“Ingredients are not sacred. The art of cuisine is sacred.”
Tanith Tyrr
It was a savoury chicken galette waiting to happen, or maybe wanting to be baked. It’s a result of blogger interactions, loads of food talk, some food cravings, events missed and repented, flavours virtually thrown into the air and talked about….I missed a picnic a few weeks ago with the Delhi food bloggers bunch. There was so much talk about food, what who was making, baking, getting, that I had pangs …not hunger pangs but pangs of missing out on something good!The Great Cookaroo threw in yolks after yolks to make her to go pastry cream from Dorie Greenspans Baking with Julia. I had the book on the shelf. A favourite from a favourite food blogger who gifted it to me from Bangalore. {Thank you again Suma!}
Then there was talk of pickled green garlic pesto which immediately threw my tastebuds in overdrive … that sounded drop dead delicious. I wanted some! My chance soon came as a bunch of us met again at the Ty.phoo Tea & Food pairing event. Sangeeta carried a bottle of pickled green garlic pesto for me.
Smothered on a toast the next morning, it had a comforting homey feel! It had all the hints of the green chutney sandwiches my dad often made … beautiful flavours that teased the palette. As I sat in the kitchen, the laundry machine whirring punishingly in the background, I reached out for Baking with Julia! The book is a winner. Read it, bake from it, drool over it, learn from it. I wanted to bake something savoury that morning, and settled for Cheese & Tomato Galette!
The galette dough was done in seconds, a Flo Baker recipe from the book. Don’t you love a dough that comes together in a heartbeat, is fuss free, smooth, pliable and uses pantry staples? I didn’t even need to rest it since it held beautifully, winter ensuring a fridge like cold kitchen. {Feedback from batch #2: An overnight rest in the fridge yields a pliable nice dough too.}
I used everything I had on hand! Pickled green garlic pesto, mozzarella, chicken salami, then some roasted onion balsamic jam, cherry tomatoes, smoked sea salt, pepper. Finished it off with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and fresh garlic greens.
The green garlic pesto was a bit spicy / chili for the younger fellow, but hit all the right spots with the daughter and husband who love everything chili! You can find the recipe for the Pickled Green Garlic Pesto{or lehsun ka achaar} on Sangeeta’s blog. Use extra virgin olive oil to get a more pesto like feel to it {as she did for my batch}, and reduce the chilies if you don’t like it too hot! BTW, Sangeeta does great personalised diet plans too, so do stop by if you need one!
You can do pretty much anything with a ‘pastry canvas’ like this. To keep the younger one happy, I made a second lot with roasted bell peppers and onions {roasting donein the Philips AirFryer, 10 minutes was all it took}, topped with sliced chicken sausages marinated briefly in a honey-mustard-garlic mix. Keep it vegetarian with roasted veggies, caramelised onion & garlic jam and feta, maybe tomatoes. It’s smooth, fun to roll out, and even more fun to ruffle over the filling to give it the characteristic galette feel.
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Recipe: Savoury Chicken Galette
Summary: A simple, crisp and delicious pastry base which can go sweet or savoury. This savoury rustic pie can hold varied combinations of toppings, vegetarian or non vegetarian, and is great for picnics, snack boxes. The savoury chicken galette can be assembled ahead of time, or even baked ahead and rewarmed in the oven briefly. Recipe adapted minimally from Baking with Julia. Makes 4 6″ galettes.
Prep Time: 15 minutes Total Time: 1 hour Ingredients:
Galette dough
80ml ice cold water
45ml buttermilk
120g plain flour
25g cornmeal [makki ka aata]
1/2 tsp salt
90g butter, chilled cubed
Suggested toppings {a combination of any of the following}
Place the flour, cornmeal and salt in bowl of food processor. Pulse briefly to mix, then add chilled butter and pulse briefly until you get an uneven mix from peas to breadcrumb size bits.
With the mchine running, pour in the buttermilk, followed by most of the chilled water and process until a soft, moist dough forms.
Remove, divide into 2, press into flat disks and chill for at least 2 hours.
Assembling
Preheat the oven to 200C.
