RECIPE #8: Caramel Apple Cream Pie

Hey, hey! Summer's almost over, and despite its relative mildness, I for one will be glad to see it go. I don't know, I just don't like sweating when I haven't been doing anything. Hot, sunny weather usually makes me tired and cranky. We just had some crazy summer storms last week that busted tons of trees, shut down power all over the area and caused lots of flooding. My parents' basement got it, although they didn't tell me until days afterward. If you remember my grandma's gorgeous blue sectional, or the tropical fountain that served as the centerpiece of the Flaming Cave Lounge (RIP), or the spare mattresses I was counting on, or the big video standee for "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors" that I begged off the owner of Video USA when I was 12, know that they are all gone. I know, that's not really summer's fault, but it doesn't exactly flood in winter, does it?

On the plus side, I have August's recipe report ready earlier than I did the last few. This wasn't a tough decision: I decided I would make my own birthday dessert this year. Cake is real nice as a tradition, but I prefer pie. I can't think of a type of pie I don't like. Mincemeat, Key lime, coconut cream, Shepherd's, turkey pot, Frito... it don't matter, I'll eat that shit. When I mentioned my idea to my Sassy Frassy Lassie, she whipped out a book entitled "The Best of Country Cooking 1999." Scanning the pie pages, it wasn't long before I came across a recipe which sounded too good to pass up. My favorite Baker's Square pie is the French Apple Cream Cheese, and this one sounded close to that decadent delight.

A further note about the recipe: Sassy Frass' cookbook is compiled from recipes sent in to magazines. Each one tells you who takes credit for the dish and allows them a few lines for a personal anecdote. This Caramel Apple Cream Pie comes from one Lisa DiNuccio of Boxford, Massachusetts, who tells us."When I first made this pie for my family, the reactions weren't real words - they were more 'Ooh!' and 'Mmm!'" She claims it won third prize at a local fair, and third place seemed like a reasonable aspiration. This was my birthday pie.

I began by peeling and chopping up four medium-sized Granny Smith apples - or what I believed to be medium-sized, anyway. Ultimately, there was too much apple filling to fit in the pie, so I probably should have gotten smaller apples. I do have leftover filling which I intend to dump on some waffles this week, so it's not a problem. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to back up and tell you that it took me forever to chop these suckers. There has to be an easy way to cut oddly-shaped food into similar chunks, but I have yet to master it.

Anyway, much later, I had a lot of apple pieces. 1/4 cup of butter and 1/2 cup of packed dark brown sugar melted together in the skillet, becoming a thick paste. Into this went all the apple chunks and 1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice. When I was looking for this last ingredient at the store, I saw two different combinations. They both contained cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice and cloves, but the Spice Islands brand included mace, whereas the McCormick one did not. Not knowing what mace was, I grabbed the Spice Islands because, hey, an extra spice is an extra spice. Turns out mace is derived from the same plant as nutmeg, and has a similar if milder flavor. Rad!

The apple mixture simmered for 15 minutes on medium heat, and I stirred it every couple of minutes. At the end, I mixed in two tablespoons of flour and stirred for a minute before removing it from the heat. Next, I prepared the crust. My original intention was to make a crust from scratch, but time was short, and the recipe does call for a pre-made 9-inch pastry shell. I went with a graham cracker crust purportedly made by elves in a rustic tree factory. This didn't require any baking prior to filling, which also saved some time. I drizzled 1/2 cup of caramel ice cream topping and 1/2 cup of chopped pecans (you'll remember those from June's muffins) over the crust before spooning in apple mixture until it was about 3/4 full.

Next came the top layer. I beat an 8 oz. package of cream cheese, 1/4 cup of sugar, 1 egg, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract while I heated the oven to 350 degrees. My arm was tired, but the mixture was smooth by the time the oven was ready. It poured easily over the apples, filling the crust all the way to the top. The recipe says to bake the pie for 35 to 45 minutes, but it was actually about 50 minutes by the time I could insert a toothpick without pulling up a big hunk of the cream cheese layer. I'm glad I didn't use a knife to check this as the book suggests, because I managed to mangle the top pretty good with a smaller tool anyway.

