Is apple cider vinegar healthy?

Or is that a myth?

Honestly, I’ve always wondered about all those studies that tout this, that or the other thing to try to prove a point. One day we’re supposed to stop drinking coffee because it’s harmful, then another study comes along and says no, coffee is good for you.

Ditto chocolate. And coconut oil.

And other stuff.

Are these really scientific studies or generational shifts, like theories about child-rearing?

I guess, like a lot of life — it depends.

It depends on the study, how many people are study subjects, who is sponsoring the study and so on.

Obviously, findings made in unbiased settings with no corporate sponsors done over a long time with many subjects are worth paying attention to.

So I was happy to read this article which cautions people to beware of the “apple cider vinegar can speed up fat loss, lower your cholesterol and help with diabetes” notions. Apparently, the studies that have been done are way too small and don’t actually prove anything of the kind.

Which is not to say there’s no use for apple cider vinegar. I always have a bottle on hand. It’s a good choice for basic vinaigrette when you don’t want something quite as powerful as Balsamic vinegar or as harsh as wine vinegar. It’s nice as a liquid, in small amounts, to deglaze a pan of sauteed chicken. You can use it to give some extra flavor to caramelized onions.

And so on. Like this recipe for Vinegar Pie. Don’t laugh. It’s true, it may sound weird but adding a bit of apple cider vinegar to custard makes a hugely delicious difference. Like the sweet-and-salty thing with chocolate covered sea salt caramels. The apple cider vinegar cuts the sweet just enough. You actually don’t taste the vinegar.

This is a quick, easy and light-on-the-stomach dessert that’s terrific for summer. Or anytime really. You can add some sliced almonds if you wish.

Vinegar Pie

 1 9-inch unbaked pie crust

4 large eggs

1-1/2 cups sugar

1/4 cup melted butter

1-1/2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

sliced almonds, optional

whipped cream and/or fresh berries

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place aluminum foil over the pie crust and weight it down with pie pellets or dry beans. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove the weights and foil. Return the crust to the oven and bake for another 3 minutes. Remove the crust and let it cool. Lower the oven heat to 350 degrees. Mix the eggs, sugar, melted butter, cider vinegar and vanilla extract. Blend ingredients thoroughly and pour the mixture into the prebaked crust. Sprinkle with some sliced almonds if you wish. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until filling is set. Remove the pie, let it cool and serve it garnished with whipped cream and or fresh berries. Makes one 9-inch pie

Time to brag.

My daughter Gillian won a pie baking contest yesterday. And it was the first pie she ever made too. And all for a good cause — raising money for P.S. 29 in Cobble Hill, in Brooklyn.

She doesn’t even own a rolling pin, so the dough got flattened using a seltzer bottle wrapped in plastic wrap.

The recipe was a takeoff on one that I posted, but she used cashews instead of hazelnuts, and a 10-inch tart pan rather than pie pan, so it looked more glamorous and the consistency was somewhat firmer. She also baked it for a shorter period of time than a deeper, standard 9-inch pie.

She won two cookbooks. You can see her holding one of the books in the photo; she’s next to judge Gail Simmons (special projects director at Food and Wine and also a judge on Top Chef and the host of Top Chef Desserts).

I never won a cooking contest but I remember entering one once many many years ago. My entry was for Chicken in Champagne Sauce, which my husband and I loved and I had just learned to cook. Everyone thought the dish was a winner, so why not enter it into a cooking contest.

First prize went to Beef Stew. Which I like. But didn’t think, at the time, that plain old beef stew should be a contest winner.

I was wrong about that.

But not wrong about this: Gillian’s Cashew Pie is really delicious. A winner, for real.

Congrats Gill!

Gillian’s Honey Cashew Pie 

2/3 cup honey

1/3 cup sugar

3 large eggs

3 tablespoons melted butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1-1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup chopped hazelnuts

1 cup chopped dried apricots

1 unbaked 10-inch tart crust

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine the honey, sugar, eggs, melted butter and vanilla extract in a bowl and blend them thoroughly with a whisk. Stir in the flour, salt, cashews and apricots. Pour the mixture into the tart crust. Bake for about 40 minutes or until the top is golden brown and crusty. Makes one tart serving 8 people

In case you didn’t know, today is Pi Day.

Yeah, that’s right. This is a special holiday that celebrates the mathematical constant pi that we all learned about once in grade school but that, at least when I was a youngster, girls were not actually required or expected to remember.

Pi is 3.1415926 blah blah blah and so on. The other day my grandson took pi out to about 16 numbers, which I found very impressive, until I read that in 2004, Daniel Tammet, a high-functioning autistic savant recited 22,514 numbers by memory.