Divide each disk into two and roll out to about 8″ circles. I cut the edges round with a pastry cutter, though you could just leave it uneven.
Line a shallow platter with the rolled out pastry hanging over the edges, fill it up as you like, beginning with mozzarella, then gently fold the edges over the filling around the sides.
Drizzle some extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, garlic greens etc over the filling and bake for about 30-35 minutes until the pastry is crisp and golden.
Transfer to a cooling rack, leave for at least 10 minutes, then slide off with a wide spatula. Serve warm or at room temperature with a scattering of garlic greens, fresh herbs etc.
“I celebrate food every day, it’s sustains us and forms who we are.”
John-Bryan Hopkins
It was the 27th and my mind was singing Empanada Gallega … only that procrastinating got the better of me this time around. It’s the Daring Baker time of the month, and this time I got deluged with work. Not that I didn’t do the challenge; I didn’t draft the post in time. From Filled Pate a Choux Swans last month to savoury pies in September, the journey gets more delicious every month.
Patri of the blog, Asi Son Los Cosas, was our September 2012 Daring Bakers’ hostess and she decided to tempt us with one of her family’s favorite recipes for Empanadas! We were given two dough recipes to choose from and encouraged to fill our Empanadas as creatively as we wished!
I was instantly attracted to the origin and inspiration behind these charming little pies. The story so beautifully and poetically narrated by Patri, it played in my mind as a film. In her words …
“My grandparents lived in a country house that my great-grandfather built a hundred years ago. It is in the northwest of Spain, right on top of Portugal, in the region called Galicia. Back in the 70s, the kitchen was the place of gathering, talking, reading… and there was always something cooking on the iron stove, be it a pot of caldo (a hearty soup), or a stew, or a cake in the oven. When I think back to those days, I can smell the sweetness of burnt wood or coal, the almost “chocolate” scent that rose up to your nostrils when you opened the door, the warmth of the air when coming in from a cool, windy and wet August morning…“
I knew instantly that I would be making these!The dough was ready in next to no time. I made the whole recipe for dough and have to say there was a LOT of dough! {I substituted a little bit of plain flour with whole wheat}. You can make one large pie, or many small ones. The dough lasted 3 days {keeps well in the fridge}. On day three I made Turkish pizzas with it. Wonderful stuff!
An empanada{or empada, in Portuguese} is a stuffed bread or pastry baked or fried in many countries in Western Europe, Latin America, and parts of Southeast Asia. The name comes from the Galician, Portuguese and Spanish verb empanar, meaning to wrap or coat in bread.
It’s an easy dough to use, and the recipe is interesting.You roll out the dough and use it like a pastry dough for pie, a larger portion for the bottom. Place it in your baking dish with a rim {step by step here}. Top with filling and cover with a smaller portion of rolled out dough and seam the edges. The amount of dough you use it up to you entirely. Since I’m trying {read desperately} to cut back on carbs these days, I rolled the dough really thin. It worked like a charm!As Patri says, Empanada is the kind of food that makes one go back to childhood. A bread-like dough that surrounds a vegetable frittata with anything you can imagine, from sardines to beef. Or filled with sugar, butter and fruit. Warm or cold, it was simple, pretty, and delicious.The amazing thing is that almost every region in the world has an empanada sort of preparation whether it be the curry puff from Malaysia, samosa and gujiya from India, calzones from Italy, meat pies from Ghana, börek from Turkey, kibbeh from Lebanon … and plenty more!{‘Plenty’ reminds me of Ottolenghis new book ‘Jerusalem‘ that Shulie just shouted out about! Another winner, another cookbook on the wishlist. Sigh}I made a portion of lamb filled empanada galettas as well {with the same lamb filling from the Lamb Purslane Pides aka Turkish pizza}. This is a handy basic empanada recipe and makes for great food on the go. Make one large empanada galletta or small ones, even petit work well in a muffin tray maybe, or in ramekins.
Do stop by here and check out some the amazing empanada galletas that will make you instantly crave pie! Thank you Patri for sharing your delicious childhood memories and recipe with us. Thank you as always Lisa of La Mia Cucina and Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice for hosting this fab kitchen!!
