Family Chow Hall

Apple dumplings made by my mother are a treat that is well-known by all family members and many members of her community. They are truly an especially delicious delight to those people who have the great fortune to taste them.

It must be the fall weather — I have been thinking of Mom and her dumplings. A friend of hers who has a lot of apple trees will bring her apples in the fall and Mom will always reward him with a large pan of her fresh homemade apple dumplings. Then she makes some for some other friends, family, and for Dad. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that she has a partially-eaten pan of them on her counter right now.

I remember, after I grew up and was starting to do a lot of my own cooking, trying my own apple dumplings. I was quite disappointed. Most recipes I have found instruct you to peel and core the apples, stuff them with a mixture that contains raisins and/or nuts, then wrap them in pastry dough before baking.

Mom’s dumplings are like this only in that; a. they contain apples, and b. you use pastry dough. Trust me, Mom’s dumplings beat those other recipes, hands-down. You peel and core the apples, cut them into chunks, make a filling similar to pie filling, and wrap them with the dough. The “secret” (which I guess will not be a secret any longer) is that she makes a syrup and pours it over everything before baking the dumplings.

Apple Dumplings, Mom’s Way
makes eight large dumplings

Pie Dough:
1 1/3 c. shortening
3 c. flour
1 1/2 t. salt
7 T. water

Filling:
8 small apples - Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, or any baking apple
2/3 c. sugar
2 T. cinnamon

Syrup:
1 c. sugar
2 1/2 c. water
3 T. butter
1/2 t. cinnamon

I won’t fool you by saying this is one of those quick and easy desserts. An efficient person can plan on spending at least 30 minutes in the kitchen here.

Start with the dough — Cut the shortening, flour, and salt together into course crumbs. Then add the water and toss until it begins to form a ball. Next you will separate the dough into eight lumps and, once the filling is made, roll each into a circle.

The filling is self-explanatory. Peel, core, and chop the apples into bite-sized pieces. In a bowl, toss the apples with the sugar and cinnamon. Divide equally among your eight circles of dough.

Fold the dough up and around the filling and pinch to seal. Carefully turn them over, so the pinched side is down, into a greased 9 x 13 pan.

Now take a moment to turn on your oven to 400 degrees. In a saucepan, combine the sugar, water, butter, and cinnamon to make the syrup. Heat this up until the sugar is dissolved, probably bring it to a simmer for a couple of minutes. Then pour this syrup over the dumplings. They will not be floating in it, but it is enough to make them nice and moist.

Bake for 40 minutes.

You will have to let them cool for a while, an hour is a reasonable amount of time. That will give you enough time to run to the grocery to get some vanilla ice cream to go with them.

I am honestly afraid of what my family might do to me if I didn’t make pies on Thanksgiving. Generally, the argument is WHICH KIND of pies I should make.

There are seven members of this family and I would have to make seven pies to please everyone perfectly.

If you are looking for a recipe today, check out my post on making pie crust.

Here is my top-ten list of good fall / harvest pies to serve for Thanksgiving-dinner-dessert:

1. Pumpkin
2. Pecan
3. Apple
4. Apple Crumb
5. Custard
6. Pear
7. Cherry
8. Cranberry-Pecan
9. Fresh Lemon
10. Chocolate Cream

I come from a big family with plenty of siblings and loads of cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. When we ate Thanksgiving dinner, children ate at a separate table wherever the women found room to stick them. Usually this was a card table or two set up in the den. We gobbled as much or as little food as we wished, went back for second helpings at will, and were pretty much ignored by the adults, who understandably wanted adult conversation.

As a teenager, I was still at a “kid’s” table for holidays. I think the requirement for moving up to an “adult” table is marriage. Anyway, eating holiday meals with my in-laws-to-be was an entirely different experience. My husband, being an only child from a smaller family with fewer cousins, always ate at the “adult” table. There was no “kid” table. He didn’t help himself from a buffet-style serving line like I had. He was served, family-style, on the “good” tableware and with the “good” silverware.

This was completely foreign to me. Something I’d seen in the movies, maybe. His family ate like human beings, civilized. Slowly savoring each dish. Dinner might take an hour. At my house, it might take 10-20 minutes, max.

