My friend Barb was born in Calgary, Alberta, about an hour’s drive east of the Rocky mountains. We met at a resort tucked in the midst of the Rockies where we both had found summer jobs- me in the dining room and Barb at the front desk where she welcomed guests with her sunny smile. Barb has Scottish/British roots (from her mom’s side) and Norwegian roots (from her father’s side), which helps explain why she loves oatmeal in the morning and hiking and skiing whenever she can find the time.

Barb’s paternal grandmother was known as “Besta” (“Bestemor” being Norwegian for grandmother).

Besta was a warm and wonderful grandmother as well as a fantastic cook. In the late 1920’s, Besta left Grand Bend, Ontario for Calgary, where she met and married Barb’s “Gramps”. During the 1940’s and 1950’s, Besta cared for her two sons alone during the week while her husband worked out of town for the United Grain Growers. Barb’s dad recalls those days like this:

     ”We had our big meal at noon, usually spaghetti with meatballs, waffles or poached eggs with spinach. The highlight of every meal was my mother’s homemade dessert- tapioca, rice or lemon pudding or, if we were really lucky, my favourite raisin pie. Her Christmas baking was wonderful too- dark and light Christmas cakes, tarts and hard toffee being the most popular”. 

Barb’s dad has fond memories of his mother’s warmth and laughter– she laughed even when scolding her two boys to “slow down!” at the dinner table so that she could sit and eat her meal along with them. Barb has fond memories of Besta too, of her beautiful summer garden overflowing with hollyhocks, peonies and snapdragons, of shopping at Woolworth’s with her in downtown Calgary along with her younger sister Sue, and especially of Besta arriving for Sunday dinners with a freshly baked raisin pie, transported in a vintage Kodak movie film tin.

Besta’s Raisin Pie (recipe is for pie filling- make pastry in advance)

• 2 Cups puffed raisins (raisins rehydrated in warm water)
• ½ Cup white sugar
• 2 Cups cold water
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
• 2 Tablespoons butter
• 3 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon lemon extract
• 2 Tablespoons cornstarch

Set oven to 450C.

Combine raisins, sugar, water, salt, cinnamon, butter and lemon juice in a pot and warm on stove over medium heat for 5 minutes. Stir to ensure sugar completely dissolves.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, dissolve cornstarch in 3 Tablespoons cold water. Stir well.

Add constarch mixture to the raisin mixture and and continue to cook over warm stove for 5 minutes or until mixture noticeably thickens.

Remove thickened raisin mixture from heat. Add lemon extract and stir well. Allow the mixture to cool completely.

Add well-cooled raisin mixture to pastry lined pie pan.

Make pastry strips, about one inch wide, and layer lattice-fashion on top of filling.

Finally, bake the pie in 450C oven for 25 minutes.

 

 

We sometimes tease my mother by calling her « The Pie Queen ». I think she secretly likes the moniker because she does seem to love making pie- especially apple pie. When we were little, she would serve her apple pies on special occasions- Thanksgiving, Christmas and Sunday dinners if we were having guests. I have fond memories of apple pie served warm from the oven, sometimes with vanilla ice cream on top. My father liked his with a slice of cheddar cheese which I thought a bit odd at the time, but now that I am « of a certain age », I prefer it that way too.

Mom just turned 85 and she is still turning out wonderful apple pies.

I finally asked her for her recipe and was surprised to find out that her pastry recipe was so simple. No eggs, no sugar, no vinegar- just flour, a bit of salt, some water and of course fat (preferably lard but she tells me that bacon fat makes a beautifully smokey crust).

Here’s the recipe for the apple pie she made for Christmas of 2017.

 

Ingredients for pastry (enough for top & bottom shell):

2 cups flour
2/3 cup lard (or bacon fat if you dare)
½ teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons very cold water

Ingredients for pie filling:

5 apples
– preferably Northern Spy if you can find them, but Granny Smith’s are fine too
1 cup sugar (less if you prefer)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
a few teaspoons butter

Mix the flour and salt together in a large bowl. Add the lard to the flour mixture and incorporate well using a pastry knife. Gradually add cold water to the mixture and continue to incorporate with the pastry knife. When pastry is moist enough, form into two balls, wrap each in waxed paper and put in refridgerator to cool.

Meanwhile, wash and peel the apples. Slice the apples into a large bowl, leaving the apple cores and peels for the deer in your backyard. (what? no deer? well surely you have a squirrel out there that needs fattening up). Now stir the sugar and cinnamon into the sliced apples.

Your pastry should now be chilled and ready to roll. First flour your working surface as well as your rolling pin. Flatten out the first ball of pastry with your floured hands, turn it over on the floured surface and start rolling the pastry from the centre outward until it is an inch or two larger in circumference than your pie pan.

Spray your pie pan with a bit of Pam (mom swears by this to keep the pastry from sticking). Set the pastry gently in the pie pan. Distribute the sliced, spiced apples in the pie pan and dot the surface with about four or five small dots of butter.

Roll out the second ball of pastry as described above. Fold this pastry over your rolling pin and every so gently unroll it over the apples. Now pinch the pastry all round the pan to make sure the juice stays trapped inside the pie- make it as pretty as you like. Cut away the extra pastry with a knife and use this for pastry cut-outs to put on the surface of the pie to make it even more pretty.

Alternatively, use the leftover pastry to make cinnamon twists (also known as « nun’s farts » in ruder circles), which are a real crowd pleaser.

Once you have prepared the pie, you can either freeze it to bake it later, or bake it right away. Either way, put the pie in a very hot oven (425C) for 15 minutes to brown the pastry well, then lower the oven to 350C and continue to bake the pie for another 40 minutes. Take it out of the oven and cool on a rack until ready to serve. And…get out the cheese!