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Recipe: Empanada Gallega
Summary: A bread-like dough that surrounds a filling with just about anything you can imagine, from mushrooms, mince and cheese. Or filled with sugar, butter and fruit. Warm or cold, it’s simple, pretty, and delicious.
Servings: 10 {makes a 40cmx30cm square empanada / a 35cm diameter round empanada or 8-10 4″ round pies like I made.} Minimally adapted from here
Prep Time: 15 minutes Total Time: 40 minutes Ingredients:
Empanada Gallega Dough
650g plain flour
100g whole wheat flour
480ml lukewarm water
17g / 1 1/4 tbsp instant yeast
10g / 2tsp salt
60ml oil
1 large egg for wash
Filling
500g chicken mince
100g / 1 onion, finely chopped
6 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1-2 tbsp dried herbs , or fresh
1 tsp chili flakes
4 small eggplants, chopped fine
200g mushrooms, chopped fine
1tbsp Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
200gm mozzarella, grated
2 tsp olive oil
Method:
Empanada Gallega Dough
Sift both flour into a big bowl and make a well in the middle. Rub the yeast in with your fingers.
In a small bowl, mix the water and the salt.
Now, using your fingers or a wooden spoon, start adding the water and mixing it with the flour-yeast mixture. Keep on working with your fingers or spoon until you have added enough water and all the flour has been incorporated and you have a messy ball of dough.
On a clean counter top, knead the dough for approximately 10 minutes
Stand mixer
Mix the ingredients with the paddle attachment until mixed and then switch to a dough hook and knead on low for about 6 minutes.
Thermomix
Place all ingredients in TM bowl and mix on speed 6 for 30 seconds, then knead for 5 minutes.
Clean and oil the big bowl you used for mixing and place the kneaded dough in it. Cover it with a napkin or piece of linen and keep it in a warm, draught-free place for approximately 40 to 50 minutes.
Once risen, turn the dough back into a floured counter and cut it in half. Cover one half with the napkin to prevent drying.
Spread the other half of the dough using a rolling pin. You can use a piece of wax paper over the counter, it will make it easier to move the dough around. Depending on the shape of your oven pan or cookie sheet, you will make a rectangle or a round.
Now, the thinness of the dough will depend on your choice of filling and how much bread you like in every bite. For your first time, make it about 3mm thin (about 1/10th of an inch) and then adjust from that in the next ones you make.
Sprinkle a little grated cheese over the bottom. Place the filling, making sure it is cold and that all the base is covered. Sprinkle a wee bit more cheese if you like. {Using a hot filling will make the bottom layer of the empanada become soggy. Be careful to avoid adding too much oil from the filling, try to make it as “dry” as possible.}
Start preheating your oven to moderate 180ºC.
I lined the bases on my ramekins with parchment paper to be on the safer side.
Take the other half of the dough and spread it out to the same or less thinness of the base. You can use a piece of wax paper for this too. Take into account that this “top” dough needs to be smaller around than the bottom, as it only needs to cover the filling.
If not using wax paper, move carefully the top to cover the filling. If using wax paper, transfer the dough, turn upside down, cover the filling and gently peel off the wax paper.
Using your fingers, join bottom and top dough, when you have gone all the way around, start pinching top and bottom together with your thumb and index finger and turning them half way in, that way you end up with a rope-like border.
When you are finished, make a 1 inch hole in the middle of the top layer, {or stamp out shapes with a tiny cookie cutter}. This will help hot air exit the empanada while it’s baking without breaking the cover.
In a small bowl, beat an egg and add a tbsp of cold water. With the pastry brush, paint the top of the empanada with the egg wash.
Place the empanada in the oven and bake for about 25 minutes for small pies and 45 minutes for a large one. Check that the bottom part is done.
Let the pies cool on a cooling rack for about 20-30 minutes before trying to dislodge from pie tins/ramekins. Gently run a butterknife along the edges to ease them out.
Filling
Heat the olive oil in a wok and add the onions, garlic and red chili flakes {and dried herbs if using}. Sauté over low heat until the garlic is fragrant.
