Perfect Pumpkin Pie

Originally from Cook's Illustrated, I tweaked this by eliminating the step where they had you heat the canned pumpkin in a saucepan for a while to get rid of that "canned taste." Never could tell the difference so why do it?

It seems to me that this pie always takes longer to bake than the directions say (but I don't have my notes here at the moment) so if it does just keep on going until it matches the description they give.

Step 1:
2 cups (16 ounces) pumpkin puree
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup heavy cream
2/3 cup milk
4 large eggs
Mix all filling ingredients and pour into pie shell. (Ladle any excess filling into pie after it has baked for 5 minutes or so — filling will have settled.)

Step 2:
Unbaked 9” pie shell, brushed with beaten egg white and let sit in fridge until dry (approximately 30 minutes ... this helps keep it crisp later ... skip the egg white if you don't care about that)
Bake at 400° until filling is puffed, dry-looking, and lightly cracked around edges and center wiggles like gelatin when pie is gently shaken, about 25 minutes. Cool on a wire rack for at least 1 hour.

Thanksgiving Outside the U.S., Part II

Part of the challenge for Americans living abroad is explaining to your new neighbors the historical significance of thanksgiving and why, exactly, we commemorate this secular holiday by gorging ourselves and watching football. My first year in London, a British colleague asked me if Americans sat around on Thanksgiving making fun of the British for having lost that particular patch of empire. I didn't have the heart to tell her that, outside of Austin powers movies, Americans spend very little time thinking about the British, period.

James Ledbetter for Chow magazine, Holiday 2004 issue

Top 10 Things that Sound Dirty at Thanksgiving But Aren't

Shamelessly stolen from Jules.

10. "Talk about a huge breast!"

9. "It's a little dry, do you still want to eat it?"

8. "Don't play with your meat."

7. "Just spread the legs open & stuff it in."

6. "I didn't expect everyone to come at once!"

5. "You still have a little bit on your chin."

4. "How long will it take after you stick it in?"

3. "You'll know it's ready when it pops up."

2. "That's the biggest one I've ever seen!"

1. "How long do I beat it before it's ready?"

Blog Name Change

Glad Gastronome was a clever name and we all had fun coming up with it (thanks again Penni and Rose!) but over time it just wasn't me. This blog really is where I just step out from Happy Catholic to mess around in the kitchen a bit every so often ... so we'll see how this name does.

Parenting and Pancakes

Whenever I'm trying to be Nice Mummy, rather than normal Bad-tempered Impatient Mummy, I make pancakes. Unfortunately, it can often be counter-productive, but the sad truth about parenting is that it's virtually impossible to learn from your mistakes. The whole business is a Dantesque punishment: you're trapped in the cycle, knowing what you're doing, but seemingly unable to stop.

Feast by Nigella Lawson

Really, we're so much alike that we might as well be twins (except for the cooking show, British citizenship, and a few other little details like those). That Bad Mummy description would sound awfully familiar to my kids. Although I have not found the cycle to be so unbreakable as all that.

For a fantastically easy pancakes recipe as well as numerous variations, go here.

Wine Tumblers? What's Up With That?

Riedel makes wonderful wine glasses. I have a set and just love them. But wine tumblers? I though the whole point of wine glasses was to hold the glass by the stem so you wouldn't heat up the wine with your hot little hands all over the glass. They must be the latest thing though since a version by a different manufacturer is being given away by Central Market as their holiday coupon item.

You can see all the different versions of Riedel's wine tumblersat Amazon.

This is a Terror I Share

...I think it tends to be the case that vegetarian food takes more time, more effort than most meat heavy feasts. It's even more a labor of love if what you want to do is make someone who doesn't eat meat feel comfortable at the table. This is always a difficult area for me. I wouldn't want to be rude, and the idea of inviting someone who doesn't eat meat for dinner and then having the table heaving with flesh, except for some specially wrought, individual portion of some veggie-pleaser, however delightful, does make me uncomfortable. I do understand that squeamishness, moral and visceral, of those who abhor eating meat would be hard to overcome.

