From the big bang to apple pie
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” Carl Sagan
Somewhere on this website there is the above quote with a note from me - "which is intriguing but I'm not quite sure I understand it." Well today I found the answer and castigated myself for being so dense and not seeing what was meant. I mean it's pretty obvious if you think about it.
The answer came from Yotam Ottolenghi of all people - well he does have a degree in philosophy:
"Sagan’s point is that nothing exists in isolation. To make a pie from true scratch - using absolutely nothing that already exists - you’d first have to create the stars that forged the atoms, the planets that formed from cosmic dust, the soil that grew the wheat, the bees that pollinated the apple trees. Every pie, however humble, rests on an incomprehensible amount of prior events, prior discoveries, and prior people." Yotam Ottolenghi
Which is a concept that I have rambled around on many occasions in slightly different ways - the history on a plate notion that is ripe for exploration in ways from the conceptual to the precise and very local. As, for example, with last night's bowl of soup which, if you cared to think about it - and we never really do - raised all manner of questions - from which individual prehistoric man or woman thought you could eat lentils, to who invented stick blenders, not to mention questions about soup itself - how did it come to be? - the history, geography, economics, politics ... associated with all of the ingredients - there were several because it was a leftovers of this and that kind of soup. Physics, chemistry, biology - and personally - who taught me to make soup? Did anyone or did I just learn from here and there, this and that? How, in fact do I learn anything?
David and I did talk about the soup a little bit, how good it was and how it was never to be repeated because of the leftovers of constructed dishes that were in it. And so it was impossible to write down as a recipe - like so many of the meals we construct in our own homes. Like all those Indian housewives adding their individual Indian touches to a bowl of pasta. Or as Ottolenghi says:
"Nothing in a kitchen is truly original…you are always, in some small way, cooking in the company of others."
He was talking in this week's Ottolenghi substack newsletter which lands in my email inbox every Sunday. It's always an interesting read - more sometimes than others of course - and moreover you always get at least one tempting new recipe. And I do think he wrtes it himself, because of the little personal things that are slipped in here and there. Today the new recipe was Brown butter cheese and corn filo pies because this was number three in a series on Picnic bites. Well it's summer over there - a very hot one. The other recipe for Vegan sausage rolls, had no recipe unless you have paid for the longer newsletter version - although he did give you clues - "bulgur as a binder, with caramelised fennel, roasted peppers and walnuts for texture, and dates and pomegranate molasses for sweetness."
So how did he make the move from the big bang to sausage rolls? Well by elaborating on that 'history on a plate' notion and these words "Almost every dish I make is built on someone else’s idea or technique or ingredients." The connection is the pie - Sagan talked about apple pie, and so because Ottolenghi had decided this week's topic was hand pies for picnics he began with the quote and then gives examples of how virtually every culture in the world has a hand pie of some kind.
And here I learnt an interesting little fact - inconsequential - probably never to be used again but interesting nevertheless, and adding to the knowledge I already had that Cornish pasties were made for lunch for the tin miners :
"The Cornish pasty was made for miners - the thick crimped edge a handle, so they could eat without getting the arsenic from their hands onto the food."
I did not know about the arsenic. A different kind of interest to that which followed:
"(such a clever justification for rejecting the filling-less bit; I will try it next time I leave the pizza crusts all over plate)"
I mean why would you do that? The crust of anything is sometimes the best part.
But back to the beginning - the Big Bang - the ultimate something from nothing - and Carl Sagan's link to apple pie. Because the quote mentioned apple pie, I thought I should try and weave apple pie into this post, and so I went looking for pictures of my all time favourite way of making apple pie - Robert Carrier's Old English apple pie and lo and behold one of my old blog posts came up - Old English apple pie featuring a photograph of my younger son aged about
five or six I think (he is now 51!) - looking very pleased with himself - and so he should be.
The recipe is not online, but if you click on this image, it will be enlarged. Or try to find an old Robert Carrier recipe book - it pops up in several of them, including his much later New Great Dishes of the World, so I think he must have loved it too. Do try it, it's gorgeous.
Obviously, having found this old post, I have written about apple pie before, so I decided to look for savoury apple pies - and of course there were lots and lots - mostly like this Savoury apple and cheddar hand pies - Mary Disomma featuring cheese. Indeed there was not a lot of variety really - the obvious companions in these things were potatoes, bacon, herbs, mustard ... so just a couple more - Savoury apple hand pies - Knead Bake Cook, which, like Mary Disomma had a lot of useful 'how to' pictures and several other ingredients, and one from the man himself - Yotam Ottolenghi - Potato, apple and Gruyère pie - relatively restrained for him, but good, of course
Tonight we shall be havng another never to be repeated recipe - a this and that pasta dish - from almost the same leftovers but different additions. I might bake it in the oven just to ring the changes a little. And no I won't be making apple pie. We have no apples. Grape pie? Is there such a thing?
YEARS GONE BY
July 5
2024 - Nothing
2023 - Mishmash
2021 - Missing
2020 - Missing
2017 - On holiday
I could eat anything in today's blog. Everything looks delcious! 😜