Add the chicken mince and roast on high flame till the mince its light golden, no longer pink {5-7 minutes}.
Next add the chopped eggplant and mushrooms and sauté again over high heat until most the liquid has disappeared and the mince is quite dry.
Season with salt and pepper, drizzle in the Worcestershire sauce and add fresh herbs if using. Give it all a good stir, stir until quite dry so the pastry doesn’t get soggy. Cool completely before using as filling.
Note: This makes a good chicken mince samosa filling too.
“We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.”
German Proverb
Nom Nom Nom … these Anzac Biscuits have to be the best cookies I’ve made in a while, a hurried first nibble when they were yet warm, and it was love at first bite. I didn’t care if the kids rejected them; I knew I could devour the whole jar full! They were SO GOOD!He woke up with a smile, trying to charm my angry face. It was past 10am and I wasn’t a happy mother. “Cookieeeeeeee …. Yum! Nice. Can I have another?” She came home early after her exam. ‘Mother, I’m hungers’ she screamed in teen talk. “Me want cookie! Oooooh nice. More? Are these fatty? Another please? Just one more?” That’s the way this cookie crumbled! Day one and the jar half full {or half empty as I saw it!}. I did bake another batch the next day!It was back to the basics for me, baking from memory {the eggless chocolate orange tart above} and turning pages of cookbooks on the shelf. I suddenly wanted to make ‘ciabatta’ on priority since the net was down {cables been cut in error they say} only to frustratingly remember that the recipe was online; only an offline link remained on my silly desktop!It’s a bit unnerving to see how much one gets attached to the net! I worked in frustration that morning – did laundry, cleaned the kitchen chimney, brushed the pooch, made rough puff pastry {froze it}, made mushroom potato soup, made sweet butter, a base for a tart, then filled it with delicious chocolate filling. … and then these Anzac Biscuits!
An Anzac biscuit is a sweet biscuit popular in Australia and New Zealand, made using rolled oats, flour, desiccated coconut, sugar, butter, golden syrup, baking soda and boiling water. Anzac biscuits have long been associated with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) established in World War I. It has been claimed the biscuits were sent by wives to soldiers abroad because the ingredients do not spoil easily and the biscuits kept well during naval transportation.
You can read more about their origin and history here. A point of interest is the lack of eggs to bind the ANZAC biscuit mixture together. Because of the war, many of the poultry farmers had joined the services, thus, eggs were scarce. The binding agent for the biscuits was golden syrup or treacle.
Its been an exasperating beginning to the year to say the least. While power cuts were something we’ve learnt to live with for long, internet connectivity was taken for granted, a right for a privatized service. No such luck however! Shoddy ISP with rotten customer service makes my blood boil, the past few days on simmer!These bites made me feel better instantly; the cookies are the best I’d tasted in a while. I remember biting into crisp, thin, delicious honey oat cookies at the coffee workshop a few months ago, mesmerised by the taste. Came home and googled forever but never found a recipe that promised to please. Then that morning, no net, no links and I made a rough puff pastry & mushroom potato soup in the Thermomix. Leafing through the pages of the TM cookbook I found Anzac Biscuits. Now I’ve been meaning to make Anzacs for ages, and the minute I saw golden syrup I decided to give the recipe a go. I’ve had a bottle of syrup in my larder for over a year. Yes, looked like a cookie I would enjoy; was happy to note ‘no eggs’ . Minor changes … knocked off the coconut as the teen can’t stand coconut it and substituted it for chopped walnuts to make the cookie a little more wholesome.
There’s something so charming about the taste, something quite addictive. The cookies are crisp on the outside yet offer this slightly chewy comforting centre within. Also, they have a butterscotchy flavor that I really like, a honeyish hue possibly due to the syrup and butter being melted together. I love the depth the walnuts add to them, though I think coconut would be wonderful too.I reduced the sugar slightly from the original recipe, and baked them slightly thicker and thus longer. Maybe next time a little whole wheat flour substitution might happen, but all in all these were the perfect bite. Made me forget that silly internet, the lack of connectivity. Just proves that food comforts … and how!
