Hello, friends! I trust all of you spent your long Thanksgiving weekend eating excessive amounts of food (as is one’s patriotic duty on the last Thursday of November). I made five dishes — three of which were potato-based — and spent it at home alone marathon watching The Great British Baking Show. And yes, I planned it that way, and yes, it was relaxing and glorious and no one was around to say anything about the fact that I chose to drink my wine out of a tumbler with a bendy straw.
But now, it’s time to get cracking because the holiday season insanity has begun! If you’ve got many a potluck to attend, consider making pie as your contribution. You can make it ahead of time, transporting them isn’t as precarious as transporting a crock pot full of scalding hot brisket, and there are as many varieties of delicious pies to choose from as the day is long.
Confession: I am not very good at making pies. Or rather, I am not very good at making pie crusts. But I am a firm believer of homemade pie crusts no matter how rubbish they may end up looking (and trust me, I’ve made some pretty rubbish-looking ones) because they will always, always taste better than the premade, store-bought kind. Trust me. You can do this.
This is a chess pie. I don’t know why it’s called that and am far too lazy to Google it myself, so you’ll have to do that investigation on your own. But I do know that it’s something I’ve had a few times when I lived in Texas, where non-fruit pies are commonplace year-round. The filling is a sweet golden custard, with just a little bit of crunch on the top. All of this is cradled inside a thin buttery crust. Yum.
