American Classics IX: Pumpkin Pie - Recap

Long time viewers of Good Eats understand that when Alton appears in front of a large American flag, he'll be hosting another American Classics episode. These episodes try to remind America how to rescue American cuisine from sinking into mediocrity, by coaxing cooks to their patriotic duty towards these classic savories and sweets. Indeed, from behind the flag we hear the inconsolable sobbing of... Thomas Jefferson, so distraught at what has become of American classic cuisine that he has lost self-control!

Ben Franklin assures Alton that Jefferson will be right soon enough, so Alton enlists the statesman/inventor's help with his drum of chance. In this brassy device Alton has stashed cards bearing the names of American classics Alton feels have been mistreated by modern cooks. Franklin gives the handle a few turns and then Alton opens the drum and fishes out a card bearing the name of the American classic he'll rehabilitate next: pumpkin pie. Redemption comes in the form of the most American of desserts. Jefferson asks whether that designation properly applies to apple pie, and Alton says no: apples are originally from Kazakhstan, while pumpkins are one hundred percent North American!

The problem with pumpkin pie is short cuts: ninety nine percent of pumpkin pies start out as – a can of pumpkin pie filling (and cans, as Alton has taught previously, originated in France!) But with a little work, cooks can avoid the can on their way to... Good Eats!

Pumpkin comes from the English pompion, in turn from the French pompon and before that the original Greek word pepon, meaning large melon. Pumpkins, squash and melons are all members of the cucurbit family; they are all fruits. All start as flowers, and grow into seed packets encased in flesh. Highly nutritious, the pumpkin's meaty flesh and tough skin give it a long shelf life, making it a valuable winter staple before the advent of refrigeration. Once natives taught settlers how to grow pumpkins, Governor Bradford of the Plymouth Colony ordered the settlers to grow them to avert starvation. Early settlers even wrote verses in praise of the vegetable.

There is quite a variety of pumpkins, but most are not worth eating. The advent of refrigeration relegated the pumpkin to a more decorative role: accessory for a headless horseman, transportation until midnight, and “domestic confinement” - here Alton removes a section from a particularly large specimen to reveal someone inside it. Indeed, many pumpkins are grown not for flavor but for their ability to stand up to knife, saw and candle for a single night in late October – but that's another show.

For those seeking flavor, Alton descends to his basement. There he offers three from a few dozen choices of baking pumpkins. The first of these is the Dickinson, which is the sort most often found reduced to puree in the canned vegetable aisle of the food store. Canning, Alton opines, is not kind to the Dickinson, and the vegetable's large size (each is about the size of a beach ball) makes it unwieldy for home use. A second choice is the Jarrahdale, which has a pale green rind but bright orange flesh with a melon aroma. From New Zealand, these can be very difficult to find. That leads Alton to his third choice, the Sugar “Pie” pumpkin. It is smaller, has a more traditional orange rind, and has smooth flesh that contains a lot of sugar.

And if you can't find any of these? Alton suggests in that case avoiding the jack o' lantern sort of pumpkin in favor of butternut squash. It has a similar texture and almost identical flavor, is sized well for home kitchen recipes, and is easily found. Stored between 50° F and 60° F at around 70% humidity, pumpkins last for as long as three months.

Back upstairs, Alton explains that early colonists typically had a single heat source: the hearth. They hung pots over this fire or buried them in dying embers or set them in front of the fire. In that milieu, a traditional pie with a crust is about impossible. But given that early pie crusts were more about containment and delivery, they often weren't intended to be edible. And sometimes the rind of the vegetable itself served as the containment and delivery mechanism: early colonists simply filled the pumpkin and set it in front of the fire to cook.

Alton could make a kind of proto-pie by hollowing out a Sugar Pie pumpkin and then filling it with cream, eggs, spices and honey (which actually sounds delicious to him), but opts instead for a savory approach.

