Jack O'Lantern, in my belly!

[Pheidippides]

After my latest batch of chili, I think I have that down pat. I feel I've got a good recipe that I've put together on my own, and I don't feel the need to explore that avenue any further at this time.

So it is on to my next excursion. I have decided to make my educational trips thematic - I am going to focus on learning how to create wonderful dishes that are indigenous to America. Step one was Chili.

My latest slice of Americana is Pumpkin Pie.

I have been doing a lot of research over the last few days. I am ready to start.
I will document my journey again.

Today's shopping list:

Sugar pumpkins
Eggs
Heavy Cream
Mace
Nutmeg
Cinnamon
Cloves
Allspice
Ginger
Vanilla Beans
Lard
Butter
Flour
Salt
Dark Rum

I will let you know how this turns out. I expect it will be more challenging than chili.

[falafel]

Niku, I commend you for always naming your threads with creative titles. You never just go with "I'm thinking of making homemade pumpkin pie." I appreciate that.

[TripletDaddy]

Please tell me you will wear that crazy snorkel/mask combo again.

[Pheidippides]

Please tell me you will wear that crazy snorkel/mask combo again.

Alas, I don't foresee a need. Chili can majorly irritate nasal cavities; what can a lowly pumpkin do? I have a Darth Vader mask that I could use, I suppose, but I don't know what the reason would be.

[Pheidippides]

Okay, here's what happened tonight.

I spent the better part of two hours running around from place to place getting the ingredients As soon as I got home and changed, I got to work making pie.

I bought four sugar pumpkins (well more than I needed). Here they are, along with the tool I used to cut them open:



I split the pumpkins open, scooped out the seeds and stringy junk, and then roasted them for an hour:



While that was roasting, I put a cup of flour and 1/2 tsp of salt in a food processor and gave a quick blend. Then I added approximately 6 T of chilled butter (unsalted, of course) and 3 T of chilled lard (that was hard to find).



That gets blended with water until it just comes together - it looks granular, but will stick together. This is put into the fridge in a plastic back to chill for 30 minutes.

Now I turn my attention to spices. I put together 2t of cinnamon, 1/2t of ginger, 1/4t of cloves, 1/4t of allspice, and 1/2t of nutmeg (all hand-ground except the cinnamon). Resulting spices look like this:



Pumpkins are now roasted and pie dough is now chilled. I roll out the dough and put it in a pie tin (this is much harder than it sounds) and then blind bake with beans in it for 10 minutes at 425:





Now I blend up the pumpkin - a little bit of water was needed to make it blend well, but not much:



That's the prep work - I'll tell you how I put it together in part II.

[Pheidippides]

Part II

Okay, so what's a pumpkin pie really? It's just a pumpkin-flavored custard. And custard means...Vanilla Beans!



And rum!



I take 1.5 cups of heavy cream and .5 cups of milk and put them in a sauce pan over medium heat - just barely at a simmer. To that, I add the vanilla bean (both removed seeds and husk), 3/4 cup of packed brown sugar, my spice mixture from above, and 1/4 cup of rum. Let gently simmer for 10 minutes or so, whisking all the while, until it looks like this:



I add in 2 cups of the pureed pumpkin mixture and let that simmer more. I hand-beat three eggs in a separate bowl and then temper them by adding in about a quarter of my cream/pumpkin mixture, whisking briskly all the while. After that is whisked and the egg mixture's temperature has risen, I add the egg mixture to the cream mixture and let simmer a few minutes more.

Then I fish out the vanilla bean husks and pour the mixture into my pie crust:



This is cooked in a 325 degree oven (I had it on convection bake - I suspect 350 would be better if you don't have a convection setting) for 45 minutes. It looks like this:



I put the slit there, btw, when I was testing consistency at 30 minutes.

Verdict:

The crust is flaky but not tender or cohesive enough. I think I need to use less butter and more lard, and maybe a bit more water as well. The crust is going to be difficult to master.

I think I could have let it cook another 10 minutes longer to let the custard set up more. Not sure, though, and we'll see what an overnight rest brings.

The vanilla flavor overpowered (not surprising, given that I used a whole vanilla bean). It was like pumpkin creme brulee to some extent - very tasty, but not quite what I was looking for. I think I need to use only 1/3 of a vanilla bean and increase the amount of allspice and cloves, and maybe even the cinnamon. Still, it was a good first effort and very tasty. I am going to try again this weekend. All in all, I'm quite proud of the result, given that I pretty much made up the recipe on my own (with the help of the science of Alton Brown).