So Much Trouble for a Pie

Sharon Millar is a Trinidadian writer who published her first book The Whale House and Other Stories (Peepal Tree Press) last year. She is one of my favourite local writers, I am sure you will understand after reading the following passage, three extracts from her short story Earl Grey:

Sally is coming to tea, she is not arriving until four but Leah is nervous that she won’t have everything prepared. She has already cut the butter into the flour and is trying to think cool, calm, thoughts to keep her fingertips cold. But in the small kitchen, humidity coats everything with a damp film and causes her hair to stick to the back of her neck. She dips her fingers into the water bowl. The water is icy, the little silver chips melting around her hot fingers. She begins to handle the pastry mixture gently, touching it with the tips of her fingers. She keeps her movements light and soft, imagining a tender, flaky crust as she rubs the butter into a grainy mix. So much trouble for a pie.

[…] She’d never heard of quiche before she met Henri. Her mother baked sturdy pies with tough crusts, the kind that could hold a whole pot of guava stew and not buckle under the weight of the fruit. Pies that did not melt in your mouth but rather had to be cut firmly and chewed with a concentration that brought its own pleasure. She is kneading the pastry gently now but it falls apart, refusing to come together even though she adds little drops of the freezing water.

[…] Suddenly it is 3.30 and the quiche has become a monstrous thing. She ignored the instructions to blind bake the pastry and it bubbled and rose in the oven with a determination that surprised her. She has had to prick holes in the bottom to get it to lie flat in the pie dish. When she pours the egg mixture onto the crust, it seeps through the holes and pools around the edges. At 3.45 she is in tears, the quiche strangely misshaped and uniformly brown.

Click to read the whole story 

Semiotics of the Kitchen (performance piece). Martha Rosler. 1975.