I never particularly liked math and sort of feared it the way a proper suburban girl was supposed to back in the day. I regret that now. But, as the poet Robert Frost says, “knowing how way leads on to way” I followed a different path, and left pi aside for pie.

Which, come to think of it, I do like better anyway.

For those in the know, the official food of Pi Day is, of course, PIE. Here’s a recipe for one that I once hesitated to make at first because of the name but did because I had to write an article about unusual pies. It’s a Buttermilk Pie. It was so good I included the recipe in my book The Complete Idiot’s Guide to American Cooking.

You can’t tell a pie by its name.

This one tastes rich and creamy, as if there is heavy cream within, but it is also light and subtle — the perfect dessert to welcome spring — and it is also just right as far as sweetness goes, nothing cloying or overpowering. The top has a delicate, faintly brittle crust that melts immediately, gratifyingly, on your tongue.

Buttermilk Pie

6 tablespoons butter

4 large eggs

1-1/2 cups sugar

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup buttermilk

unbaked 9-inch pie crust

1/3 cup sliced almonds or 1/2 cup currants

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Melt the butter and set it aside to cool. In a bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, flour, vanilla extract, salt and melted, cooled butter and beat the ingredients with a whisk or an electric mixer set at medium speed, for about 2-3 minutes or until the mixture is smooth and uniform. Stir in the buttermilk and blend in thoroughly. Pour the mixture into the pie crust. Sprinkle the nuts or currants over the filling. Bake for about 45 minutes or until the surface is golden brown and the center is set. Makes one pie

Was your mother really a good cook? Was that chocolate cake or those hash browns you had 20 years ago at that restaurant really fabulous?

Food memories can be funny. Our tastes change. Maybe Mom’s chocolate chip cookies weren’t really that good, maybe those hash browns were actually a bit too greasy and if we ate these foods today in someone else’s kitchen or in a different restaurant we wouldn’t rave.

But we remember them so fondly that we think we’ll never find the ultimate recipe for whatever it is we thought was so wonderful.

I have that feeling about a lot of foods. My Mom’s Nut Roll. The Apple Tart at L’Orangerie in Los Angeles. My grandmother’s baked blintzes. The Hot and Sour Soup at Temple Garden in New York’s Chinatown.

When autumn comes and I see the trees turning orange and gold, my food memory turns to pumpkin pie and that makes me remember the Automat. It went out of business when I was a little girl, but I still remember my Aunt Roz and Uncle Mac taking me there for lunch or dinner when we went into Manhattan to go ice skating or to see a show. They were the kind of aunt and uncle that took their nieces and nephews to places and we all loved them so much that the food that came with the day would of course be wonderful no matter where or what it was.

At the Automat, if it was autumn, there was pumpkin pie.

It was the very best pumpkin pie. In my memory. I have been trying to duplicate its flavor and texture since I started cooking. But food memories linger so no matter what I come up with, it’s never “the one” even if the results are fabulous. Someone once gave me a recipe that was supposed to be the Automat authentic version and I made one. Of course I didn’t remember the pie tasting like my pie did.

So which is better, the food or the memory of the food?

Both really, for different reasons. We can savor the memory and eat something delicious even if it isn’t quite the version you remember.

Here’s a terrific recipe for Pumpkin Pie. Not too spicy and with a hint of molasses. Don’t use pumpkin pie “mix”, use plain pumpkin puree or fresh mashed pumpkin (press fresh mashed pumpkin to extract excess liquid).

Pumpkin Pie

1-1/2 cups mashed pumpkin (canned is fine)

1/3 cup brown sugar (any kind)

1/4 cup white sugar

3 tablespoons molasses

3 large eggs

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

1-1/2 cups half and half cream or evaporated milk

1 9-inch single pie crust, unbaked

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F. Spoon the pumpkin, brown sugar, white sugar and molasses into a bowl and blend ingredients thoroughly. Beat in the eggs. Add the cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and cream. Blend ingredients thoroughly. Pour the mixture into the crust. Bake for 8 minutes. Reduce the heat to 325 degrees F and continue baking for 55-60 minutes or until set. Remove from the oven and let cool. Makes one pie

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In the Jewish world, this is holiday season. The new year has begun. We’ve been repentant (hopefully!) and now it’s almost time for Sukkot, when we remember the 40 year period that the ancient Hebrews wandered in the desert after the Exodus. Sukkot is a most joyous holiday that comes after the introspective and solemn Days of Awe.