Indeed, I live in terror of being infected with it. There is a Graham Greene play, The Potting Shed, which tells the angst-ridden story of the impact on a devoutly atheistic family when one of their number has a religious vision, smartly followed by a stunned conversion, in the potting shed of the title. The fear and tension of the family whose scornful disbelief is so suddenly shot to pieces resound particularly with me, for I have a concomitant fear. One day something terrible, so ideologically unforeseen, could happen to me: one day I could wake up and find myself vegetarian.

Feast by Nigella Lawson

And then to have to eat veggie burgers at summer barbecues? That is indeed a terrible vision.

Taste

A few things of interest from the Dallas Morning News food section.

A simple sauce for broccoli
What a no-brainer and I can't believe I never thought of doing it before. But I will be very soon in the future ... as soon as I buy some broccoli!

All about dark chocolate
Mmmmmm ... dark chocolate. The very best kind of chocolate.

Coming soon to a store near you
Dark Cherry Vanilla Coke is coming in January. Coca Cola dropped plain Vanilla Coke and also Diet Lemon Coke.

Dump cake recipes
This is the sort of cooking that makes my parents blanch but makes me secretly curious. I have a perverse attraction for recipes that dump things or combine mixes, etc.

Thanksgiving Outside the U.S., Part 1

Vicki Lopow and Kate Menken wanted a kosher Thanksgiving in Kenya. They procured a wild turkey from the wildlife region aound Lake Naivasha, and then had it shechted (killed in a kosher way) by a kosher expert visiting the Israeli embassy. They knew stuffing would be a challenge in a country that has no native bread (the closest substitute is ugali, a kind of porridge), but Menken found a baguette in a store catering to expats. The biggest stretch was the "cranberry sauce" made out of local tree tomatoes, a variant of the potato family that produces a red oval-shaped, sharp-tasting fruit -- "kind of tart like cranberries are, so I made preserves out of them," says Menken (who now lives in Manhattan, well within Ocean Spray territory). "It tasted good but was definitely not cranberry sauce." The real score came through a connection at the U.S. embassy; Lopow managed to secure Pepperidge Farm herb-flavor seasoning through the diplomatic pouch.

James Ledbetter for Chow magazine, Holiday 2004 issue

I'm getting in the spirit early so thought I'd take y'all along for the ride!

Hot Links Comin' Up

THE CHEESEBURGER BILL

The House of Representatives has passed a bill that would prevent people from blaming food companies and restaurants for their weight problems.

Read the whole story. It's about time people started taking responsibility for their own actions. What a crying shame that the culture of blaming others has gone so far we have to have legislation for it. Via Minivan Mom.

COMPARING APPLES TO APPLES
Accidental Hedonist decides to compare the prices at Whole Foods, Krogers and Safeway using her own list and money. See what she found.

NO THANKS, I'M NOT HUNGRY

Recipe for chili using a blowtorch.

Grilled cheese sandwich made with a steam iron.

Prison wine made in a toilet.

Find out how to do this and much, much more at Miss Cellania.

FIVE WORST FOODS
Robert Duncan gives us Dr. Joseph Mercola's list of the five worst foods you can eat. What are they? There aren't really any surprises but Homer Simpson really isn't going to like what got ranked number one on the list. Get the whole scoop over at his place.

CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES
Get it right here.

Thanksgiving: the Meta-Feast

At their heart, Christmas and Thanksgiving share some central purpose: to bring the family together round food, to celebrate being together. In both feasts,the majestic, and much-maligned, turkey rules the roost. But Thanksgiving is different in one crucial, and for me exciting, respect. There is something magnificent in the idea of what the great French structuralists might have dubbed a meta-feast: that's to say, fancy epithets aside, an occasion when the very purpose of the feast is to celebrate the feasting. Thanksgiving really is about the food itself. Most crucially, it is about American food, a glorification of the luck of living in a world of plenty.

Feast by Nigella Lawson