We are a house divided. And it doesn’t have anything to do with football. It does have everything to do with a nut.
That’s right. A nut.
You see my Georgia-born boo says “PEE-can” and I of Alabama birth say “puh-KAHN.” Now admittedly this is not a subject that comes up for disagreement every day. But around this time of year when I start making pies, it does.
I’ve tried to school him in the proper ways of pronunciation, and he does humor me from time to time. But just when I think I’ve converted him, he backslides into his native ways. Maybe because his head is just about as hard as the shell on a “puh-KAHN.”
Here are two other words on which we part company. He says, in reference to those paper slips that entitle you to a discount, “KOO-pun.” I say “QUE-pahn.” He also puts “SEER-up” on his pancakes but I put “SIR-up” in my “puh-KAHN” pie.
I naturally assume that I am right in all 3 cases, and he thinks he’s the one who’s right. And we bicker about it, but it’s all in good fun. That’s because we agree on one thing — we’re nuts about each other.
Here’s my favorite “puh-KAHN” pie recipe based on one from my Southern Sideboards cookbook.
Pecan Pie
Ingredients
- 1 refrigerated pie crust (I’m afraid of trying to make a pie crust, so I never make my own. If you are brave, more power to you!)
- ½ cup butter
- 1¼ cup sugar
- ½ cup light corn “SIR-up”
- 3 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1 teaspoon vanilla (I always slag in a little more.)
- 1 Tbsp bourbon
- 1½ cups pecans
Directions
- Partially blind bake your pie crust. About 3 or 4 minutes works. If you don’t know what that means or how to do it, check out this Epicurious video.
- Preheat oven to 375°.
- Cook butter, sugar, and corn syrup over low heat until the butter is melted. Do not let the mixture boil.
- Let cool a bit, then stir in the beaten eggs. Make sure it is all mixed up really well.
- Add the vanilla, bourbon, and pecans. Make sure that you use pretty pecan halves, not a bunch of broken up pieces. That way you get a prettier result when the pie is baked.
- Bake for 40-45 minutes. When it’s done, it will still be a little soft in the center.
One of my old bosses told the beat story on this subject. She and her (fellow Texan) husband, Cliff, were entertaining a distant, northern-raised relation who kept rhapsodizing about the Southern dessert he loved, Pee-Can pie. All week long, that’s all they heard from him, Pee-can, Pee-can. On Saturday, Cliff took the cousin fishing in his John-Boat, along with a sack lunch. After some hours, the cousin asked to be rowed to shore, so he could visit the restroom. Instead, Cliff tossed him an empty coffee tin he kept in the boat and said, “This is what we call Pee-can. That pie in the sack is Peh-cahn!”
That’s hilarious!!