Peach Pie Blues

It was the perfect day to make peach pie. Peaches are plentiful around here and my husband, Stuart, had just worked his way through part of a large cardboard crate of peaches by making several quarts of peach jam. With the sealed jars cooling on the counter, many more peaches in the crate, and weekend guests arriving in a few hours, peach pie seemed the obvious dessert for dinner.

I quickly made two batches of butter-based pie pastry, wrapped them in wax paper and then plastic bags and placed them in the freezer for a quick cool down. In the meantime, I boiled a large pan of water and blanched the peaches so the skins would easily slip off. Slicing 10 cups of peach flesh into a glass bowl, I then sprinkled over a cup of brown sugar.

The sky started to get dark and ominous and the radio was warning of dangerous thunderstorms in our area. Nothing to get alarmed about as we have lots of late afternoon thunderstorms during summer in our part of northwestern Connecticut. The heat and humidity builds during the day and the tension releases in violent storms as the sun starts to get lower in the sky. A typical summer day, except this storm front was influenced by the effects of Hurricane Bill out in the Atlantic. The storm clouds were impressively churning.

But peach pie was calling and I methodically continued my preparations for two pies - one to be frozen, uncooked, for later consumption and one for tonight.

Squeezing a large lemon, I scraped the pulp into the juice and poured it all over the sweetened peach slices, sprinkled with cinnamon, ground ginger, fresh ground black pepper (yes, it is my secret ingredient for all fruit pies and makes the fruit zingy and gives depth to the flavors). Tossing the whole thing together, I set aside the bowl and turned on the oven to preheat to 450 degrees. I like to start the pies off in a hot oven for 10 minutes and then turn the oven down to 350 to finish.

Everything was proceeding nicely with no hint of any trouble to come. The sky was getting black and rumblings could be heard in the distance. My cats and dog started to become restless.

I rolled out the first pastry shell, layered the fruit in the dish and covered with the top crust layer. Into the oven the pie went just as a bolt of lightening broke right over the house followed almost instantly by a crash of thunder. I'm used to this type of weather but it is a bit un-nerving when the storm is right overhead. One after another lightening bolts broke around the immediate neighborhood and three times in a row the electric current in the house gave off startling loud crackles as if the wires outside had been hit directly. Then, disaster - a loud crack of lightening, a flash of light, a popping sound and.....horrors! No electricity!

The timing could not have been worse with my pie in the oven and our guests arriving on the New York bus shortly. Torrential rain was gushing down outside and the gutters off the roof were emptying the deluge into the rain barrel on the corner of the house near the kitchen window.

I decided the best thing to do was to play it cool. After all, the oven had reached 450 degrees and if I didn't open the door it could stay hot for some time. Who knows? Perhaps the pie would cook in there even as the temperature cooled.

After about an hour I run out through the still-gushing rain to drive to the bus station to collect our friends. Taking my life in my hands, I drove through the still dangerous lightening dramatically flashing all around. I was sure a tree was going to come down on my car as I drove through tree-lined country lanes. I left Stuart at home to figure out how to cook an entire dinner on an outdoor gas grill.
The electric company had no clear idea how long the power would be off, but the estimate was at least 3 hours. Not too bad. Of course, the New York bus was delayed because of the storm and I sat in the depot lot in my steamed up car feeling frustrated, tired, and very sticky while several buses came in sans friends. I had no actual idea at that point how long the delay would be, since the depot was closed and there was no-one to ask. An hour later, friends safely in my car, we make our way home through more rain.

At home, there was still no power but the house was very pretty with candles and the Coleman camping light illuminating the kitchen counter. Stuart was heroically cooking on the gas grill - thankfully the rain had eased to a gentle misty drizzle.

The pie was still in the oven but was only about half baked. I felt half baked after the experiences of the last few hours! Nevertheless, I removed the pie from the now cool oven and looked for a place to set it. All the kitchen surfaces were covered with stuff! There was no space! I guess baking and cooking in darkness with no running water (because no power for the well-pump) leads to a lot of mess, to say the least.

I set the pie dish on top of the pan used to blanche the peaches and went on to help with the rest of the dinner preparations. All our camping experience came to the fore and we produced a lovely dinner - home-made bread made earlier in the day, marinated baked tofu - ditto, steak on the grill, potatoes dug fresh from the garden were boiled on the gas grill and smothered with chive butter, and sliced veggies cooked on the grill. Two bottles of wine, candles, music - we were actually starting to enjoy this.

After dinner, I decided to finish cooking the pie on the grill on top of a pizza stone. Lifting the dish off from the top of the water pan proved to be extremely difficult as a vapor lock had occurred fastening the pie-dish rim tightly to the top of the pan. I used the point of a knife to loosen under it and just then another disaster occurred! The pie dropped into the pan of water and was completely submerged.

Undeterred, but almost hysterical with the comedy of the event, I fished out the pie and stuck it out on the grill and closed the lid. I had no idea what to expect. I had visions of having to ditch the pastry and try to salvage the peach filling to serve over ice-cream or some such thing. But, twenty minutes later I retrieved the pie, cooked to perfection. The pastry was light and flaky and seemed completely unaffected by its arduous path through electric power outage, a dunking in a water bath and cooking on a pizza stone on an outdoor grill.

The moral of this story, seems to be that precise cooking and baking instructions are totally unncessary and one can produce delicious and picture-perfect food in any number of unorthodox ways. I highly recommend dunking uncooked pies in a water bath before cooking!