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6 8 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.14 dine in WITH Mary Welp O f all the world's clichés, the phrase "easy as pie" has to be the most inaccurate. Contrast it, for instance, with "piece of cake." As a metaphor, "piece of cake" makes more sense. Te person saying or hear- ing the phrase instantly imagines the ease with which a piece of cake — a single slice — goes down. But "easy as pie" suggests that concoct- ing a pie might actually be easy. No one who has ever made a pie from scratch fnds it to be among the easiest of culinary chores. Te crust alone is a pain in the . . . hand. Ten there are all of those questions about whether to pre-bake it or not, whether the flling itself needs to be cooked — separately or together with the crust — how much cooling time is ideal, how to slice it up for a dinner party, etc., etc. Tus the majority of cooks — sometimes even otherwise excellent cooks — end up either assigning the dessert course to someone else or making a trip to the local bakery or Pie Kitchen. Te writer who frst got across to me the idea that making a pie could be easy was Nora Ephron. In her novel Heartburn, the infamous key lime pie (which in the movie version ends up smashed into Jack Nicholson's face by Meryl Streep) is saved for the last scene. But a few pages before the character Rachel brings the pie and her marriage to a ruinous end, Ephron writes: "Te key lime pie is very simple to make. First you line a nine-inch pie plate with a graham cracker crust. Ten beat six egg yolks. Add one cup lime juice, two fourteen-ounce cans sweetened condensed milk, and one table- spoon grated lime rind. Pour into the pie shell and freeze. Remove from freezer and spread with whipped cream. Let sit fve minutes before serving." A Pie Made Gingerly By Mary Welp Illustration by Carrie Neumayer Already you can see that the flling of the pie is so much easier than most fllings involving eggs and cream because there is no baking in- volved. She also specifes that the lime juice does not need to be key lime juice, that any good limes will do. Over the decades, I have made all of the recipes from Heartburn more times than I can count. Tere was not much that Ephron was wrong about, other than capers, which she had no use for. But she was most especially not wrong about how a custardy pie does not have to be baked, which in the middle of summer is just about the last thing anyone would want to do anyway. I've tried various baked versions (my own and others), and while all were serviceable, for me the baking process lends the flling a texture that falls somewhere along the fan-cheesecake spectrum and therefore does not have the pure summertime refreshment quality that you crave in a lime pie. Ina Garten (Te Barefoot Contessa) has perfect- ed Ephron's flling by making it less pudding-y and more solid. Doubling the lime zest provides exactly the right complement to another change. What would make Ephron's recipe easiest of all would be to use a store-bought crust, in the manner of French home cooks. But I've found that the biggest improvement to the original results comes from using gingersnaps rather than graham crackers for the crust. Tis pecan-gin- gersnap recipe is adapted from an old Williams- Sonoma cookbook, but it's made even better by the use of Trader Joe's Triple Ginger Snaps, which are (I am sorry to have to say this) better than any other gingersnap I have ever tasted, homemade or otherwise. Why? Because they are spiced just right and loaded with candied ginger, so you can omit the sugar, cinnamon and crystallized ginger from the Sonoma recipe. A pecan-gingersnap crust makes this creamy lime pie stand out on a summer dessert table. 62-104 BACK.indd 68 6/17/14 2:03 PM