After it cooled a bit on a wire rack, I added my own final touch. The original recipe calls for serving the pie with whipped topping and a sprinkle of pumpkin pie spice. I kept the spices, but not being a big whipped topping guy, I instead improvised a little design with caramel topping. Glad to have the thing done, I rushed this; if I had waited until the pie cooled a little more, I would not have needed to wipe up so much caramel from my counter. Ah, well.

Sure, the final result did not look as nice as what you'd get at Bakers Square (see above). Sure, a homemade crust probably would have been even better. Sure, I made it to serve at my birthday party on Saturday, then waited until enough people showed up, then waited until the crowd thinned so I wouldn't gyp anyone, then got too drunk to care and ended up trying it with Sassy Frass Sunday morning. The point is, this is a fine pie. Every bite had something awesome in it, and I now have a foolproof method of concocting my own apple pie filling. Hats off to Ms. DiNuccio. This should have at least come in second.

New CD reviews (HORSE the band, Stereo Total) are here. Finally, here's the best fan-made teaser trailer for Tim Burton's "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" that I have yet to see. I believe the footage was nicked from "From Hell." It's only a matter of time before we have real "Todd" footage to drool over... although we probably won't get any gore, not even in the film itself. Yeah, like a Sondheim musical's gonna bring the kids running if it simply skips the gushing carotids.

32 Footsteps

Throwin' banana peels

CD REVIEWS, File Under: C - Chthonic, Constant Velocity.

Every summer, I sit down with a terrible, terrible movie. In 2005, this unique tradition lead me to document my slog through "Zeus and Roxanne." Last year, I got ambitious and suffered through a Jim Belushi trilogy ("K-9," "K-911" and "K-9: P.I."). Although I'm a much busier dude in 2007, it's an annual custom I couldn't bear to give up. I mean, we just lost Bergman and Antonioni. There's something about gritting my teeth and rolling my eyes through some forgotten, aggressively mediocre studio drivel which no one has rented in half a decade that makes me feel tapped into the gaudy, draining, consumptive, bloated, empty spirit of my least favorite season. The more dust on the video rental box - and the fewer the people who recognize the title until you describe it for them - the better a summer crap flick.

The original plan was a themed double feature starring my two least favorite actresses, but time is short, so I am holding onto that idea for another year. Instead, I regressed to the standby theme of precocious children and wacky animals. Here we have a mighty expansive genre, one ripe with lowbrow, underachieving commercial crud. I'd actually considered this year's feature in years past, but refrained due to the movie not being old enough and having too much enthusiasm for its young star's later roles (and fabulous figure) to want to drag her name into this canon of cinematic slandering. But now, the flick came out 13 years ago, and said buxom brunette starlet not only turned blonde, but hasn't been in a movie anyone's heard of since 2004. Without further stalling, here's my arduous adventure with...

"Monkey Trouble"
(1994)

We were about halfway through the '90s. Coke was out, weed was in. The Internet had just begun to seep into popular consciousness. Real drums were back in popular music, hair metal was dead and and rap-rock was several years from its odious peak. The average person couldn't have picked Paris Hilton out of a lineup of pampered blonde princesses. Sept. 11, 2001 was years away. The American president wasn't a cold-blooded hillbilly murderer, just a do-nothing hillbilly philanderer. Yesiree, things were pretty good, and the nation reflected its bounteous contentment in the most logical way: with a spate of monkey movies.