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Recipe: Anzac Biscuits
Summary: Sweet, chewy inside, crisp on the outside, delicious and wholesome bisuits. Cookies that are simple to make and very addictive. They have a long shelf life but disappear too fast to prove it!
Prep Time: 7-10 minutes Total Time: 40 minutes Ingredients:
120gm unsalted butter
100ml golden syrup {I used Solar}
1tsp baking soda
65gm sugar
65gm brown sugar
½ tsp salt
150gm plain flour, sifted
100gm rolled oats
50gm walnuts, chopped fine
Method:
Preheat oven to 170C
Heat butter and golden syrup in a pan over low heat till the butter melts and the two mix together. {Can do it in the microwave too}
Add the remaining ingredients and mix well. The dough will be a little stiff.
Drop tbsp of dough on parchment lined cookie sheets, flatten with the tines of a fork. {I rolled the dough into balls, flattened them slightly with the palm of my hand, and then further flattened them by pressing down with a fork.}.
Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown.
Leave to cool on cookie sheets for 5 minutes {they are quite tender when they come out of the oven} , and then transfer on racks to cool completely.
Thermomix Recipe:
Place butter & golden syrup into TM bowl. Heat for 2 minutes at 60C on speed 2 until fully dissolved. Place bicarb into bowl and mix for 5 seconds on speed 3.
Add remaining ingredients and set dial to closed position and mix for 30-35 seconds on interval speed…. then continue as above from step 4.
“Baked apples are at the core of modern thinking.”
Naomi Kobuko
A rather unsettling beginning of 2012 with the internet playing truant for a plethora of reasons, blame nature for a lightning strike, or man for cutting the underground cables … whatever, but it left PAB very hungry. I’m back to fill the hollow feeling with a chic Shabby Apple Apron Giveaway, and a recipe for Fred Harveys French Apple Pie with Nutmeg Sauce. The apron and the pie both very charming with a promise of retro charm. The pie from a cookbook {Appetite For America} that goes even further, a trail that chronicles ‘meaty‘ chunks of American culinary history from the roaring twenties!!
First the giveaway. The Shabby Apple folk wrote in to say … “We appreciate the quality of your website and its air of culinary chic, and we’d love to offer your fashionable readers a Shabby Apple Giveaway! Shabby Apple’s “Boysenberry Pie” Collection of aprons features designer fabric in cheery prints and charming styles, blended together for a vintage-inspired look that’s altogether sweet. Each apron comes complete with a recipe for its namesake dessert.” … Whats not to love about these???
Shabby Apple, an online boutique of women’s dresses, casual dresses, skirts, and women’s apparel that caters to a need to make women feel feminine and beautiful. They offer flirty, stylish dresses a woman can wear just as comfortably in the office, at a family dinner, or on a date. Shabby Apple is a fashion company for women, by women, and of women. I’m giving away one apron from their Boysenberry Pie Collection to one lucky winner.
HOW TO ENTER: To win a Shabby Apple apron {value for $32-$40}, you must leave a comment before 22nd January, 2012, telling me you …
Which Shabby Apple dress or item is your favorite by visiting the Shabby Apple site
…and have a USA shipping address
To continue the nostalgia of the old world charm, I’m going to tempt you into making a simple and delicious French Apple Pie, pulled out from the pages of history. Serve it with a simple Nutmeg Sauce and it sends you back many years.This classic eating house comfort food dish was tarted up by the head Fred Harvey baker at the Los Angeles Union Station way back in the 1920’s!!The recipe comes from an entirely devourable book “APPETITE FOR AMERICA: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire that Civilized the Wild West“, penned by Stephen Fried who says, “Over the years, Fred Harvey has become something of an obsession, because it seems that the more I learn about him, his family, his business, and his world, the more I understand about my homeland, and how it came to be.” So who exactly was Fred Harvey?
An Englishman who came to America in the 1850s, he built a family and a career and then, in his early forties, started a revolutionary business feeding train passengers in the Wild West along the Santa Fe railroad. He became something much better understood today: the founding father of the American service industry. Fred Harvey ran all the restaurants and hotels along the country’s largest railroad, the Santa Fe between Chicago and Los Angeles.
