Lemon pie, me oh my oh

One of my new year's resolutions is to eat more pie. 2006 saw entirely too few slices of pie travel down my gullet. Luckily, at Christmas I received a copy of Ken Haedrich's pie cookbook, called Pie: 300 Tried and True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie. There is a lot to like about this book. Yes there are 300 recipes for pies, but he also includes a wide range of pie crusts. After all that he admits that the store bought roll out pie crust isn't that bad. Since my homemade pastry is generally weak, I tend to go store bought, unless it is a specialty crust.

Each of the recipes has a small story/introduction. For example, he has a recipe for a Peanut Pie Like Virginia Diner's, because the people at the Virginia Diner wouldn't give up the recipe. There are pies from all over the US, and pies of every type and for each one we hear why the pie is distinct from others and from whence it came.

My first one was a Shaker Lemon Pie, see here for an example. This person has a nice variation using Meyer lemons and ginger. It's a delightful pie, with a consistency in between lemon chess and custard but with macerated lemon slices. I don't think I sliced my lemons quite thinly enough as they were close to too tart (my spouse said they were easily over the line into too tart.) Next up is the orange pie with the pistachio crust. After that, the turtle pie. Who knew resolutions could be so easy?