We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee
makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season
without thinking of the grapes it has borne.
– Marcus Aurelius
Our Thoughts:
It’s soooo good! For me, because it’s a regional fingerlakes favorite, this is the taste of fall, and childhood.
The pie seizes up as it cooks, making a wonderfully gooey dessert with just a hint of the lemon, which only intensifies the flavor of the grapes. The aroma curls through the house, tempting tendrils nearly as perceptible as cartoon animation, luring you to the kitchen. The taste is an explosion of grapeness, as though you are eating Platonic Concord grapes, sun-warmed from the vine.
Why it should be in the next book:
Because it’s delicious! It’s a perfect pie for the Redwynes, as their economy revolves entirely around the export of grapes and wines. It would be almost inevitable that they would have a very grape-centric cuisine, and this pie would, for them, be as much a staple of their pantry as apple pies in New England. At least before the reavers hit…
Concord Grape Pie Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 cups Concord grapes (a little over 2 quarts)
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 (9 inch) pie shell (get a recipe, or use your own)
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Squeeze the pulp out of the skins into a saucepan, saving the skins in a bowl. Cook the pulp in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the guts break down and the seeds separate from the grape.
Press the cooked grapes through a sieve and add to the skins. Discard the seeds. Add sugar, flour and lemon juice to the grapes.
Pour into an unbaked 9 inch pie crust and make a lattice top.
Bake at 375 degrees F for about 50 minutes. This pie may overflow, so you may wish to put a pan underneath it.