About a week ago, I decided that this year I would quite like to have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with some friends from work. Thanksgiving isn't until Thursday 22nd November this year, but I've already gotten going on the sort of food we would have to churn out for this kind of occasion.
Besides the obvious turkey and stuffing, mash and so on; dessert seems to feature quite heavily in this sort of dinner. One dessert which is observed at every traditional Thanksgiving is pumpkin pie: a delicacy of pastry, pumpkin, cream and nutmeg. So with this in mind, when we last ordered a Tesco delivery a couple of days ago, I added a rather large pumpkin to my list.
Pumpkin is not a vegetable I cook with often. The last time I bought it was my second year of university, and my only aim at the time was to carve it up for Halloween. I do remember it being a major pain to cut into, remove the seeds and cartilage and then eventually get it to look like I've carved anything cool into it.
This happened once again today. I decided to take a break from marking lab scripts to empty out the pumpkin and carve a few designs into it (which would remove enough of the pumpkin for me to eventually cook with). Well, my pumpkin design isn't going to win any prizes. It was intended to look like this:
but ended up looking like this:
Maybe I was too distracted by Will&Grace on TV. But given my lack of artistic skills, I don't think it was too bad an attempt. Regardless, after chopping out a large section of the back of the pumpkin, I had enough to start baking a savoury pumpkin pie - a recipe that I pretty much made up due to my lack of preference for sweets.
So, here's the recipe I concocted:
Besides the obvious turkey and stuffing, mash and so on; dessert seems to feature quite heavily in this sort of dinner. One dessert which is observed at every traditional Thanksgiving is pumpkin pie: a delicacy of pastry, pumpkin, cream and nutmeg. So with this in mind, when we last ordered a Tesco delivery a couple of days ago, I added a rather large pumpkin to my list.
Pumpkin is not a vegetable I cook with often. The last time I bought it was my second year of university, and my only aim at the time was to carve it up for Halloween. I do remember it being a major pain to cut into, remove the seeds and cartilage and then eventually get it to look like I've carved anything cool into it.
This happened once again today. I decided to take a break from marking lab scripts to empty out the pumpkin and carve a few designs into it (which would remove enough of the pumpkin for me to eventually cook with). Well, my pumpkin design isn't going to win any prizes. It was intended to look like this:
but ended up looking like this:
 |
| hmmm...maybe next time I'll use a proper template |
Maybe I was too distracted by Will&Grace on TV. But given my lack of artistic skills, I don't think it was too bad an attempt. Regardless, after chopping out a large section of the back of the pumpkin, I had enough to start baking a savoury pumpkin pie - a recipe that I pretty much made up due to my lack of preference for sweets.
So, here's the recipe I concocted:
Ingredients:
Shortcrust pastry:
- 175g flour
- 85g butter
- 5 tbsp cold water
- flourish of salt
Filling:
- 1/4 large pumpkin
- 1 large carrot
- 1 large sweet potato
- 1 large onion
- 1 chicken stock cube
- 20ml single cream
- 1 tsp wholegrain mustard
- flourish of cayenne pepper
- flourish of paprika
- seasoning
The recipe itself was very simple. I made the pastry by bunging all the pastry ingredients into my Kenwood mixer - job done!! I then stuck the pastry in the fridge in clingfilm for half an hour to rest.
I chopped all the vegetables except the onion, and roasted them in the oven on a medium heat for an hour with the chicken stock cube and mixed herbs. In the meantime, I chopped the onion and lightly fried it. When done with the oven, I mixed all the veggies with the rest of the ingredients. Next I rolled out my pastry and put it in a dish, followed by the filling and more pastry on top. Voila!! After baking in a pre-heated oven for 45 minutes it was done....and it came delicious!!!!
Sadly, there's no photo of the pie because my kitchen is too dark and I'm more concerned with going to buy a bottle of wine now...
So, today's lesson. If you're an awesome cook like me....make up some awesome recipes. Otherwise, read awesome cook's blogs and copy their recipes :D
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