I always have a hankering for dinner at Gather and so was pleasantly surprised to see Chef Giulio had gifted us all with the restaurant’s spruce-tip key lime pie recipe in last week’s paper.
As many of us are surely feeling, there is a big, empty hole in my life when I can’t look forward to licking my plate clean at Gather so I hastily found some of the last fresh spruce tips nearby my home and set to whipping one up!
If you have been feeling reluctant to make this lime pie or to accept the grief of not having a slice for a while, I recommend tackling Giulio’s recipe.
A Vitamix blender really helps as it not only chops up the graham crackers instantly, but also easily integrates the spruce tips into the cream and eliminates the need for straining the mixture. Though any blender or food processor would do it.
I love pressing crumb crusts into shape (I used a 10-inch tart pan, which was a good fit) and if you use gluten-free graham crackers from Isabel Creek, for instance, you don’t have to worry about over-mixing and activating gluten into toughness.
I have worked as a commercial baker for some years in my life and somehow never used gelatin and felt intimidated by that.
I channeled all my hours watching the Great British Bake Off and squeezed the soaked gelatin sheets (making sure to break them apart some in the cold water) and was fascinated by how quickly the gelatin dissolves into the just slightly warm cream. Really satisfying.
Key lime pie is a wonderful, exotic treat and I never take citrus for granted, especially here in the great wild north. The zing is what it’s all about and I always go a bit overboard on zest and juice if I can.
The best part of this recipe is that it’s no-bake! Throw it in the fridge or outside in the chill for a few hours and it’s set.
I topped the finished product with black currant sauce from our currant haul last summer, which really brought out the sour-pucker factor.
I feel very grateful to have the spruce trees and black currants around. They help to ground and bring one back to the current moment when perhaps, for example, we have consumed too many international events updates on the internet and are feeling all the ensuing complex emotions.
My settler upbringing deprived me of the basic understanding of the interconnectedness of the land and myself and I am grateful for having the opportunity to be up close and personal with the spruce tips every spring.
The spruce are excellent teachers!
Thanks Giulio for sharing your trade secrets with the masses.
L and B,
Tl.aall