Halfway down the Danube

Pie Blogging: The Clove and Tom Collins Pie

From the American animated television show The Simpsons, December 16, 1993:

Lisa: There's nothing to eat for breakfast.
Homer: You gotta improvise, Lisa: cloves, Tom Collins mix, frozen pie crust...

Cloves are the spice. A Tom Collins is a cocktail made with lime, lemon juice, bar syrup, club soda, and gin. Frozen pie crust is what I have been using.

I accepted the implicit challenge.

First, I started with half a cup of Rose's Lime Juice, and poured it into a mixing bowl. Rose's is sort of like real lime juice, but with added corn syrup and preservatives and an odd, metallic taste. Every liquor cabinet I have ever seen has had a bottle.

Next, I cut a lemon in half, and squeezed the juice into the bowl as well, picking out the seeds.

Then I poured an 14 ounce can of condensed milk into the mixture. Condensed milk is heavily sweetened whole milk, caramelized light brown and as thick as yogurt. It's extremely popular in the Spanish-American world, and a lot of differently Latin households have a can or two in the cupboard. There is a mildly dangerous dessert one can make with it, simply with an unopened can, which I will not recount here.

The acidity of the lime and lemon juices began to curdle the condensed milk, but the condensed milk was already quite thick in texture, so some stirring rapidly evened the bowl out.

Then I crushed six cloves -- skittery little things -- into the mixture. Ground cloves would likely be better, and less stale cloves better still. But mainly, I wanted enough clove flavor to compete with the Tom Collins citrus component of the pie. I stirred them in, ending up with a yellow batter with brown flecks. It tasted good and sweet and sour, much more so than the vinegar pie. The clove bits produced a mildly minty sensation on the tongue.

Three egg yolks followed. In theory, I could make meringue with the egg whites. But I don't like meringue all that much. It's like eating burnt candy styrofoam. And I do like white omelettes.

The filling at this point was a nice light glossy yellow, with scattered brown flecks of clovosity. I poured it into, yes, a frozen pie crust, thawed to room temperature. I waited for the oven to heat to 350 degrees F (175 C), and let the pie cook for fifteen minutes. The finished pie was light yellow with a light brown crust, with a remarkably smooth sheen to the filling. Cars should be painted that smooth.

I let it cool, and about an hour later I had a slice. Ooooh. Sweet enough to make my teeth hurt, sour enough to make me purse my lips. Kick it up a notch! The filling, while sticky, was able to hold its shape, and the pie crust, although with difficulty, did hold the filling. The flavors of the lemon and lime blended, somewhat to my regret, into a generic sort of citrus, while the six cloves had a much subtler effect on the whole pie, infusing it with a light mint flavor. (I should note that my cloves were rather stale.)

Mmmm, clove and Tom Collins pie. Now I have something to eat for breakfast.

Posted by coyu at June 30, 2004 03:59 AM