Taverney Forever

Today was a beautiful autumn day. I sat for a while on a bench watching Max in the park. Under the iron canopy of another bench further away, a couple was kissing. I wasn't being a voyeur, I was only keeping an eye on Max who had gone to do number two right in front of them. They were too busy to notice...hopefully.

Imagine what these benches have seen and heard. We speak of what the walls of houses have seen, but never benches. How much more colourful and varied must be their accounts! Couples talking, fighting, crying (yes, I know - we've all all done that), old people, homeless people, lonely people, children, mothers with prams...

Autumn always reminds me of Geneva, as do empty parks (sorry, but they were always empty leaving me wondering where everyone was) and apple pie. Here, in Greece, the parks are never empty. If there are no humans, there are cats - hundreds of them - and the occasional stray dog sunning himself. Until, that is, Max bounds up, scares the cats away and and annoys the dog.

The best apple pie I have ever tasted is the one Chez Lipp, La Brasserie Lipp in Geneva. I used to go there with Viviane who, at 72, was the youngest person at heart I've ever met and one of those people who touch your life forever, an angel, as I used to call her and the kind of friend you meet once in a lifetime. It was usually sunday, a day people are with their families. I was with mine, Viviane and Andre, a little astronaut in his push-chair. Lipp's apple pie is thin, as thin as can be, filo pastry, salted butter, thin slices of apple and a caramel glaze. Needless to say, I have tried to reproduce it a thousand times and although I haven't managed to reproduce the exact pie, I nearly have it! I would like to make a very important point here: I always, always, use salted butter in deserts that have apple or chocolate. It brings out the taste of the apple and chocolate and thereby avoids creating that over-sweet taste that overwhelms everything else.

Now, this apple pie has a story, an epic story. Over the years, it was the witness to nearly all of Andre's birthday parties and the goodbye party held for my neighbors before our departure forever from Geneva. It sat there and witnessed the chatter and the strong bonds between people from different walks of life, different cultures. Unlike my past parties, this last one was terribly sad. I bordered on tears, my heart breaking. I knew what they were all thinking. 'Go, we will miss you, but we understand'. The best kind of people. The ones I used to sit with on benches watching Andre. The bench in the right hand corner of my park, the one with the overhanging tree from which we would watch the first buds of spring growing. We would all squish on that bench. Neighbours from Taverney 3. The park wasn't empty then.

Taverney Apple Pie

Ingredients

5-6 apples (preferably Golden)

110-130 grams salted butter

150 grams sugar (preferably brown)

juice of half a lemon

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 filo pastry

Start by cutting 1 apple in thin slices, then cut the slices in half. Put them in a small pan, add 100 grams sugar, the lemon juice, cinnamon and butter. Cook at medium-high heat, mixing from time to time until the apple has softened and the mixture has caramelised. Set aside. Cut the remaining apples in very thin slices. Open up the filo pastry on baking paper in a metal tart pan and spread the apple mixture on it. Arrange the apple slices in a tight circular pattern on the mixture. Sprinkle with cinnamon and distribute the remaining knobs of butter equally on the pie. Bake at 180 degrees for 45min. Five minutes before taking it out, sprinkle the remaining sugar on top. For a more caramelized base, lower pie to the bottom rack for an additional 5-8 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla ice-cream (preferably Movenpick Swiss Ice-cream).