This curious Englishman turned out to be more than just a brilliantly successful manager of hotels and restaurants and a true Horatio Alger story come to life (during the time when Alger actually was writing those stories). He created the first national chain of restaurants, of hotels, of newsstands, and of bookstores— in fact, the first national chain of anything— in America.
The restaurants and hotels run by this transplanted Londoner and his son did more than just revolutionize American dining and service. They became a driving force in helping the United States shed its envy of European society and begin to appreciate and even romanticize its own culture.
I often find the son completely immersed in the history channel America, the Story of the US on TV … taking in the history of America, from the American Indians, the Henry Ford car model, the railroad, oil, civil war, Confederate army, Abraham Lincoln, the Vietnam War … an extraordinary series indeed of how America was invented.While he devours history taught this way, I devour this book which deliciously crosses paths with the TV channel, as Fred’s grandson Freddy was an original partner in TWA with Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford.‘Appetite For America’takes you back many nostalgic years, where times were simple. Hospitality was a different ball game, and culinary trails and entrepreneurship developed in a remarkable way. Unlike the chains of today, the Fred Harvey system was known for dramatically raising standards wherever it arrived, rather than eroding them.It turns out that being a fast- food nation was originally a good thing!Fred Harveys success story and his methods are still studied in graduate schools of hotel, restaurant, and personnel management, advertising, and marketing. “More than any single organization, the Fred Harvey System introduced America to Americans,” wrote a historian in the 1950s. As Prof Fried says, “whether we know it or not, we still live in Fred Harvey’s America”.
Stephen Fried is an award-winning investigative journalist and essayist, and an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism. Links {with recipes} you might enjoy:Fred Harvey Cooks, Fred Harvey Cookbook Project
[print_this]Recipe: French Apple Pie with Nutmeg Sauce
Comfort food redefined. Takes you back to the good old days … a simple, comforting apple pie served with an even simpler nutmeg sauce. This classic eating house comfort food dish was tarted up by the head Fred Harvey baker at the Los Angeles Union Station way back in the 1920’s!
{I made half portion. The pastry recipe I used is from here}
French Apple Pie:
Pare and slice eight cups tart apples and place in the saucepan with one-half cup water to cover. Bring to a boil, and cook until tender, about five minutes.
Add one-half cup sugar, mixing gently to avoid damaging the apples. Using slotted spoon, arrange apples in pie tin lined with pastry.
In a small bowl, stir to mix one cup graham cracker crumbs, one half cup flour, and one-half cup sugar. Add one-third cup butter and a few drops of vanilla and stir thoroughly with a fork until mixture has a coarse, crumbly texture.
Sprinkle the graham cracker topping evenly over apples.
Place in oven pre-heated to four-hundred-fifty degrees and bake for thirty minutes, or until pastry turns light brown.
Nutmeg Sauce:
In a small saucepan, beat one egg yolk, one-half cup sugar and one-cup milk together well. Heat to just boiling and remove from heat immediately.
Add one teaspoon nutmeg and stir thoroughly. {I added 1/2 a scraped vanilla bean too}
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“Marge, it’s 3 AM. Shouldn’t you be baking?”
