Coconut Custard Pie (Page 770)

• Date: Wednesday, July 4, 2007 -- 7pm
• Location: Cambridge, MA
• Kitchen: Matty's Apartment
• Dining Companions: Alex, Gunther, Matty, and a bunch of other partygoers...
• Recipe Rating: C
  

This one came off the list made by the random number generator. I made it to bring to a 4th of July party at Alex's. In summary: yick. What's worse than a recipe being bad is when a recipe takes truly delicious components and makes them bad. I would probably have felt better about this pie being bad if it at least contained one ingredient that I don't love. But as it was, it took a bunch of delicious things and made them significantly less delicious. First the positive comment: the crust was good. It was a quick puff pastry crust rather than a more traditional pate brisee. It came out very nicely on the sides. On the bottom it was a bit soggy, despite being blind-baked, but it still had a nice flavor. The real problem was the filling. The coconut custard was incredibly eggy, both in taste and texture, which made it wholly unappealing in a sweet pie. It had a gelatinous quality to it that was quite bad. The whipped cream topping was nice, but it was sweetened significantly, which contributed to the whole dessert being way too sweet -- and I like my dessert sweet, so you know this one was way overboard! I love almost any pie, but I found this one hard to eat. Definitely not a winner.

Here is the recipe.

When I was writing my thesis, I would sometimes work at one of my friends' apartments for a change of scenery. In the spring I would sit on his futon in my Indiana sweatpants and a t-shirt, typing away all afternoon. There is a guy who lives across the street who was always sitting on the porch. I don't know if he's unemployed, or just works odd hours, but almost every afternoon that I was sitting on the futon he would be lounging on the porch furniture, reading a novel while I was working on my thesis. In moments of deep self-pity, I would stare at him and envy his leisurely reading. I could never tell if he could see me there. If so he probably wondered if I was unemployed myself, or what kind of job I had that involved sitting on a futon in sweatpants all day.

Today the weather is beautiful, and I am outside sitting on the porch with my laptop, relaxing and writing emails. The mystery guy just came outside and is sitting on his floral green porch furniture across the street. I had to stop myself from yelling, "hi" when he came outside. I had to remind myself for a second that even though I have him filed as "Porch Guy," I don't actually know him...