It’s like the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas only instead of putting up and decorating a tree, we build a sukkah in our backyard (or a smaller, representational one in our apartments). You can eat and sleep in a sukkah. It’s like camping out.

My family never built a sukkah when I was a girl. The closest I ever came to camping out was one night when my cousin Leslie and I were allowed to sleep under a bridge table set up in her kitchen. My aunt Beck threw a chenille bedspread over the table to enclose us. We didn’t have sleeping bags and the floor was hard. We lasted about 2 hours and then went to bed. But we still talk about it years and years later.

Of course, like most Jewish holidays, Sukkot brings with it some really terrific food. It’s a harvest holiday as well as one of remembrance, so it’s time to cook with the fresh fruits and vegetables of the season — like pumpkins, winter squash, nuts, cranberries, apples and so on — and prepare dishes that are warm, colorful and comforting as the cold weather approaches. Pumpkin soup. Baked Cranberry Stuffed Squash. Sauteed Eggplant with Yogurt and Pine Nuts (there’s a recipe in my book, Hip Kosher), Apple Crisp. Hazelnut Cake.

If you want to eat in a sukkah, it also has to be food that’s easily transportable and not too messy: pieces of chicken, stuffed peppers, Carrot and Parsnip “Fries” and Couscous with Dried Cranberries and Toasted Almonds (both of the last two recipes also in Hip Kosher).

One of my favorite Sukkot desserts is Cranberry-Maple-Cashew Pie. It’s a riff on Pecan Pie, but my daughter Gillian is fiercely allergic to pecans, so I made this one up as a replacement. Here’s the EASY EASY recipe:

Cranberry-Maple-Cashew Pie

1 cup maple syrup

1/3 cup light corn syrup

1/4 cup sugar

3 large eggs

3 tablespoons melted butter or margarine

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup halved cashew nuts

1 cup fresh cranberries

1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, combine the maple syrup, corn syrup, sugar, eggs and melted butter and blend the ingredients thoroughly using a whisk. Stir in the flour, salt, nuts and cranberries. Blend thoroughly. Pour the mixture into the pie crust. Bake for 45 minutes or until the top is golden brown and crusty. Makes one 9-inch pie

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Election season is now in high gear. Fortunately, so is apple season, so we can drown out the candidates and the nonsense with a big slice of homemade apple pie.

Besides, election season ends. But you can freeze an apple pie for up to a year.

My mother, who made fabulous apple pie, taught me the tricks to perfect pie crust. First, she said, use as little liquid as possible for the dough, because that’s what makes the crust so flaky.

She also didn’t use ice water, like most recipes say to. She used milk or sour cream and sometimes orange juice or even melted vanilla ice cream. The crust was incredibly delicate, crumbly and rich.

She also had this important caveat:”don’t kill the dough!” and I hear her warning every time I roll some out. She meant, roll the dough gently, don’t press too hard or bang it. It’s dough, not clay so you don’t have to batter it to death to get it smooth.

Warning in mind, every September I make an annual trek to a nearby farm to get the kind of apples she always used: Rhode Island Greenings. I’ve tried to make a pie as good as hers using other apples but nothing can compare to these. Unfortunately, you have to search them out. Stores do not carry them as a rule. I’m lucky that I only have to travel about 45 minutes to get my annual load — a bushel. I make about a dozen pies and a few other goodies like Apple Brown Betty.

The pies last almost the entire year in the freezer. We always eat one just after the first one cools down from baking. The next one at Thanksgiving, then New Year’s. The rest depend on who’s coming to my house and when.

Here’s my Mom’s recipe. If you can’t get Greening apples, use Newtown Pippin, Northern Spy, Idared, Stayman, Winesap or Jonathan. Or a mixture of any of these. Golden Delicious are fine, but a little sweet. If you use Golden Delicious, cut back a tablespoon or two of sugar. Lots of people use Granny Smith apples, but I don’t like the texture of these apples when they’re cooked.

Mom’s Apple Pie

Crust:

2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup cold butter, cut into chunks

1/3 cup cold vegetable shortening

4-5 tablespoons liquid (water, milk, yogurt, juice, etc.)

Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. Add the butter and shortening and work the fats into the flour using your fingers or a pastry blender (or pulse in a food processor). Add the minimum quantity of liquid and work into the ingredients to form a dough, using the remaining liquid if necessary (or pulse in the food processor until a ball of dough forms). Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let rest for at least 30 minutes before rolling. Makes enough for 2-crust 9 or 10-inch pie

Apple Pie Filling

3 pounds pie apples, peeled, cored and sliced

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1/2 cup sugar

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon butter, cut into pieces

2 tablespoons milk, optional

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place the apples in a large mixing bowl and sprinkle with the lemon juice. Add the sugar, cinnamon and flour and toss the ingredients to mix them evenly. Roll out half the dough and fit into a 9 or 10-inch pie pan, leaving an excess overhanging the edge. Spoon the filling into the pan. Dot the apples with the bits of butter. Roll out the remaining dough and place it on top of the apple filling. Gather the top and bottom crusts at the edge of the pan and either press them with a fork to seal them together, or roll them slightly and press down to seal the edges, then flute the edge using your index finger and thumb. Cut holes in the dough using the tip of a sharp knife. Brush the surface of the top with the milk, if you like a darker crust. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Makes 8 servings

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When Frankie Dunn, the Clint Eastwood character in the movie Million Dollar Baby, searches for something real, good and sweet in a gloomy, far from perfect world, his sunny answer to the darkness is Lemon Meringue Pie.

I can understand that. Considering only its virtues as a dessert, Lemon Meringue Pie is a triple-textured wonder of smooth, thick tangy custard, soft, sweet foamy top and toasty-tasting, crumbly crust. 

But its emotional pull says more. Lemon Meringue Pie is a symbol of what’s okay. In our busy, crazy world where we talk on the phone as we keyboard on our computer and listen to TV pundits in the background or, heaven-forbid, where people text and drive and where the political discourse has become rabid and ugly, it is among those simple comforts that reassure us that life can be all right, even when you’re feeling miserable, angry and vulnerable.

It’s fast-paced and sophisticated out there, even in the food world. Chefs and food magazines offer us things like Caramelized Orange Napoleons with Toasted Pecan Dust or Lavender-Ginger Panna Cotta with Pomegranate-Balsamic Glaze. But that’s not the kind of food you eat when you’re feeling down, stressed or lonely. At those times you want stuff that sustains you heart and soul.

When I was in the third grade we had a class cookbook project. I asked my mother to submit her recipe for Apple Pie, thinking it was the best anyone ever made (I was right). She said no, that it wasn’t good enough. Instead, she gave me her recipe for Lemon Meringue Pie. Because it is so special. It makes you feel better when you’re feeling terrible. And, by the way, it’s pretty good when you’re feeling terrific too.

Mom’s Lemon Meringue Pie

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup cornstarch

1/4 teaspoon salt

1-3/4 cups water

4 large eggs, separated

2 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon finely grated lemon peel

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

1 fully baked pie crust

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine 1-1/2 cups sugar, cornstarch and salt in a saucepan. Place the pan on the cooktop over medium heat an gradually add the water, stirring the ingredients to keep them smooth. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for one minute. Beat the egg yolks slightly in a small bowl. Gradually stir about a half cup of the hot mixture into the yolks. Pour the heated yolk mixture into the saucepan. Turn heat to low and cook, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat. Stir in the butter, lemon peel and lemon juice. Let the mixture cool for 15 minutes. Pour the mixture into the pie crust. Whip the egg whites until they are foamy. Add the cream of tartar and whip until the whites stand in soft peaks. Keep whipping, gradually adding the remaining 1/2 cup sugar, until the mixture stands in stiff peaks. Spread this meringue mixture over the pie, making sure to cover all the lemon filling to the inner edges of the crust. Bake the pie for about 15 minutes or until the meringue has browned slightly. Remove the pie from the oven and let cool. Makes one pie serving 8

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For some reason today is National Pecan Pie Day. Somehow I always associate Pecan Pie with Thanksgiving, but who cares. Pecan Pie is a wonder of sugar and nuts and the kind of sweet-tooth satisfier that you can eat anytime.

Unfortunately, we can’t at my house. My daughter is extremely allergic to pecans, so over the years I have made Pecan Pie without the pecans.

We’ve had Cashew pie. Almond Pie. Macadamia, Peanut, Hazelnut.

As the ancient philosopher philosophized: necessity is the Mother of invention.

So, for National Pecan Pie Day, here’s a recipe for Honey Hazelnut Pie.

Honey Hazelnut Pie

2/3 cup honey

1/3 cup sugar

3 large eggs

3 tablespoons melted butter

1-1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup chopped dried apricots

1 cup chopped hazelnuts

1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust

Preheat the oven the 350 degrees. Combine the honey, sugar, eggs and melted butter in a bowl and whisk the ingredients until well blended. Stir in the flour, ginger, salt and vanilla extract and blend in thoroughly. Stir in the apricots and hazelnuts. Pour the mixture into the pie crust. Bake for about 45 minutes or until the top is richly brown and crunchy. Makes one pie

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