And after dinner, it was time for pie and coffee. Pat’s mother would meticulously clean up the dishes and the kitchen while everyone remained at the dining room table. She would not allow me to help. Eventually, she would bring out the pies and a fresh pot of coffee for whoever wanted it. By this time, our full bellies were not sure if pie was a good idea. We forced the issue anyway. When you eat a fast meal, you can cram the pie in before you realize how full you are. When you eat slowly, you are completely aware of how much you have eaten. You feel stuffed, and yet you are offered pie – the very best part of Thanksgiving dinner. How can you refuse?

Simple. You can’t. Sometimes you have to sample two pies because you can’t choose which looks best.

Overindulgence. Probably not what the pilgrims had in mind when they gave thanks almost 400 years ago.

Well, what doesn’t get distorted after 400 years?

You know, sometimes I hear of or see a recipe that is just so bizarre, I simply MUST try it. I love to experiment in the kitchen and, for the most part, my family enjoys the results.

So when I saw a recipe for lemon pie with actual slices of lemon, I felt compelled to give it a whirl. I filed that thought in the back of my memory a couple of months ago.

Last week, when I was ready to test it out, I realized that I had forgotten to file into my memory WHERE I had seen the recipe, or what was in it except slices of lemon. (Do YOU ever wish you could upgrade your RAM, just like you can for your desktop computer?)

Anyway, the hunt was on. I knew there was a recipe for lemon pie out there, I just had to find it. Not surprisingly, with this amazing thing we call an internet, it took me under ten minutes to find A recipe for lemon slice pie. Not sure if it’s the same thing I saw a couple of months back, but I found one and I was happy. I made one small change - I prefer tapioca to flour as a thickener.

Gotta add a plug here for www.recipesource.com – if you are hunting a particular recipe, ethnic food, etc., check there. I almost never fail when looking at recipesource.

Well, I whipped this pie up this afternoon because - miracle of miracles, all my kids were done with school about 2:30 and I had an hour of baby’s naptime to kill. I warned everyone that I wasn’t sure how this pie would taste, it might be bitter, it might be sour, blah… blah… blah… Once I say the word pie, no one hears much else.

Anyway, I am happy to report it was good. Beyond Good. Way Good. Stupendously, Exceptionally, Amazingly Good. My six-year-old, who, to my memory, has never eaten pie — EVER, tasted it and ate a slice.

This pie gets a 7-thumbs up. (Sam says 14 thumbs, because we each have two .)

Lemon Slice Pie
makes a 10 inch pie

Crust:
Pie crust for a 10 inch, double crust pie

Filling:
1 1/4 c. sugar
2 T. quick tapioca
dash of salt
1/4 c. butter
3 eggs
one lemon
1/2 c. water
cinnamon and sugar

Roll out the bottom crust and line a 10 inch plate with it. For the filling, start by combining the sugar, tapioca, and salt in a medium bowl. Set this aside for a minute. Separate one of the eggs — you’re gonna save the white to brush onto the top crust later. Now add the two whole eggs to the one yolk and beat. Melt the butter and add it to the eggs. Now combine the eggy mixture to the sugary mixture and stir gently.

Next, zest the lemon. Now, I don’t have a lemon zester, so my 12-year-old just scraped it agains the finest part of my cheese grater. Worked fine. Just scrape the bright yellow part of the entire lemon off. This is the zest. Add the zest to the egg-sugar-butter concoction. Now I sliced off most of the thick white part of the lemon peel, although my orginal recipe did not say to do this. I happen to know that’s the bitter part and I figured I didn’t want that in my pie.

Finally, slice that lemon as thinly as humanly possible. I mean, you want floppy, see-through slices of lemon. Be sure to remove the seeds. Add the slices of lemon and the half cup of water to the gooey, sugary mixture. Stir well and pour this into the pie shell.

Finally, put the top crust on and seal as you would any other double-crust pie. Brush the top with the reserved egg white and sprinkle the cinnamon and sugar on top.

Bake at 375 until golden brown - about an hour. Now, this is not an overly aromatic pie but the flavor totally makes up for it. I may never make a lemon meringue pie again.