Peach Pie

One of my favorite cookbooks is not a cookbook at all. It's a novel called Heartburn by Nora Ephron. The book was made into a movie starring Meryl Street and Jack Nicholson -- with a theme song by Carly Simon.

The main character is a woman named Rachel Samstat, a cookbook writer. She tells the story of the demise of her marriage and mixes in recipes along the way. Blending cooking and a narrative now seems quite popular, but this was one of the first places I ever saw it.  In the book, Rachel makes several kinds of potatoes to cheer herself up, spends a weeklong vacation perfecting the peach pie, and agrees to share her trademark vinaigrette with her husband before they finally part ways.

I'm going to make the peach pie for a dinner party tonight:

Put 1 1/4 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 cup butter and 2 tablespoons sour cream into a Cuisinart and blend until they form a ball. Pat out into a buttered pie tin, and bake 10 minutes at 425. Beat 3 egg yolks slightly and combine with 1 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and 1/3 cup sour cream. Pour over 3 peeled, sliced peaches arranged in the crust. Cover with foil. Reduce the oven to 350 and bake 35 minutes. Remove the foil and bake 10 minutes more, or until the filling is set.

Ephron also wrote When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and the screenplay Julie and Julia. A fun fact about the novel Heartburn is that it was based on Ephron's marriage to Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein.