“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 luxuries of 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!
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. {Filling from Eagle - www.eaglebrand.com/recipes/details/?RecipeId=3929&CategoryIndex=11}
Ingredients
600gm pumpkin with peel
2tsp pumpkin pie spice
50gm powdered sugar
100gm unsalted butter, chilled, cubed
150gm cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp sugar
50gm pistachios
1/2 teaspoon salt
2-3 tbsp cold water
440gm roasted pumpkin puree {recipe above}
1 can condensed milk
2 large eggs
1/2 vanilla bean scraped
1/2 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Remove seeds etc of pumpkin {I used a long slice}, wrap in foil and bake at 180C for about 45 minutes.
- Once warm enough to handle, peel and chop the roasted pumpkin, add pie spice and sugar and puree. I find that the pie spice gets an enhanced flavour in warm puree and matures well.
- Yields about 425-440gms of pumpkin puree {approximately 1 15oz can}
- Blend flour, pistachios, sugar and salt in processor till nuts are ground very fine, {Thermomix: Speed 8, 7 seconds}
- Add butter and blend until you get breadcrumb like mix, and then a little more {2-3 seconds}. Add water, 1 tbsp at a time, and process till the dough begins to hold together when you pinch it. {Thermomix Speed 6, 5 seconds}
- Turn onto work surface and pat together gently into a ball {donot overwork dough}
- Either roll between 2 sheets of baking parchment to line the pie tin, or push into place with your fingertips. Chill for about 30 minutes.
- Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for 15 minutes. Cool. {I baked mine in the last 15 minutes while the pumpkin was roasting}
- Preheat oven to 190C. Whisk pumpkin, sweetened condensed milk, eggs, spices and salt in medium bowl until smooth. Pour into crust. Bake 15 minutes.
- Reduce oven temperature to 180C and continue baking 35 to 40 minutes or until knife inserted 1 inch from crust comes out clean. Cool. Garnish as desired. Store leftovers covered in refrigerator.
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
