In high school a dear friend of mine volunteered to answer a question in Advanced Placement Environmental Science. She told the class that if global warming continued at the same rate it would be a "disastrophe." She caught her mistake (conflating disaster and catastrophe), but nonetheless, the word entered all of our vocabularies. And while I do not claim that my "pie" (my attempt at ba.com's Top 100 pie recipe) is on the same plane as climate change, it was, without a doubt, a disastrophe. A train wreck. A horrible mess. A disaster and a catastrophe. Although it tastes pretty good.
I have never made a pie crust from scratch, and although it is notoriously difficult, I was feeling up to the challenge. As previously blogged, I enjoy baking.
THE LARD CHASE
The crust recipe calls for lard. I was planning to follow these instructions, but I am not the type of person to go on a city-wide lard chase. I figured I would act like a normal pie-baker not a blogger. If I were just baking this pie for a friend (I would be embarrassed, but I didn't know that yet) I would just go to one store and buy everything there. That store turned out to be Whole Foods. (The skinny on lard and four tips for pie crust.)
The first person I asked at Whole Foods for lard asked me what
that was. "Um, animal fat." She referred me to someone else who
told me they had it in aisle three. I found that hard to believe,
and indeed, they did not have it. They had
shortening. I then went to the refrigerated section where I
found seemingly sophisticated vegetable shortening that had to be
refrigerated. I took that as a good sign--it meant it was probably
closer to lard than Crisco--so
I bought that. 
I went home, watched the
pie crust making videos on bonappetit.com, and put all my
supplies in the freezer. (It is, according to ba.com, important to
have cold ingredients for pie crust.) After about 25 minutes I got
to work. I put everything, in the appropriate order, in the food
processor. The first bit of trouble happened when the dough
came together a little too quickly in the processor. It went from
"coarse meal" to dough in half a second. I stopped it, took it out,
gave it a tiny knead (leaving pieces of butter as suggested) and
then wrapped it in wax paper and put it in the freezer again. About
25 minutes later I took it out, realized I had forgotten to
separate it into two discs, did that, and then began to roll it
out. It seemed too warm so I put it back in the freezer and made
the peach filling.
(Check out these tips for making pie crust.) 
This is done in the processor also. I have yet to find the metal
blade for my Cuisinart--still using the
dough blade--so I was nervous about the scraped vanilla bean
getting finely minced enough, so I used a little more than called
for and cut it in tiny little pieces so it would get bounced around
as much as possible. The smell of 8th grade girls filled the
kitchen. (Seriously, why do 13-year-olds, myself included, love to
smell like marshmallows?) I gave the vanilla sugar a whirl and then
put it through my
sieve, grinding the vanilla pieces with the back of a spoon. (I
probably could have used my
food mill if I weren't slightly terrified of it.) Then I added
the cardamom.
Man oh man, even with a scant teaspoon it seemed like a lot. That
business is potent. I added the flour, mixed the whole thing
together, and then added the peaches. I tossed it together and felt
optimistic (ha). 
I got the dough back out and began to roll it out. It seemed like I didn't have enough dough to make a 12-inch round. I was rolling it out on a silpat, which has measurements, and it wasn't getting big enough. It barely fit in the pie dish. I did the best I could, which was awful. I then decided to just stretch it as much as I could and hope the top piece was bigger and worked out. I put the peaches in the dish. And then I realized something was strange.
It appeared that my pie dish was too big. I thought it was a 9incher but my other aluminum 9-inch pie dish was much smaller. "Uh-oh," I thought. "This pie dish is too big, and I don't have nearly enough dough." Now, at this point, I could have put the peaches back in a bowl and started the dough over for a smaller dish, but instead, I panicked. I rolled out the other dough, transferred it to "cover" the filling.
THE DISASTROPHE
Let me tell you why I put quotes around the word "cover": That dough sat on top of the peaches like a yarmulke. I did my best to "glaze" it with the whipping cream and shoved it in the oven. You can imagine how well that went. The peaches instantly broke through the pathetic dough cap. After an hour the juices were bubbling thickly everywhere due to the fact that the top crust had collapsed onto the filling like a drunk cobbler.
I took it out and let it cool for two hours. It tasted ... very cardomom-y. Way cardomom-y, but pretty good. The crust was not quite flaky. To be fair, it was not quite anything. It tasted fine, a little mushy and not exactly like a pie, but sweet and interesting.
No matter what it tastes like though, it looks terrible. This is a pie that would be totally safe on a windowsill; actually it would probably ward off intruders.
More from
bon appetit:
- The Well Stocked Kitchen
Everything you need to cook anything you want with this bon appetit guide. - A Lesson In Knife Skills
BA Project Recipe Blogger, Chris, gives his expert advice on slicing and dicing. - The BA Foodist
Restaurant editor Andrew Knowlton shares tips, trends, and his take on eating out. - Subscribe to Bon Appétit - Just $1 an issue!
