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Nov. 21st, 2012 10:24 pm
The proof of the pumpkin
I'll leave tasting and judgment up to our guests, but I'm not thrilled with how the pumpkin pie came out. The filling is flawless--rich, complex, smooth, creamy, and light--but it was a lot of work getting there. As I quipped to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu, I dirtied three bowels, two saucepans, two spoons, a ladle, two sieves, and the Cuisinart. The most annoying part was the sieving; even though I read through the recipe a couple times beforehand it still caught me by surprise. It's not something I would normally do. It's just so...so French, and my people were Germans. We don't sieve; we mash.
The real disappointment, however, is the crust. Bittman gave me the idea of baking the pie in a shell made of gingersnaps. I thought the ones I picked were high-quality: a crunchy-granola Canadian brand from Whole Foods with some real ginger bite. But pressing the crumbs into the pans was a chore, even after I returned them to the food processor to add more butter. Every time I removed my hand, crumbs came back with it. This made me worry about getting the filling in without leaving bald spots, so I baked it blind.
And yet the crust still came out soggy! I can't figure it out. The recipe specifically says that they reason they have you cook the filling in a saucepan and hurry it into a 400° oven for the first ten minutes of cooking is so that it will set up before it has time to seep into the crust. But that's exactly what happened. And not only is there no snap, there's not much ginger either. There's no bite to the crust at all (although the grated ginger really shines in the custard).
Maybe if this were the only pie, it wouldn't be so bad, but it's really going to suffer by comparison. The GWO made a pastry crust for the mincemeat and his dough is always flawless. Plusclintswan is making mini-pies as his contribution and don't they just look gorgeous? Next year, maybe it's back to something I have more confidence in, like my gougères.
monshu, I dirtied three bowels, two saucepans, two spoons, a ladle, two sieves, and the Cuisinart. The most annoying part was the sieving; even though I read through the recipe a couple times beforehand it still caught me by surprise. It's not something I would normally do. It's just so...so French, and my people were Germans. We don't sieve; we mash.The real disappointment, however, is the crust. Bittman gave me the idea of baking the pie in a shell made of gingersnaps. I thought the ones I picked were high-quality: a crunchy-granola Canadian brand from Whole Foods with some real ginger bite. But pressing the crumbs into the pans was a chore, even after I returned them to the food processor to add more butter. Every time I removed my hand, crumbs came back with it. This made me worry about getting the filling in without leaving bald spots, so I baked it blind.
And yet the crust still came out soggy! I can't figure it out. The recipe specifically says that they reason they have you cook the filling in a saucepan and hurry it into a 400° oven for the first ten minutes of cooking is so that it will set up before it has time to seep into the crust. But that's exactly what happened. And not only is there no snap, there's not much ginger either. There's no bite to the crust at all (although the grated ginger really shines in the custard).
Maybe if this were the only pie, it wouldn't be so bad, but it's really going to suffer by comparison. The GWO made a pastry crust for the mincemeat and his dough is always flawless. Plus
clintswan is making mini-pies as his contribution and don't they just look gorgeous? Next year, maybe it's back to something I have more confidence in, like my gougères.