blue artichoke

I celebrate religious holidays according to their food traditions. Today, Good Friday, is a day of fasting for Roman Catholics. Fasting isn't exactly a food tradition I support, but I can support a fast if it is traditionally broken with a big ol' slice of pie. Early French settlers (Cajun) broke their Good Friday fast with a sweet-dough pie, usually a sweet custard pie, but the tradition has evolved into breaking fast with any old pie. Because this is my first Good Friday fast, I decided to break it with a traditional custard pie. I started making the pie straight away after waking up. I have designated my grandmother's periwinkle blue bowl as my official "pie bowl." It may not be the prettiest bowl, but it has history, and a piece of masking tape stuck to the bottom with my grandmother's old phone number in her unmistakable scrawl. It is wide and shallow; perfect for scraping together dough for the pie crust, and for whisking together a custard filling.

I fasted until 10:05am, five minutes after the pie came out of the oven. It wasn't the prettiest looking pie, but it was sweet custard deliciousness to a grumbling tummy. The crust was flaky, but not sweet and actually sort of salty. I think a slightly sweet crust would be better, not because the pie needed to be sweeter, but to meld better with the pie filling.

Good Friday Egg Custard Pie

American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America’s Back Roads, by Pascale Le Draoulec, 2003.

Crust:
1 prebaked pie shell crust
Filling:
3 eggs
¼ c. sugar
Pinch salt
1 c. whole milk
1 t. vanilla
Nutmeg, to taste

Mix filling ingredients, except for nutmeg, together in as pretty a bowl as you can find. Fill a prebaked pie shell with the mixture. Bake at 325 for 45-50 minutes. Sprinkle nutmeg on top midway through baking time.

Pie Crust
This custard pie recipe didn't come with a crust recipe, so I tried this one. For some reason, there is no all-purpose flour in the house, so I used bread flour instead. If I use this crust recipe for the custard pie again, I'll probably replace the salt with sugar, for a lightly sweetened crust. When I blind-baked the crust, it puffed up in the middle and pulled away from the edges a bit. Next time, I'll poke a few holes in the bottom with the tines of a fork and hope that prevents the bubbling and pulling.

1 c. flour
½ t. salt
1/3 c. vegetable shortening
2-3 T. cold water

Combine flour and salt in medium bowl; cut in shortening with pastry blender until crumbly. Sprinkle with water; blend until mixture holds together.

Shape dough into a ball; place on lightly floured surface. Roll out dough to 1/8” thick. Line pie plate with pastry. Turn edge under; crimp edge as desired.

If blind baking, bake at 375 for ~15 minutes.

Yield: 1 9” deep-dish piecrust.

Getting to Know All About You: What's your favorite kind of pie?