Thanksgiving Eve
My level of celebration goes something like ‘well I’m still alive’.* It’s also Wednesday evening and I should be pulling on a bell rope. Whimper.
However it’s the night before Thanksgiving and I am still alive and we’re having duck and claret tomorrow and I may even eat/drink some. Whether it will be wasted on me remains to be seen. As dreaded lurgies** go this one seems to be proving*** not that serious, which is the good news, but the ME is making it serious.†
But Thanksgiving Eve: what a perfect excuse for a recipe.
I used to love pumpkin pie. Probably still do, if I had the opportunity. The first blow to my pumpkin pie love was when I went off dairy. Pumpkin was made to go with heavy cream. Then I somehow managed to marry into a clan of people who don’t like pumpkin. If I’d realised that pumpkin-aversion was a foundation gene in the British national character I might have thought twice.†† I’d still be willing to have a slice of a wicked, cream-filled pumpkin pie††† but I’d be eternally damned if I tried to eat an entire pie and I can’t quite face passing it out on street corners to the homeless.‡ The second and final blow has come with this menopause thing: when you are only allowed 6.72 calories a day or it’s Whole New Wardrobe time, there isn’t a lot of room for pumpkin pie.‡‡ So I thought I’d indulge in a little nostalgia and post my Favourite Basic Pumpkin Pie recipe. I have quite a few pumpkin pie and assorted sweet-pumpkin recipes; if the dreaded lurgi lasts a while I may post a few more.
This is adapted from The Silver Palate Cookbook which some of you will know/recall takes no prisoners in terms of light and waistline-friendly.‡‡‡
Pumpkin Pie
3 biggish eggs
2/3 c brown sugar, packed down hard
2 c fresh cooked pumpkin (it’s really worth cooking your own, instead of getting it out of a tin, and it’s dead easy, you just have to remember to allow the extra lead time)
1 tsp ground ginger
1½ tsp gr cinnamon
½ tsp gr allspice
¼ tsp gr cloves
¼ tsp gr cardamom
¾ c heavy cream
¼ c half and half
One-crust pie crust lining a deep 9″ pie plate (you are making your own pie crust, aren’t you?)
Preheat oven to 425°F.
Beat eggs till light. Then beat the sugar in a little at a time–I do this by hand, crumbling and sprinkling with the hand that isn’t holding the spoon/electric beater. You can do this quite quickly but I think it works better than just dumping a dense mass of brown sugar in your bowl and hacking at it. Stir in pumpkin, then stir in cream. Pour into your crust.
Bake at 425° for 12 minutes, then reduce to 325° and bake for another 40-50 minutes till the filling is set. (This is so dependent on your oven. The original recipe tells you to start at 450° but 450° turns things black in my world. Unless I want charcoal, I don’t go above 425.°) I’m not a big fan of testing it with a knife, but the pie should be more or less all the same colour right through the centre, no dark damp spot, and you can also tell if it’s done by touching near the edge lightly with a finger and then the centre. They should have the same texture. (Warning: touch lightly and I mean lightly. Not only will you make a mess if it’s not done–which is what I have against sticking a knife in it–but wet filling will stick to your finger. Wet hot filling, comprenez?)
The original recipe tells you to decorate with pecan halves. This is very pretty, but I don’t (didn’t) do it. I prefer to praline my pecans first: they go a treat with pumpkin pie that way, although you hate yourself in the morning.
* * *
* I’m still alive and I don’t have toothache. Well . . . let’s not exaggerate. I have a lot less toothache than I had last Thanksgiving. Last Thanksgiving I celebrated by having burning goblins banging stakes in my jaw.
** http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-dre1.htm For any of you Americans unacquainted with the Goon Show. Although I’ve always spelt it ‘lurgy’. And please note reference to ‘cooties’ which made me laugh out loud.
***. . . she says cautiously
† I really must teach the hellhounds to pull a cart.
†† Naah. There were other inducements. Growing roses, for example, in a climate and a landscape that likes them. And as a drooling Anglophile American I totally couldn’t resist marrying a man who talks like a BBC costume drama.
††† Oh, and pumpkin cheesecake . . . Tragedy. . . .
‡ And if they’re British homeless, they won’t want it either.
‡‡ Chocolate is, of course, a food group.^ Pumpkin pie, unfortunately, is not. There is no RDA for pumpkin
^ ‘Food group’ is a silly phrase so I thought I’d look it up for whatever the scientific form is. And got this on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_groups Love the last line–if it’s still there when you go look. Hi Lauren, how’s it going? A tiny reminder of the basic wonkiness of wiki.
‡‡‡ We could put Silver Palate and the original Moosewood together in a small room and take bets who would walk out still standing . . . bleeding butter from every pore.
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