Of course, there weren't many huge hits, but we can now look back at the mid-1990s as boom years that gave us such sterling cinematic simians as Ed, Rafiki, Buddy, Amy and Dunston. Amid these bigger beasts scampers Finster, a capuchin who got top billing as Dodger in the much-forgotten kids' picture "Monkey Trouble." As dated and clichéd as its cloyingly crappy tropical/synth score or the font that announces the title on its poster, the flick tells the timeworn tale of a sulky kid who finds joy and fulfillment in harboring a crafty, impertinent critter.

Its biggest human star was Harvey Keitel, as it came out the same year he appeared as Winston Wolfe in the perennial dorm room favorite "Pulp Fiction." Here, he's Azro, a shifty gypsy with an accent of undiscernable origin... perhaps the Bronx. Azro's instructed the monkey in the ways of picking pockets and robbing houses, but his is a cruel love. The swarthy thief somehow blames the furball for making his wife leave him. "You don't believe me? Read! READ!" he bellows while shoving his wife's Dear John letter in the monkey's face. "She hated you and your stinkin' mess!" What's a capuchin with an unhappy home life to do, but wander the streets in search of sympathy. He does, and finds it in the arms of Eva, played by twelve year-old Thora Birch.

Now, it's been well documented that I believe Thora Birch is one of the most attractive young ladies in Hollywood, even if she's turned all bony and underwent the aforementioned unfortunate hair coloring. I know, she's too young for me, but considering I briefly dated a girl who is actually a few months younger than Ms. Birch a couple of years ago (also too young for me), I don't feel especially creepy owning up to it. Let me be very clear that I do not find little Thora attractive, which would indeed be creepy.

When we meet Eva, she's smartly clad in a B.U.M. Equipment shirt, of which we are reminded in the next scene as it begins with a shot of a billboard advertising B.U.M. Equipment. The girl spends most of "Monkey Trouble" screaming at the monkey or sulking about her baby brother, the product of her mom and stepdad's unpleasant coupling who has stolen all her thunder as the precocious youngster of the house. ("I hate him! He's a nerd!" Eva wails.) Mimi Rogers plays mom, her brittle, stern and joyless countenance displaying what it must be like to have spawned two kids with two different guys about a decade apart. The stepdad is played by familiar character actor Christopher McDonald - the dad from the flop 1997 "Leave It to Beaver" movie - whose cold eyes and rodent smile guarantee he's perfect as a stepdad cop.

Another source of resentment for Eva is a no-pet rule instituted because of her stepdad's allergies. Thus, she must hide the monkey once she discovers him hanging out in a park. Eva names the capuchin Dodger because he steals her baseball cap. The Dickensian implication of the name is completely lost on her, and probably on everyone else except for writer/director Franco Amurri, the native Italian behind the forgotten Kiefer Sutherland/Dennis Hopper hippie comedy "Flashback," and his co-screenwriter Stu Krieger, whose poison pen helped incarnate the Pauly Shore/Andy Dick vehicle "In the Army Now" and Don Bluth's animated non-classic "A Troll in Central Park."

The monkey's sinful nature quickly drags the already self-centered Eva down to his level of brazen deception. Almost immediately after she meets Dodger, an old couple appears and starts grilling Eva about him. The inherently dishonest girl stammers that she got him from pirates in the Caribbean, "retired ones. They own a restaurant now." Oof. This girl, who used to visit her local pet store every day just to moon over the dogs she could not have, now eagerly pushes dogs out of elevators because they scare her monkey. She even pulls her only friend into a scam that involves lying to her mom and stepdad, breaking into her real dad's house and playing hooky so she can hang out with Dodger. That little beast corrupts everything it touches.

Once she gets Dodger home, Eva has a hell of a time dealing with him. He pisses on the floor and shits in the sink, laughing all the while, so she puts a diaper on him. (The application and cleaning of said diaper is never addressed.) The creature's mangy fur sets off sneezing fits in stepdad, but in keeping with dumb kids' movie convention, his dreadful allergies disappear whenever inconvenient to the plot, much like Azro's need for a walking cane. Speaking of Azro, he's skulking about looking for the monkey, and he snatches the bastard during a not-so-thrilling chase at the beach. This scene includes abundant monkeyshines, as Dodger runs around under a box, tripping up a bunch of rollerbladers, and he hops on a kite that some kid is flying.

