Thanksgiving Day 2019 has come and gone, but the fantastic food is here to stay. My family arrived early on Thanksgiving Day in the midst of my early morning cooking. The madness in the kitchen ensued shortly thereafter. After almost the entire morning and afternoon cooking and baking, Thanksgiving dinner was ready to be served by early afternoon. Mom and aunt joined me in the kitchen with peeling and prepping vegetables the moment they stepped foot into our home. Dad got his phone camera ready to capture each and every moment of Thanksgiving chaos. Kevin spent most of the afternoon cheering on Michigan basketball after picking up my family from the airport. By the time my family arrived, the apple medley pie was already baking in the oven. I had prepared three batches of my pie dough recipe the evening before in anticipation of Thanksgiving Day. Two of the pie doughs were reserved for the apple medley pie. One batch of pie dough was reserved for a pumpkin pie (mom’s favorite holiday pie). Our order of operation in the kitchen for Thanksgiving usually starts with the pies, then biscuits, followed by the turkey, sides, and ending with the cranberry sauce and pan gravy. While we were waiting on the turkey and sides to finish up, we arranged the salad, plated the rolls my classmates and I had baked ahead of time in my professional baking class, and touched up the dining table to be camera ready for dad to snap photos of the finished dishes. Thanksgiving Day truly is a big production in our family. We celebrated this year over an oven roasted turkey with pan gravy, green bean casserole, cheesy hash brown potatoes, sausage dressing, apple medley pie, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, salad, and assorted rolls. Everyone was starving by the time all of the food was ready to be served. We all nibbled on some biscuits and rolls as we waited for all of the dishes to finish cooking. The plates came out around 3:00 p.m. and the feast began promptly. The first 20 minutes of dinner was just pure silence, a rare occurrence in our family. You can tell the food is good when no one is speaking a word during the meal. After seven hours of chaos, it’s a welcome change to have some silence. Once the bellies were full, it was time to get to work on the turkey soup for a couple hours before heading out to do some early holiday shopping. Heading out early for shopping also forced us to squeeze in some exercise. With one meal behind us, it was time to start tomorrow’s meals. Typically, I would repurpose some of the leftovers by putting new spins on those dishes, but because we barely had leftovers actually left over, I decided to make some pizza, as a alternative, for my family to enjoy. I prepared a quadruple batch of pizza dough and left it to rise on the cold counter before heading to bed. Since we didn’t have a lot of turkey left, I browned some chicken breasts to use for two BBQ chicken pizzas, spins on my BBQ turkey pizza. I also made a pear, blue cheese, and onion BBQ pizza for the third pie, and a simple chicken with fruit and vegetable pizza for the final pie. The pizza was served with the turkey soup to complete the morning meal. With breakfast done and everyone full, we headed out for a day trip to explore Northern Kentucky. The first stop was to Newport on the Levee to soak in some of the city views. On our way back, we stopped by the international market, Jungle Jim, for a quick grocery trip. By the time we got back home, it was already early evening, so I started on making pork and cabbage dumplings from scratch to serve to my family for dinner. Dessert was leftover apple medley pie and pumpkin pie from the prior day along with some ice cream from Graeter’s and Jeni’s. We were all exhausted by the time dessert was served, so we all retired for the evening shortly after. Mom brought along ingredients for her braised beef and planned on making it on Saturday as we watched the game on television. Thanksgiving Day 2019 has been a huge success. The best part was being able to curl in the corner of my coach to do some light writing and sip on some tea.
For the apple medley pie:
· Double batch of pie dough recipe
· 3 large Granny Smith apples
· 3 large Fuji apples
· 1 lemon, zested and juiced
· ½ teaspoon cinnamon
· ¼ teaspoon all spice
· ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
· ¼ cup fine sugar
· ½ cup light brown sugar
· ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
· 2½ tablespoons cornstarch
For the egg wash:
· 1 large egg
· 1 tablespoon water
Directions:
1) Prepare the pie dough following my pie dough recipe the evening before. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and store the dough in the refrigerator.
2) The next day, remove the two pie doughs from the refrigerator. Set aside a large bowl. Remove some of the skin from part of the apples and slice up the apples into thin slices. Add the sliced apples into the large bowl. Mix in the zest and juice of the lemon, all of the spices, sugars, salt, and cornstarch into the large bowl. Toss until all of the ingredients are well incorporated. Let the large bowl rest for 30 minutes.
3) Preheat oven to 425°F.
4) Roll out one piece of the pie dough. Loosely wrap the pie dough on a rolling pin and use the rolling pin to transfer the pie dough to the pie dish. Unroll the pie dough. Trim off any edges and reserve the trimmed pie dough for making the lattice top. Scoop the apple mixture into the pie pan.
5) Roll out the second piece of pie dough into a large rectangle. Cut the pie dough into anywhere from fourteen to sixteen equal strips. Use the rerolled trimmed edges from the first batch of pie dough to make additional strips, if needed. Starting from the center, lay one strip down vertically. Lay another strip on top of the vertical strip horizontally. The two strips should be perpendicular to one another. Lay two more strips parallel to the strip running vertically. Fold down the center vertical strip and lay two strips parallel to the horizontal center strip. Fold back the center vertical strip. Continue this process in a weaving motion as if you were weaving a basket. Once all of the strips are laid out on the pie, crimp the edges of the pie dough around the pie pan.
6) Make the egg wash by whisking the egg and water together until combined. Brush the egg wash all over the pie including the crimped edges.
7) Place the pie in the preheated oven and bake for 20 minutes on 425°F. Turn down the heat to 350°F and bake for another 30-35 minutes until the apples are cooked through and the crust is golden brown. Remove the pie from the oven and let it rest for at least two hours before serving.
Takeaways: My apple medley pie combines a mixture of Granny Smith and Fuji apples. I like the balance of the tart Granny Smith apples combined with the sweet Fuji apples. As an alternative, you can also use Gala apples or Honeycrisp apples. I find making the apple medley pie first and letting it rest while cooking the rest of the dishes yields the most intact apple pie. The first few Thanksgivings when I started out cooking, I waited to make the pie last which resulted in the pie being runny because it didn’t get sufficient time to cool. Letting the pie cool while the rest of the dishes cooked yielded perfect, intact pie slices.
