The Key

I used to carry my recipe for Key Lime Pie around in my wallet. I was prepared to be able to make one, or to give my recipe out, at any time -- mostly because we made frequent trips to visit my dad in Siesta Key, Florida. He had a friend who had a key lime tree or two in his yard; we'd go to this friend's house to fish in the Gulf and we'd be given a bag of limes to take home. I'd make pie, of course, and we'd make margaritas and have slices in our vodka tonics or bloody marys (not that we drank all the time or anything, and it was before we had Dean in any case).

Key limes are just about the size of a walnut. I can't explain to you why key limes are so much better than your regular old run-of-the-mill limes, but they are. I was shocked to find a bag of key limes at my grocery store this week, and had to celebrate by making a pie. (For the record, I squeezed all the limes at once and froze the leftover juice for another pie -- no limes in drinks anymore.) Key Lime Pie is astonishingly easy to make -- just finding the limes is the trick (although Trader Joe's often carries bottles of key lime juice and sometimes you can find it other places as well). So:

Key Lime Pie

For the crust:
1 and 1/4 cups crushed graham crackers (in the States, graham crackers traditionally come in rectangles -- it takes 8 of these rectangles to equal 1 and 1/4 cups crushed crumbs)
1/3 cup melted butter
3 tablespoons sugar
pinch of salt

Combine crust ingredients and mix well. Press into a buttered 8-inch pie plate.

For the filling:
1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk
4 egg yolks
1/4 to 1/3 cup key lime juice

Combine filling ingredients and mix well. Pour into crust. Bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 10 to 12 minutes until set. Cool completely and refrigerate.

To serve, whip up a pint or so of whipping cream, dollop decoratively on pie, slice and serve. Or, let everyone apply his or her own whipped cream. Ahhhhh. We're paying our respects to summer today when we serve up the pie I made yesterday.