When Azro wrestles the kite out of the kid's hand, the best moment of the movie occurs. Here, respected actor Harvey Keitel, sporting a hideous beige suit, bellows at a child, "Give it up! I eat your face!"

Azro nabs Dodger, but not before the monkey shoots at the gypsy with his own gun. I suppose this flick was made before people became super paranoid about having guns appear in children's movies - nowadays, the bad guy would probably be armed with a stick or a loaf of bread or something. For her part, Eva thinks Azro is a pirate, which is kind of funny. Eva's parents discover her housebreaking stunt, and no one believes her story about having a monkey, so she bolts to look for him. Dodger is reunited with Azro's estranged son, who apparently had some sort of love for the critter, but after Azro discovers that Eva has retrained the monkey to not steal, the beast escapes and heads for Eva's house. Eva's mom, stepdad and birth dad (who is such an emasculated sad sack he appears to only ever work or hang out with his ex-wife and her new husband) flip out that she's missing, until her baby brother spots the creature hiding in Eva's room and delivers his first word: "Monkey!"

In the end, there's a big showdown over which kid the monkey wants to stay with. On one side is Eva, the other Azro's kid. At first, Dodger goes to the boy, and Eva walks away crying. However, preferring life in a comfortable suburban house versus a rusty old shack, the capuchin rethinks and runs back to Eva, resulting in an uproarious slow-motion girl/monkey reunion scene. Azro goes to jail, his son's dual despoilment of long-lost father and pet completely ignored by the film. All that matters is that Eva has accepted her brother and gets to keep her monkey, as she brings them both to show-and-tell for the treacly finale. Her family is complete: haggard mom, creepy stepdad, pathetic real dad, cutesy brother and reformed bandit pet.

I have watched "Monkey Trouble" and detailed its proceedings in hopes that you do not. Those of you with children, please heed my warning. If for some reason deemed necessary, you can get them the Minstrel Books novelization for cheaper than the cost of a rental. Look at this stupid trailer. Do you really want something like this in your house?

visit videodetective.com for more info

Farrell children

So, I was pretty much free to wander Lollapalooza at my leisure last weekend, which was nice. I saw a whole lot of bands, got to hang out with some folks, got plenty of exercise and sweated out some toxins. Since I didn't get to write about it elsewhere, I decided to give you loyal readers some random observations and a rundown of the ten best sets I saw.

-Performers I watched (in order): Ghostland Observatory, Chin Up Chin Up, G. Love (solo), Son Volt, Charlie Musselwhite, Viva Voce, Sparklehorse, M.I.A., moe., Blonde Redhead, Satellite Party, LCD Soundsystem, Femi Kuti and The Positive Force, Daft Punk, Sound Tribe Sector 9, The Roots, Regina Spektor, Roky Erickson and the Explosives, The Hold Steady, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Spoon, Patti Smith, Interpol, Apostle of Hustle, Iggy & The Stooges, Peter Bjorn and John, !!!, Yo La Tengo, Modest Mouse, TV on the Radio, Pearl Jam

-Performers I only heard from a distance (didn't actually see them): Against Me!, Bang Bang Bang, Blue October, Cold War Kids, DJ Craze and DJ Klever, Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals, Los Campesinos!, Jack's Mannequin, Kings of Leon, Motion City Soundtrack, Muse, The Polyphonic Spree, Slightly Stoopid, Rhymefest, Amy Winehouse

-This year's performers who previously performed at Lollapalooza: The Black Keys, Blonde Redhead, Blue October, Cold War Kids, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Ghostland Observatory, G. Love and Special Sauce, The Hold Steady, Kings of Leon, My Morning Jacket, Pearl Jam, The Roots, Satellite Party, Soulive, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Spoon, Yo La Tengo

-Better than I thought they'd be: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, moe.