Homer Simpson
Did you make your own fruit mincemeat this year? I just about did, and far too late in the month IMHO. I procrastinated forever; then noticed it was the 18th of December and hit the panic button. It was now or never since it needs a few days to soak the fruit. I eventually got it done, also getting distracted along the way … and suddenly, it was time for a batch of Christmas Fruit Mince Pies!Day 3 yesterday and the soaked fruit was looking plump, good and shiny. I should have waited to turn the whole batch into my Garam Masala Christmas Cake, but I couldn’t resist making some little mince pies! {I write this post as my fruit cakes finally bake in the oven!}My sister sent me a load of baking goodies with the BIL who flew in from the US, much like Santa who got here before time. Petit tins of all sizes, something that I love, vanilla beans, sprinkles, a dessert cookie baking tray, a Lindzer cookie cutter, a ‘sack‘ of baking chocolate chips … loads more!Despite telling her that I hardly bake ‘fancy‘ {read tedious} cookies any more, I pulled out the Lindzer set to make a batch of Toasted Walnut Linzer Cookies with Strawberry Filling. Typically, my mind wandered in the opposite direction, and I whizzed some pâte sucrée in the Thermomix. Soon the dough was being rolled and the Lindzer cookie cutters were being used to make toppings for petit fruitmince pies!Its dangerous to have a big bowl of fruit soaking on the counter. Hungry mouths on the prowl get attracted to it, so I hid it … but couldn’t get it it out of my head! Yesterday I figured I could nick some for a before Christmas cake treat. These little pies are fun to make; quick too. I love using the snowflake cutters sweet Nic @ Cherrapeno gave me … so festive! Use your favourite pâte sucrée / sweet pastry dough or use the one below. This works a classic 2:1 ratio of flour and butter. As with pie/pastry dough, keep handling/kneading to an absolute minimum. That way you’ll have a nice light, crisp pastry once baked. If you like, you can add some apple to the filling, like Alli did in her Christmas Chocolate & Fruit Mince Pies. Nice!!
“Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.”
Jim Davis
India is pretty much pumpkin country, the yellow and rather mellow squash that you will find around every nook and corner all year through, a vegetable I looked at rather disdainfully until I made my first Praline Pumpkin Pie 2 years ago. The lad nudges me this time every year to remind me he l♥ves it! This one is for him – a Perfect Pumpkin Pie.Mentally conditioned by food blogs, lovely pumpkin posts painting the net in a orange hue, I eagerly await fall. It makes me look at the pumpkin in wonder, a rather underestimated veggie, yet one that holds a lot of promise. The beautiful flavour of the pumpkin soup I shared with Jamie in London holds a special connect. It was the company, the atmosphere, the euphoria of that first time we all met. Somewhere in the middle of all this, the humble pumpkin got an even more elevated status in my life!I made soup last year, and for some silly reason it never got blogged. This pumpkin pie is the result of inspiration out of the blue. I saw a mail in my inbox saying ‘If you had two extra hours in a day, how would you spend it?‘ … and I thought, hmmm, I wonder!An extra 2 hours for the obsessed baker in me is like an impossible dream. My life seems to run choc-a-bloc morning to night, balancing the fine act of racing through laundry, trying to feed a blog, a brood, a pooch, snatching a few harassed moments to take photographs while the dog is now tall enough to get to table tops {… CUTE as a button too}, grocery {sigh}…and then emails of course!That thought stayed in my mind while I ran the laundry that morning, and teased me while I went to the vegetable vendor, our fabulous sabziwala. Someone was buying pumpkin and the fellow cut a nice bright one for her. That was my cue!Give me 2 extra hours and watch me bake with joy, bake something to fill home with autumnal aromas, pumpkin gently roasting {of course you can buy it canned as well in the rest of the world, but we know no luxuriesof the sort in India!}. Much from scratch with this too, I have never had tomatoes or pumpkin out of a can here. I have read though that fresh roasted pumpkin beats the canned one hands down. Got an extra hour?Roast some!
I always have tins of condensed milk on hand after having indulged in this absolutely addictive Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream from Perfect Scoop. You need less than an hour to make it, need resolve to keep away from the freezer, and finally 10 minutes to polish it off. But if you can grab those two extra hours, then I recommend you head for pie! The verdict was delicious! The terrible teen screwed up her nose and said “Ewwwwwww …. pumpkin!!,” and then predictably went on to ravenously demolish the slice, and ask for another. There was something about it!! The boy lapped it up … it was his on request after all!!This is a pie right for fall. The filling … silky, smooth and spicy! The crust just right, not too crisp, yet offers a handsome bite, gently teasing the palette with beautiful pistachio flavours and a pleasing texture. I wish I could offer you a slice…it was that good, and it went FAST!
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And since I had so much extra time, I shot some pictures of out CUTE Coco … she was ‘all eyes’!! Oh to have those extra two hours more often!
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Also find me on The Rabid Baker, The Times of India
