What's Cookin': Apple Pie

 Well, it's only been, what, a decade or so since I've done one of these posts... but frankly, I haven't exactly done a lot of exploratory cooking in that time, and this is the first thing I've made in a long while that I've said "I need to hold on to this recipe for later."  That said, my initial attempt's results were less than ideal (due to massive pie crust containment failure), so consider this a starting point for your own experiments.

For pie crust, I'll leave that to you, since you likely already have a favorite double-crust recipe to use.  Again, if I wasn't clear, you probably don't want to try this as your first pie, since you can practice on pies that take less work, like blueberry pie.  That all said, to the recipe!

Ingredients

• 4 lb. (about 6 large) "pie apples" (Granny Smith is the go-to here, but any firm, tart apple works)
• 1/4 t salt
• 1/2 c granulated sugar
• 1/2 c brown sugar
  
• 1 t cinnamon
• 1/4 t ginger
• 1/4 t cardamom
• 1/4 t nutmeg
• 2 T cornstarch
• 1 T butter

Equipment

• Large ("bigger than you think you need") bowl for mixing ingredients
• Knives and/or other tools to prepare the apples
  
• Glass pie plate
• Baking sheet
• Parchment paper

Procedure

•  Peel, core, and thinly slice the apples (I used a mandoline slicer for 1/16" slices, but anything up to 1/4" would probably be fine), and put the slices in the bowl.
• Sprinkle the salt, sugars, and spices over the top of the apple slices, then use your hands to mix everything together, coating the slices as thoroughly as possible in the process.
• Let the apple mixture rest at room temperature for one hour.
• While waiting on the apple mixture, prepare the lower half of your pie crust in the pie plate.
• After the hour wait time has passed, add the cornstarch to the bowl and mix again.  You will notice that the apples have shrunk, and there is a large amount of liquid (about 3/4 c) in the bottom of the bowl - this is normal.
• Pack the lower pie crust with the apple slices that will fit, level to the brim of the crust.  Unused slices can be discarded (or, pan-cooked and used as a topping for, say, ice-cream).
• Pour what you can of the collected liquid in the bottom of the bowl over the top of the apples in the pie crust.
• Cover the pie with your upper crust.  In my case, I tried doing this with a standard "full cover with vents cut after" method, which failed fairly spectacularly.  I would suggest doing a lattice crust with plenty of vent room for this pie.
• Line your baking sheet with parchment paper (cooking spray is handy to make it behave), then place the assembled pie on the sheet, to capture any spill-over.
• Bake the pie in a 400F oven for 75 minutes... is what the original recipe called for.  I'm going to say you should start checking on the pie at least 10 minutes beforehand.  The goal is to see filling bubbling up through the vents (or, if you prefer the scientific method, an internal temperature of 195F).  With the long cook time, over-browning is a valid concern, so you may want to employ aluminum foil to help with that.

After a few hours of cool-down time, you should have a very tasty apple pie (as in, even in its imperfect form, the one I cooked is easily top 10 of any apple pie I've had, ever).  It's a shame that prepping the apples is such a chore, otherwise I would strive to make this my go-to pie.