An tetanus shot for an apple pie

Wow, I can't believe this never made it to the blog, the post has been ready since last October... Oh well, better late than never I guess, here goes:

I had a bunch of beautiful organic Golden Delicious apples and had just purchased myself a new gizmo, the apple "peeler, corer, slicer", as shown below.



The planets all seemed perfectly alligned for a perfect apple pie day. I make my dough, chill it, roll it, prepare all my ingredients for the filling, all that is left to do, is the apples.

The machine worked great. It worked great on the apples. It also worked great on my right index finger.

Truth be told, it was really my fault. One of the apples got stuck (the very last one, go figure), and like an idiot, I pushed it forward... and jammed my index right into the "corer-peeler" blade. Made myself a pretty nasty and log cut, too.

But we writers are made of solid stuff--I wasn't going to allow something like a gushing finger ruin Dave's apple pie. I rinsed my finger, dunked it in Neosporin and bandaged it tight to stop the bleeding. Then I decided to simply pretend it didn't happen just for long enough to put on a latex glove on my right hand, discard the bloody apple, and toss the previous ones in the sugar and spices so they wouldn't waste.

Only then, did I tell Dave what happened, and we went to the hospital.

The good news was that the nurse told me I had done a good job bandaging the wound. The bleeding had stopped, and it looked as good as it could be expected considering it just got peeled and cored. She disinfected it again, added a few self resorbing strips in lieu of stitches, and made a new bandage. The bad news was that I needed a tetanus shot.

The shot in itself was nothing. side effects were another story. I have been down right miserable for 3 days, with over 100.5 temperatures, flu-like symptoms, extreme tiredness, and a lot of pain in my left arm (the one that got the shot). It felt like it had been hit by a truck. A large truck. Repeatedly.

Between the arm on the left and the hand on the right, it's been an interesting week so far. Oh, well. At least the pie was good (recipe follows).


"Bloody" good apple pie:

For the crust, put the following in the bowl of your food processor:

2 1/2 cups of KAF Mellow Pastry Blend flour (*), 3/4 tsp. salt, 2 Tbsp. buttermilk powder, 2 Tbsp sugar. Pulse a few times to mix everything, then add 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, that you previously cut into 1/4 cubes and froze for half an hour. (You can also do half butter half shortening, but imho nothing beats the taste of an all butter crust.)

Using a few short pulses, process the butter until the mixture is crumbly. Leave chunks of butter about the size of small peas in the dough. Sprinkle with the smallest amount of water (8-10 Tbsp of ice water), then pulse again, once or twice. Feel the dough to see if you can squeeze it together (careful for the blade). If necessary, add a little more water until the dough holds together.

Just be sure to have a light finger on the pulse button, it's easy to over process and thus thoughen the crust once you've added the fat and the water.

Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and divide it in half. Flatten it to 2 thick disks, flour them and wrap them well, and refrigerate for 30 minutes, or until you're ready to use them.

(*) you can also add all unbleached all-purpose flour; you'll need to add a bit more water to the crust, and it'll be slightly less tender).

For the filling, you need:

About 2lbs of the apples of your choice, peeled, cored and sliced. (the blood is optional); 2 tsp. lemon juice; 3 Tbsp. cornstarch or 3 Tbsp. Instant Clearjel, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. nutmeg, 1 cup of sugar, 2 Tbsp. butter, 1/4 cup of boiled cider (or golden syrup if you don't have any boiled cider), 1 Tbsp of vanilla extract.

Put the apples in a large bowl, and sprinkle them with the lemon juice as soon as they are peeled and sliced. In a small bowl, whisk together the cornstarch or clearjel with the sugar, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg until it's well mixed. Add this dry mixture to the apples, and stir to combine. Thoroughly combine the apples and dry ingredients. Then add the boiled cider and vanilla extract.

Ready to roll:

Remove one piece of dough from the refrigerator. If it's been in the fridge longer than 30 minutes, allow it to rest at room temperature, covered, for about 10-15 minutes, until it's cool, but flexible enough to handle.

Roll the dough to at least 12 inches in diameter, and gently transfer to 9-inch pie pan (I use an enameled stoneware pan). Once it's nestled in the pan, don't stretch it! stretching and tugging pie crusts is why it slides down the sides and puddles in the bottom of the pan while the pie is baking.