-Not as good as I thought they'd be: The Hold Steady, Patti Smith

-Strangest bookings: Silverchair, Charlie Musselwhite

-Cancelled: Sean Lennon (months prior), Kinky (days prior), CSS (hours prior)

-Most embarassing set: Perry Farrell's new band Satellite Party, who began and ended with Jane's Addiction songs, sandwiched a number of others into their show and even did Porno for Pyros' "Pets" for good measure

-Most inappropriate moment: G. Love, playing on the children's stage, distinctly slipping the word "damn" into his closing song

-Best quote from the stage: "Do you think Eddie Vedder's dad calls him Ed Ved? ED VED! Do you think Perry Farrell's dad calls him Pere Fare? PERE FARE!" - Nic Offer (!!!)

-Best quote from the stage (runner-up): "Some people don't want us back next year. The Sun-Times doesn't want us back. They don't think we have good manners." - Perry Farrell (Satellite Party, co-founder)

-Number of times I walked completely across Grant Park: 13

-Grossest food I mistakenly bought: The "Ruben Roll," which I assumed would be a corned beef wrap but turned out to be two deep-fried egg roll wrappers stuffed with corned beef, sauerkraut and Swiss cheese

-Price of bottled water: $2, compared to $1 for the same brand and size of bottled water at Pitchfork

-Most joyous discovery: The luxurious spaciousness of wheelchair accessible porta-potties

MY TOP TEN PERFORMANCES:


1. The Roots - The veteran Philly collective put on the most eclectic, dynamic, engaging show of the weekend. From a solid base of hip-hop, they jumped from funk to rock to soul to jazz and back to hard rhyming. They managed to make their hour in the middle of the second day seem too brief, yet covered so much ground that it was impossible to leave unsatisfied. Black Thought cut through the booming group without turning his rhymes into a screaming mess, remaining the thoughtful and authoritative MC he is in the studio while ramping up the energy for a joyous audience. The Roots just never stopped moving. I really, really need to see them do a full headlining show.


2. Blonde Redhead - One Japanese gal and two Italian dudes based in New York City put on one of the lousest sets I witnessed over the weekend, and I was sitting pretty far away for most of it. Just as the motherfucking sun was blasting straight into the audience's eyes on the super-hot first night, their gathering storm of squalling guitars built to an ear-splitting pitch, the pink-orange ball of burning pain forcing everyone to become literal shoegazers. Straight into the cosmos... pure psychedelic bliss. I wished I knew more about Blonde Redhead going in.


3. TV on the Radio - These scenesters' favorites from New York played in the same slot as Broken Social Scene did last year - across the field and directly before the final fest headliners (Pearl Jam in '07, Red Hot Chili Peppers in '06), forfeiting 15 minutes of stage time in compensation for exposure to the weekend's biggest and most mainstream audience. My expectation from their records was a sumptuous, immersive set on which I could float out of the park for good. I got that, but it was way more rocked up than I'd imagined. The vocal harmonies soared and snarled, their intricate rhythms propelling spastic, orgiastic whoops from a crowd swaying dazed, sun-blazed and amazed before the stage.


4. Daft Punk - French electro-funk duo Daft Punk closed out Friday opposite Ben Harper, who I thought was pretty amazing when I saw him a decade ago. I'm no big fan of dance music, but I'd seen Harper before, and I do love vocoders. And holy crap, not since Pink Floyd themselves have I seen a light show so overwhelmingly eye-searing. The two dudes were perched in the middle of a big flashing pyramid, working their computers and jiggling their shiny, helmeted heads while a rainbow of throbbing lights pulsed and flashed in time with the heart-squishing bass. With all those people shaking their asses and the fresh evening breeze coming off the lake, I felt like I was at some European hillside rave. No, I didn't dance, but I could not help bopping around a little.


