Apple Pie

I had been craving Apple Pie for a while. I don't have cable, so I only get to watch tv once a year, when I go home to visit my family for Thanksgiving. While there, I watched the Food Network, and they had a special on Thanksgiving food (surprise surprise). Alton Brown had an episode about an apple pie, and it looked absolutely delicious! You can find his recipe here. The only thing was that the recipe called for one special cooking instrument (a pie bird) and two special ingredients, which I could not seem to find anywhere: Grains of Paradise (not to be confused with the plant, Bird of Paradise) and Apple Jack.

Pie Birds, I have learned, are fantastic ingenious devices. All that extra liquid can really destroy the inside of your pie. The pie bird is a small, hallow ceramic device. It prevents the liquid pie filling from boiling up and  leaking through the crust by allowing steam to escape from inside the pie.  Place it down on your bottom pie crust. You can then place your apples or fruit in circles going outward from the pie bird in the center. If you have a cover on your pie, like in this recipe, just place the second crust on top. The pie bird will poke its way through the dough and you can remove any extra dough that is clogging the pie bird.

I looked high and low for Grains of Paradise. I thought that living in the Bay Area, surely there would be a store that had the spice. Alas, no dice. I went to Seattle with my fiancee to visit some friends, and I happened upon an excellent spice shop, Market Spice, and they had Grains of Paradise. Market Spice is a fantastic store! If you are ever in Seattle, I highly recommend checking it out! It is really cool! You can also order online, and they will ship you the spices!

Apple Jack is similar to Apple Brandy, but much more closer to Apple Whiskey. Its very potent stuff! I was able to secure some at a local store in Berkeley called Ledgers Liquors

This is the first Alton Brown recipe I made, but I must say I am tempted to try more of his stuff....Especially his Fried Chicken.

I made a few alterations to the recipe, but those were by mistake. For example, I forgot to crush the grains of paradise and left them whole instead. I also forgot to add the Apple Jack when I was mixing the dough, so I added it to the glaze instead. I also used my own recipe (a la Alice Waters) for the pie dough (I used butter instead of vegetable shortening, and I didn't put any sugar in the dough). Needless to say, it was still delicious!

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