Spoon the apple mixture into the crust.

Roll out the remaining piece of crust, just like you did the first piece. Lay it over the filling, making sure it completely covers the edges of the bottom crust. Trim off the excess, leaving about 1/2 inch all around to work with. Seal the edges on the top and bottom crust together by brushing the edge of the bottom crust with water, then folding the edges under and crimping with your fingers or with a fork to seal. Slice a few steam vents in the top crust. Brush with milk (or an egg-wash) and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake the pie in a preheated 450°F oven for 15 minutes, reduce the oven heat to 350°F and continue to bake for an hour or longer, until it's as brown as you like. If the edges brown too much while baking, cover them with a pie shield or foil. Be sure to place a parchment or foil lined cookie sheet below the pie to catch any drippings that boil out.

It's best to wait until the pie has completely cooled off before you eat it, to leave the filling time to set.

The picture at the top is not "my" picture, but it's the picture of the original recipe, and your pie will look just like that.

Enjoy!

Me, an author? Surely you must be joking.

A first post is a very delicate thing. Truth be told, as much as I love to wax lyrical about my loved ones, my cat, my last plot change, my culinary creations, or the book I just finished, I am very shy when it comes to talking about myself. I guess I'll learn as I go, and post the silly nonsense that happens to me every day. I just hope that my narcissistic babble won't bore you to tears in the process.

I've always written stories, but didn't consider myself an author until very recently. My latest and current novel had been building itself in the back of my mind for years, I just needed to put it on paper. Eventually I did, sometimes in January or February of 2009, and Fargerik the dragon-wizard was officially born. I showed the first few chapters to my husband. Who hates to read (figures).

But somehow, he loved the story. And asked me to write more--which I did. I even sent it to a few friends of mine, a couple of which authors themselves; some of them even had a few short stories published. Two of them were kind enough to review my work and helped me tremendously. The feedback I received was phenomenal, and encouraged me to keep on going. Everybody that read the story agreed that I was on to something.

Somewhere during the summer, I decided to get a reality check, and applied for the New York Pitch and Shop Conference. Nobody was as surprised as me when they emailed me back and told me I got accepted. I dove into my novel with even more enthusiasm, and before I knew it September was here. My manuscript under my arm I left for New York, ready to conquer the literary world.

I won't lie: the conference was rough. Our workshop leader, Michael Neff, was brutally honest, and a few very unpleasant truths were told. But that's what I had asked for, so I sucked it up, licked my bruised ego, and worked on my pitch until I finally passed muster. I'll never be able to thank him enough for being that tough on me. Thanks to his advice, one of the editors I pitched to, an Executive Editor with a big name from a major US publishing house, wants to see my manuscript. To this day, I have to pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming. I guess I am an author after all.

The other fabulous thing that happened during that conference was the absolutely amazing group of people I met. People who, like me, wrote stories. Authors, with the same doubts, the same dreams, the same insecurities as the ones I had. It was really amazing to be part of a group containing so much talent, so much creativity, so much energy! Only for that, New York would have been a wonderful experience. Of course, being requested didn't hurt the trip either.

I came back from New York flying on a pink cloud, my head full of edits, a list of books to read to perfect my craft in my pocket. I'm still not done with all the reading, which frustrates me a tad, but if I learned one thing in New York, it's that I have a lot to learn.

A friend of ours arrived from Germany on Saturday, and will stay with us for two weeks. Then in December, my mother will fly in from Monaco, and spend the month with us. Since we are already in October, and because I doubt I'll be able to do much writing while they are here, I don't expect to be able to do much work on my novel before January arrives. Hopefully I'll be able to compile my notes and start my actual edits by the end of the year.

After that, I have 3 months to do a full re-write (or four) of my novel. Then in April, I plan to sign up for another session of torture with Michael Neff, and attend another Algonkian Conference. After which I'll probably have to re-write my entire manuscript once more--but that's ok. If I learn half as much as I did during the New York event, it will be well worth the blood sweat and tears.

Once that rewrite will be done, I guess I'll have to find a good editor to proof check my novel. Then it will be time to find myself one of those elusive and highly hard to catch creatures known as "agents". Then, and only then, will I be ready to send my manuscript to that famous big name Editor... and hope he likes it.

So there. You have the recap of what has been happening in the world of Sherine this summer.

Are you still awake? ;)