Colorful Pies

I was invited to the Thursday night Frangi barbeque many times, first as a newcomer teaching at the Anglican High School and later as the owner of Mac’s Pizzeria.  Thursday nights at the Frangi were a special treat, the buffet was terrific and there were always interesting people to mingle with.  As long as the Frangipani was open the barbecue took place, even in the off-season when business was slow.  Mac and I were invited once by Reny and Jimmy Hill, and the four of us were the only diners that night.  I couldn’t help worrying about the waste, all that good food laid out on the buffet table with no-one to eat it!

It was hard to do, but I always had room for dessert.  The Frangi offered iced cakes, fresh fruit salad, caramel custard and their famous Bequia lime pie.  One night Mac and I were the first guests to approach the dessert table and the lime pie looked especially appealing, the meringue was swirled and perfectly browned, and I asked for a piece.  When the pie was lifted onto my plate Mac and I  burst out laughing ….. the pie filling was a bright blue!  The waitress explained that the baker had used blue food coloring instead of green by mistake, and instead of throwing all the filling away she had simply topped the pies with  meringue.  I covered cake mistakes with icing at the Pizzeria all the time, but covering blue pie filling with merengue was a new one to me!

We made the exact same lime pie at the Pizzeria.  At first I was reluctant to do so, I had always thought of the lime pie as being unique to the Frangipani.  However, Mac claimed that an old girlfriend of his had given the recipe to Pat Mitchell several years before, and he figured this gave him the right to serve the pie at his own restaurant.  The pie was easy to make and very popular, making it  a good addition to the Pizzeria’s menu.

Made with fresh Bequia lime juice, the pie always looked best with just a tiny drop of green (not blue!) food coloring.   Without the dye it didn’t look as pretty, the fresh lime juice mixed with egg yolks and sweetened condensed milk produced a rather dull yellowish color that wasn’t appealing to the eye.  It was my baker Carmen’s job to make the pies each morning, and she was careful not to add too much food coloring to the mixture; too much dye and the pies would be bright green and look phony, too little and the pies weren’t pretty. Mac objected to the use of the food coloring and we argued about it all the time.  He had never seen what the pie looked like without the dye, perhaps if he HAD he wouldn’t have been so vehemently against it.

One morning Mac came through the Pizzeria’s swinging doors and caught Carmen and me standing over a bowl of lime pie filling.  Carmen’s hand had slipped, and too much green had gone into the mixture. It was green all right, bright BRIGHT green.  I figured it could be fixed by doubling the number of pies, and we were talking about making more crusts when Mac suddenly freaked out.  Snatching the green food coloring from Carmen’s hand, he raced over to the sink and dumped the dye down the drain.  Cursing loudly, he stomped into the store room, grabbed the rest of the bottles and dumped them too.  Poor Carmen was in tears, Mac in a rage was something to behold.  He ranted for quite some time, and ordered Carmen to never, ever use dye in the lime pies again.

From that day forward the green food coloring Mac hadn’t found in the storeroom during his rampage lived in the pocket of my apron.  Each time Carmen was ready with the pie filling we  secretly added a drop of the precious green merchandise. Mac had never seen the pie without a bit of food coloring and he never DID.  Carmen and I, we had a secret and a secret it remained.