not!Key Lime Pie

What do you do if you have a surplus of limes lying around the house? This is obviously one of the great existential questions in life, which I was forced to confront this weekend after I got suckered into the on-sale limes from the fuit and vege shop last week. They were looking yellow and rather miserable, so something had to be done. Normally limes equal gin and tonic, but I'm a seasonal drinker and despite the sunshine this really isn't gin and tonic weather - one of the good things about winter being that I end up with a bootle of red wine on the kitchen bench, on hand for drinking or cooking or both, following the Ian Parmenter school of wine should be drinkable if it is used in cooking. Luckily for my budget I have low standards of drinkability, though not as low as my grandfather and his $3.99 specials, which, pray god, won't be available soon because of the drought.

So, limes somehow word associated to key lime pie - obviously, I didn't have the extra special key times but hey, right type of citrus at least. The internet gave me 101 versions, so I went with the simplest version, ending up something like this:

Grate the zest of two ordinary limes. Don't grate your fingers, as having lime juice around will make this an even more painful mistake. Juice the limes plus another three. At this point I went out and did grocery shopping plus a visit to the plant nursery to get some native violets, a bay shrub (for my shrubbery!), and potting mix. That is obviously an optional part of the recipe.

Make a biscuit base by crushing about 8 granita biscuits, then adding enough melted butter that it starts to hold together when pressed. Cut out a circle of baking paper to fit in the bottom of a spring-form cake tin, then put the biscuit crumbs in and press down. Bake for 180 degrees celcius for 10 minutes-ish.

Separate 4 eggs. Take the yolks and beat until creamy and lighter yellow. Put aside the egg whites for something else, like egg-white omlettes. What do the diet-crazy people who live on egg-white omlettes and chicken do with the egg yolks? Most of the recipes I know using egg yolks and decadently evil dessert things. How does this fit? I've always wondered.

Stop wondering and mix in most of a tin of sweetened condensed milk. If I translated the American recipe right, you want 350g of milk, but the tins seem to all be 395g (again, why? This seems a very arbitrary number). If your house and family is like mine, the leftovers won't last long anyway. Then slowly drizzle in the lime juice, mixing as you go, and then the zest. The key lime pie websites all proudly proclaimed that the sweetened condensed milk comes from this recipe being invented before refrigeration, and presumably, there being no cows in Florida for on-the-spot milk delivery. It is comforting to know that when the apocalypse comes, and all I'm left with is my mothr's stash of canned goods, I will have dessert options. The other fact for the day is that the reaction between the acid in the lime juice and other ingredients 'sets' the mix, but in these days of food hygiene consciousness, we are supposed to bake the pie anyway. I went the safe option and put the milk mix on top of the pie base and baked for 12 minutes (12 being hygienically significant, apparently).

The pie actually ends up looking more like what I'd call a tart - but then I couldn't have wandered the house on Sunday going mmm pie.