the impatient patient

I have a few solid accomplishments on my tenacity resume. Some include routinely entertaining a group of pre-schoolers, solo, for 45 minutes, with an empty room and a Koosh; and climbing a glacier atop a volcano with a pair of ancient crampons, a pickax, and a guide that spoke English with a heavy Italian/Australian accent. But last week, I eclipsed both when I made an apple pie from scratch with only seven fingers.

The pre-Thanksgiving fall that broke two bones in my dominant hand meant a brace and fairly profound weakness, punctuated with pain when I got too cocky. But a girl has to eat, and the local apples in my refrigerator crisper had been in exile for so long that they had begun to play the harmonica and sing obscure Patty Loveless songs.

Some high-level finagling was in order.

The crust was pretty simple: a zip zip zip in the Cuisinart and pat-in-the-pan method got the job done. But how to manage those apples made me scratch my head (with my left hand). I couldn’t cut them up as I always did, quartering them with a chef’s knife and peeling, coring, and slicing them with a paring knife. Then I thought about the serrated knife, the only knife left in the block after all my experimenting failed.

My favorite food writer — the late but still incomparable Laurie Colwin — saw no value in serrated knives. She didn’t think they sliced bread well, and if they can’t even do that, what was the point of them?

I agree with her, bread-wise. But I have found nothing better for slicing tomatoes without compressing them and making a runny, seedy mess all over your counter and, inevitably, floor. They are also ideal for chopping shards from a bar of baking chocolate. Now, I have a third reason to love them.

Under a serrated knife, an apple doesn’t squiggle out and scamper across the counter. It stays put. I carefully quartered and cored, then held each quarter with my left hand and gently, with the thumb and pointer of my right hand, shaved off each peel in a back-and-forth motion. Okay, it took a half an hour to prep eight apples, but it WORKED, my friends.

Every day, my hand gets a little stronger. Yesterday, I made focaccia with local rosemary and a bit of local rye flour. Kneading with my left, non-dominant hand was immediately ruled out when I started to fling flour all over the counter. I took off the brace and tried kneading with my right. The pace was dialed back from Road Runner to sloth after watching The English Patient, but I did it. And cutting the bread was tricky too, but I managed with a paring knife and kitchen shears.

With extra extra virgin olive oil and local sea salt on top, it was sensational.