Pie Talk #8: "Sweet Enough"

Good Sunday morning from the Outer Banks. The winds blowing across Ablemarle Sound are nearly always a loud and gigantic presence; you never feel alone. But this morning? All is calm. I can hear only the birds from where I am sitting, at a dining table covered with dozens of documents I’ve numbered 1 - 17 and lettered A - P, in the hopes that such organization and annotation will help me to stitch together what needs to be stitched. That, and/or I can accept the succor offered by Rick Rubin, in conversation with Bari Weiss on her Honestly podcast: to consider, when we are creating work and trying to be perfect, that “everything we make, we’re making as an offering to God. If you’re making it for God, you’re not taking any shortcuts.” It does not matter, or does not matter to me, whether you believe in God. The idea appeals!

I am deeply fortunate to be staying in a 5-bedroom home (it’s just me!) arranged by my friends Laura and Andy, who live next door. Here is the breakfast room:

And here, a bit of that wind. I love it here so much.

As mentioned in the audio, I have been extended this invitation because of a podcast, The Fifth Column to be exact, and the community of people that has grown around them in the past seven (!) years. These people include Laura and Andy, fans of the Fifth (and twenty year subscribers to Reason, where Matt Welch is editor-at-large). Back in 2021, my last scheduled stop of a 5,000-mile road trip was Miami, to see a live Fifth show, drive the guys to Key West, hang out for a few days, then zip home solo to NYC.

I didn’t have a place to stay on the trip’s last leg, and I am not sure how it transpired, but Laura and Andy invited me to stay.with them. Their house is right on the Sound. I fell in love. I realize we often say that about places we visit, but let’s just say, I can see spending time here…

Which I did last night at Laura and Andy’s, including with their friend Kim - ooh did we have a lot to talk about, including the move, happening even in Virginia, where Kim is a juvenile court judge, to get rid of cash bail entirely. Meaning, no matter what you do, stab me in the eye, run over my kid, the judge has the option to let you go free until trial. Having written about a case in which such a practice resulted in murder, I have a problem with repeatedly setting recidivistic violent felons free, a policy on which we will never all agree. Anyway! Also there last night was Andy’s friend Sludge, a name given to him his first week in college after he drank the backwash from the keg bucket (or whatever that’s called; I don’t drink beer). Sludge is a former engineer who now works in healthcare, but what does he love more than anything? BAKING! I have never engaged in a conversation like this, the words were spilling (the margaritas helped), we talked T45 flour and canele pans; he ate some shortbread (Pie Talk #7) I’d brought as a hostess gift, he gave me English muffins he made here because, of course, he travels with his starter.

The last person I spoke baking with was… drumroll please… Alison Roman. Anyone who’s spent a few minutes here knows I am a super-fan of Roman’s, that I bake her blueberry-cornmeal tart compulsively all summer (scroll down), that it was her tweet about induction ranges that convinced me to buy one. That she wound up at my apartment last month was… it was just right. We sat for several hours with a few others, talking media and eating a pie I’d made (of course I made her a pie, and no I still cannot recall what kind it was!), and when everyone else peeled off to the living room, she and I talked crusts, and cookbooks, and whose recipes work (hers, always) and whose sometimes do not. I wish there were a video of Roman making the salted chocolate pudding, but in lieu, let her tell you about her new book:

As mentioned, I once owned more than 100 cookbooks. Alas, these were sold to Powell’s when I left Portland, all that is but five: The Silver Palate Cookbook, which I rarely use and keep, maybe, for sentimental reasons, including a note I wrote in the back when I was a few months pregnant; New York Cookbook by Molly O’Neill, Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Chocolate Desserts, in which I’ve tucked the handwritten thank you note Heatter sent me after I gave the book a nice review in Bon Appetit (I mean…), Tartine (are you sensing a dessert theme?), and How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking, by Nigella Lawson, whose late-night snacking videos my daughter used to watch obsessively, to the point where she said, “I feel like she’s another mom to me.” More moms, more snacking, what is not to like?

I have not yet made Roman’s a bowl of salted chocolate pudding so cannot tell you what I might change (likely nothing).

I can tell you I learned, because she told me in the book’s “Ingredients” introduction, to not add more salt to her recipes; that she’s already done that, which is good for me to know as I almost always add more salt than called for; your cookies will thank you if you do. I can also tell you, her “Equipment” intro convinced me to get a kitchen scale, look, it’s nine bucks.

Because everyone has been so nice to me, and because the sky is right now pink, this Pie Talk is free for all. May you, as Roman suggests, eat the bowl of chocolate pudding communally with friends, “when the lights are low and the music is loud.” xx

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