5. Interpol - The toughest choice of the entire weekend for me came at the end of the second night, when Interpol and Muse played on opposite ends of the park. I totally dig both of them, had never seen either before and wasn't about to waste 15 minutes hustling between stages to see half of both. However, I met up with some friends who intended to see Interpol, and I'd had kind of a tumultuous morning, so I decided that the New Yorkers' velvety gloom was more in tune with my mood than the proggy exaltations of the Brits. In no way do I regret my choice, because their stormy, glittering pulsations complemented the evening's brief cloudbursts, mesmerizing and almost ritualistic. No joke, some dude standing next to me fell over on his face while he was watching them.


6. !!! - I find the idea of dance-punk a sketchy one. A mix of thumping electronic beats and confrontational yet simple loud rock can be entertainingly bratty, but it can also be obnoxiously juvenile. Luckily, Californians !!! (say "chik chik chik") have been doing this stuff for more than a decade, and they know where the line between those points is drawn. Grating and endearing at once, they banged out spry hipster jams punctuated by political slogans and frequent admonitions to those of us refusing to dance. !!! is the kind of band I would like to take a cynical attitude toward, but they're too guileless, too convincing, too good at what they do. Pure energy like theirs cannot be faked.


7. Femi Kuti and The Positive Force - Speaking of pure energy, I couldn't turn down the opportunity to see the son of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti working his magic. I caught the beginning of LCD Soundsystem, but as entertaining as that was, I wish I'd trucked to the other end of the park sooner for Kuti's competing Friday night set, because the half I caught was awesome. He had, like, six or seven horns, several percussionists, three gorgeously thick African princesses on backup vocals and a host of other dudes plucking and shaking stuff. At the center, Femi howled and growled and strutted and wailed on his sax, seemingly possessed by the jazzy polyrhythms circling him. His set was way more intense than those of a lot of the rock bands I saw over the weekend, and I walked away feeling lighter and happier.


8. Iggy & The Stooges - With a noticeable lack of anything resembling a metal band at the fest this year, we fans of the less polite types of rock had to take our musical aggression where we could get it. That said, an aging headbanger could hardly ask for a better placebo than the godfathers of punk. You read my review of Ig and the boys' last Chicago show, so you'll remember I was pretty enthused about their live reunion bid. However, since I'd already seen them, I watched the end of Apostle of Hustle's set before sauntering over to where The Stooges were hammering out their sweaty, bluesy pre-punk scorchers to a rejuvenated mid-day crowd on Sunday. You'd think maybe the heat would slow down these old-timers, but those dirty riffs kept tearing away, and good old Iggy Pop leapt and humped and convulsed like a madman. I'm telling you, see Iggy & The Stooges before they're not doing shows or dead or whatever.


9. M.I.A. - This British MC of Sri Lankan origin got a lot of hype a couple of years back, the press focusing on her background as the daughter of a revolutionary as often as her music. She combines the most militant percussive aspects of grime, dancehall and IDM into the sound of conflict, an idiosyncratic and forward-thinking clatter that, combined with her fiercely political rhymes, brings to mind the glory days of Public Enemy. As a performer, she was riveting, a lightning rod clad in flourescent gear, shuddering to her complex beats, sprightly spreading her vigor to awake everyone and everything within earshot. I hope she confounded every audience member who expected a more conventional girl rapper.


10. Roky Erickson and the Explosives - I only caught a few songs of the psych rock cult hero while walking between other stages, but I'm glad I took the time to stop by for a few of Erickson's barnburners. Nearly lost for good in a haze of mental illness and legal troubles, the former 13th Floor Elevator returned to performing two years ago, and it was a great move. What I saw of his set on Saturday kicked serious ass. I'm not too familiar with his music, but what I heard were very Stooges-like slabs of gritty garage rock, touching on blues and proto-metal without becoming either. It's pretty shameful how few people were watching him... it's not like The Hold Steady was really exciting or anything.