dimanche 29 septembre 2013

Mulling over pumpkin


mull /mʌl/ vb
  1. (transitive) to heat (wine, ale, etc) with sugar and spices to make a hot drink


This Autumn was going to be the season of the Pie. 'Ne'er a day shall pass without pie on sill', thought I with the first maple leaf's fall. Clafoutis, apple pies, tartes aux pets de soeur, tarte au sucre, and pecan pie: I was going to do it all! If thanksgiving arrives and I don't have a perscription for insulin injections, I will have failed.

I became stuck on pumpkin. What of the pumpkin I thought? There are so many questions! So few answers!
Do I use fresh pumpkin? Most people think of canned pumpkin when they imagine their favourite pumpkin pie. Dark and dehydrated, made from the condensed flesh of the sweetest sugar pumpkin at their ripest moment. 'My mom's pie,' people think. Surely for the most concentrated flavour of pumpkin this is one's best choice, I thought. Then again, all that fresh and light subtlety that comes from fresh pumpkin would be lost. Symbolically too, that feeling of being one with the changing of the seasons, of marveling in the edible natural world that is closest to us, would be lost.

There are so many advantages to canned pumpkin. It's so robust in flavour that one can mull the mix with much more spice than with fresh pumpkin. The filling is far more likely to set after cooking too. Whether or not the gelification of a pumpkin pie should be a gamble, it can sometimes feel that way as it leaves the oven. There is something so coquettish about the jiggle of that pie!
To be frank, processing a fresh pumpkin can feel like a lot of hard work too! Cleaver it into pieces, roast it, de-flesh it, purée it, pass it through a sieve and reserve it. It sounds like too much work for a quick bit of pie.

The trick I think, is to make a lot of it. Make a lot of it at once and freeze it. Yes pumpkin keeps brilliantly on your kitchen table, but when you're going to make pumpkin pie, do a lot at once and forget about the centre piece. Reap the benefit of your labour through season-wide pie. Because after all the work is done, I honestly believe it makes better pie. Used properly, fresh pumpkin purée makes five star pie. If you catch that perfect balance in freshness, richness, spice, aroma, gourdiness, custardiness and umami, you've transcended your mom's pie, and the world will now remember your pie as the classic.

If you've never tried making fresh pumpkin pie, and think it might be too much work, YOLO.

Pie crust: thick or thin?
Make your crust really thin, but then pinch lots of dough around the edges, this way the top of the crust will take as long as the pie will to cook and it won't burn. Also, everyone loves pie crust.


Here are some tips for processing great pumpkin:

Cleave the pumpkin in two equal parts so that it has a hat, scoop out the seeds and plant them in your garden (just don't tell Monsanto). Put it in the oven, flesh side down on a tray with a piece of parchment. This way, the skin side will roast and the inside will steam itself, Once the pumpkin is cooked, turn it over and continue to roast it until the water has evaporated and the pumpkin is roasted (quite brown).
Roast the pumpkin A LOT! Al dente is not the idea here. We're trying to create something that will set in a custard with other wet ingredients so water is your enemy.
Purée the pumpkin hot! The fibres will break down more easily if they are hot and unstable.
Before you try and pass the pumpkin purée through a sieve, let it sit in a super fine sieve first and let it drip out all its water. This water can be discarded, or you can drink it (It's delicious). I've never tried chilling it, but I imagine it would be really refreshing.
If you have a food mill, that will be much faster and less annoying than passing the pumpkin through a normal sieve. You can put it back in the super fine sieve afterwards, to drip out more water. You don't have to but I do because I'm a maniac.
Finally, cool completely.

Eggs or egg yolks?
Eggs and egg yolks. Go on, throw an egg yolk in there! It's the Holidays!

I feel like mulling spices make up the most complex of my flavour memories. Those two words take me to so many places in my mind: that old fashioned donut I ate in the north-end of Edmonton. Mulled wine at Kate and Brett's in the winter. Thanksgiving dinner always included a pumpkin pie in my household growing up. Chai lattés steaming the all-too donutty air of Chez Boris. What would park-ex be without garam masala?

It is delicate and daunting, but the balance between a slew of spices cannot be overlooked when making your pie. Too much cinnamon overpowers everything and turns the mind to apple pie, which is surely not your intention. Too much clove and you burn people's nostrils till they pass out. They'll wake up 30 seconds later in a stupor wondering when they sucked on that active fuse. Too much allspice or star anise, and your pumpkin pie tastes like licorice. Omit dried ginger and people become confused. I've heard of people staying true to their morals and using fresh ginger in their pie. This seems a bit overzealous, besides which, ground ginger is also the flavour that rounds it all out in my mind. The flavour that most intrigues next to pumpkin.

There should be lots of nutmeg. I don't have a good reason for that one, it's just an obsession.

Even with the addition of aromatics such as cardamom, allspice, or anise, I still think that a touch of vanilla is necessary. It just uplifts the flavour profile from this resiny, brooding place, to something exciting that pops in your mouth while it soothes. It just works. It connects the world of custard to the spicy world of the trees. It is the emulsifier of heaven and pie.

Finally, you have to taste the pumpkin! The amount of all of these spices should be so slight. For this reason, it works best to prepare your mulling mix in advance and only use a small portion of it at a time. Don't worry, it won't go to waste (see above: garam masala, etc.) All of the flavours have to tease your palette. No one flavour should pop more than the others, they should be caressing your tongue so lightly you forget they're there and just relax. Pumpkin pie is about relaxation. Pumpkin pie is about pumpkin.

My recipe for mulling spices (pumpkin pie spice) is as follows.

8.5 ml cinnamon (not fresh, nor freshly ground)
7.5 ml ground ginger (not fresh, nor freshly ground)
3/4 whole nutmeg (grated)
2.5 ml clove (fresh)
2.5 ml allspice (fresh)
1 to 2 ml peppercorn (fresh)

I use about a half a tea of this mix for a big pie alongside 1/8 tea pure vanilla extract. If you don't follow the indications for freshly ground or powder, the recipe would be completely different.
Cream or Evap?
Cream. Evaporated milk is great and all, but again, five star pie or your mom's pie?

Then what of consistency? Do I want a pumpkin custard, a pumpkin cream? perhaps a pumpkin curd? Do I precook the shell, or cook it with the pie? All of these questions are great, but they cause one to loose track of what's important. Pumpkin pie is a ritual. If you want to fold pumpkin purée into whipped cream and dress a precooked pie shell with it, go ahead. It will be delicious, but is it really pumpkin pie? What makes pumpkin pie unique is the resistance pumpkin gives to an oven custard. The addition of pumpkin makes it possible to cook a custard for a long time in a shell of flaky pâte brisée! It's an incredible thing. It makes for a rich flavourful custard with a unique texture that is really hard to mess up. It's how millions of Americans like their pie and it's ten million times better than flan.














2 commentaires:

The Eating Hour a dit…

That pie looks phenom. How did you make the crust?

james a dit…

125g cold butter cut into 200g flour with .25 tea salt and 1 tablespoon sugar in a food processor until you reach a 'coarse sand', enough ice water with 1 tea vinegar added by hand till it starts to clump. rest in fridge (or freezer if you're in a hurry). roll out thin. pinch at the borders, bake in a hot oven with pie weights (beans) and parchment covering the entire crust for 10 minutes, rotate, cook another 10 minutes and then let rest before use.

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