Smoof Blog: (Nearly) Perfect Lemon Chess Pie

I've been homing in on the perfect recipe for lemon chess pie. I think I've made about six of them. Here's the best one I've made so far:

For the crust:

• 6 ounces by weight of all purpose flour
• one stick of very cold butter
• 1/2 teaspoon table salt
• very cold water. (I use a bar shaker to chill the water).

For the filling:

• 4 eggs
• 1.5 cups sugar
• 5 tablesppons melted butter
• 3 tablespoons cornmeal. (I may use only 2 next time)
• juice and zest of two lemons
• a pinch of salt

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 425. Combine the flour and salt. Cut the butter into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter. Do not use a food processor. The butter chunks should be roughly pea sized. Put the ice cold water into a spritz bottle. Spray it on the flour mixture, toss the mixture, and spray again. Continue spraying and tossing until the mixture comes together as a dough when you squeeze it in your hand. It should still be somewhat crumbly. Wrap it up in tin foil and press it flat. Leave it in the fridge for at least half an hour. When you take it out it should be a good deal more dough-like. Form the dough into a ball, trying to work it as little as possible. You may have to knead it a few times to work in the crumbly bits, but the less kneading, the better. Roll it out into a crust. You'll need to frequently apply four and flip the dough to avoid stickage. Put the crust in your pie pan, and dock it with a fork. Cover it with parchment paper and cover the parchment paper with pie weights, or dry beans, or rice. Bake it for ten minutes. Take off the weights and parchment and bake it until it's just starting to brown, about another 10. Take the crust out and let it cool completely.

Lower the oven temperature to 350. Once the crust is cool, beat the eggs and whisk in the rest of the filling ingredients. Fill up the pie. You probably don't need the whole batch of filling. It's very lemony and rich so you really only want a thin layer. I think I used about 2/3 of it. Bake it until the top is slightly browned and a knife comes out clean, about 30-35 minutes. Let the pie cool completly before eating.