Tough but Tender, Like Grandmother

An occasional series in which staff members share a recipe that we turn to time and again.

I spent many summers at my grandmother's hip. I followed her around the kitchen of her tiny wood-frame home, so close to the train tracks that the house would rattle long after the freights had passed.

The South Carolina sun was too hot for us to venture out at midday, so often we would spend the time snapping beans, shucking corn, shelling peas. And every couple of weeks we would make my grandmother's lemon meringue pie.

My job was to roll the lemons. "Roll 'em good," she would tell me as I pressed them back and forth. She would sprinkle flour across the table, shape her dough, press it out with a rolling pin that looked as if it had been used for a lifetime. Her crusts always seemed to come up with ease. And on the rare occasion one dared to break apart, she would utter a well-worn "confound your soul."

The eggs would have been separated by then, the yolks folded into the lemon mixture. Stir and stir and stir some more on the stove top. We would take turns whipping the meringue. She didn't have an electric mixer, just the kind that you cranked by hand.

My grandmother died in January, a month short of her 98th birthday. Two weeks later, I bought a sifter and a proper rolling pin. I had spent months thinking about making her lemon meringue pie. But I always put it off. I wasn't sure I could do it. I had watched my mother fight with a wayward crust far too often. And I had heard my grandmother criticize my mother's efforts. "Ol' tough crust. She rolls it too much."

And the idea of making her pie had seemed blasphemous. After all, it was her pie. But when she was gone, I felt I had to do it.

I turned to my mother, who lives in Baltimore. I asked what I needed to do to make a pie crust from scratch. She told me about some mix I could pick up from the supermarket, and just add water.

Great. Not only did I doubt myself, but my mother doubted me, too. Then she told me to sift my flour well, mix in some lard, add some salt and a little milk. "Don't roll your dough too much," she said. "It'll get too tough."

And then she said, "My mother could make a pie crust."

The night before Easter, I decided to make two pies. I started by rolling and squeezing the lemons. Then I began to work on the crusts. Call it a fluke or beginner's luck -- I like to think my grandmother was guiding me -- but by gingerly sliding my hands, palms up, under one section of the dough at a time, I was able to transfer both crusts intact from the floured table to the pie pans.

They didn't turn out exactly like my grandmother's pies, but they were close. The crusts needed a bit more salt, but they were flaky. The lemon filling needed a tad more sugar, and the meringue needed a tad less. My mother said they were really good.

My grandmother, my family said, would be proud.