Noting that pumpkins grow in dirt, his first step is to clean the rind with water and a scratchy sponge. Next, he sets an oven to preheat. To open the top, he considers and discards a few knives before deciding on a wallboard saw, available at any home center. This triangular, stiff blade designed for piercing and cutting wallboard works well for certain cooking applications, including pumpkin preparation. Orienting the saw at about a forty five degree angle and with the teeth facing him, Alton drives it through the rind and begins sawing as he turns the pumpkin with the other hand. In a few minutes he has a replaceable top in one hand and a pumpkin in the other. To remove the seeds and strings, Alton turns to an old-fashioned ice cream spade. Although Alton disfavors this tool for its intended use of serving ice cream, it works well as a “guts remover”.

The pumpkin cleaned, Alton drizzles some oil into a casserole sized to hold it, and brushes some of that oil on the rind itself to help with heat conduction. Then he turns to the filling. That's a mixture of unsalted butter, diced onion, minced garlic, Braeburn apple (peeled, cored and diced), kosher salt, low-sodium chicken broth and cream (ideally of the heavy sort). Ingredients added, he replaces the pumpkin's top and slides it into the oven to bake for an hour and a half. The flesh can transfer a good bit of heat to the contained ingredients without losing structural stability.

The pumpkin is an edible cooking vessel that also brings a lot of nutrition to whatever is made with it. To learn more, Alton visits the chill chest looking for the Lady of the Refrigerator – but she is not there. This time, a very large pumpkin appears in the middle of the kitchen, and there Alton finds the Lady. It seems that she goes wherever there is nutrition. Inside the pumpkin is vegetable protein, fiber, calcium, potassium, and carotene compounds (alpha and beta), which the small intestine converts into Vitamin A. Vitamin A keeps the skin and mucous membranes healthy, is a strong anti-oxidant and is known as a wrinkle-fighter. It is also vital to good vision, especially good night vision. But too much of a good thing can be bad: it IS possible to overdose on Vitamin A. Indeed, a single polar bear liver contains a more than lethal dose of the chemical, perhaps explaining the lack of polar bear liver for sale at the supermarket...

Back at the oven, it's time for Alton to add more software to his pumpkin. Removing the lid, he adds goat cheese and thyme leaves, then slides the pumpkin (without its lid) back into the oven for another half hour. To serve this Alton scrapes some of the softened inner flesh into the liquid, and then visits the mixture with his stick blender until it has the consistency he wants. He offers this to the founding fathers, and two of them are pleased. But Jefferson is not, declaring that the dish is “not pumpkin pie”. True, it's not what most of us think of as pie, but it is probably as close as the early colonists got. To make the kind of pie modern America would recognize, Alton will need some pumpkin purée, which he most assuredly will not get from a can!

Alton starts an oven preheating, this time to 400° F. Pumpkin puree is tasty, versatile, easy to make and tolerates freezing well, so he sees no reason not to keep some on hand all the time. Starting with a medium sized baking pumpkin, Alton twists off the handle and then must split the vegetable. There are a lot of ways to do that, but he chooses... well, for that, he brings in a guest.

Alton's “Effects Guy” moonlights on other jobs when Good Eats is not in production, and his most recent outside job was a horror film called Bloody Arbor Day. The finale pits a rabid, ax-wielding lumberjack against a lunch lady armed with a cleaver! She was to use the cleaver to split open the rabid lumberjack's skull, and then all this... here, a slightly queasy looking Alton interrupts. He wants to know what kind of cleavers they tried. Effects Guy first produces a thin-bladed Asian cleaver, but this is meant for multiple vegetable cutting, as when preparing stir-fry. It's not the right choice for this heavy job. Next up is a classic meat cleaver, with a heavy blade at about a twenty-two degree angle, and the back wider than the blade. It has a hole so that it can be stored, since it is too thick for a block and too heavy for a magnetic mount. Now THIS is more like... suddenly, Effects Guy goes to town on Alton's pumpkin with the cleaver, making short work of it! Pity. Alton was going to eat that.
Alton has a subtler approach. With a wooden mallet, he taps the cleaver through the tough top of the pumpkin; once past there it slides easily the rest of the way in, neatly halving the vegetable. Of course, the pumpkin lacks the red paint and squid meat that Effects Guy would put in for... on that note, Alton bids his guest good night.

Once again with the ice cream spade, Alton removes the interior strings and seeds, then dusts the flesh with kosher salt, which will help pull moisture out. He lays the halves cut sides down on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper and roasts them for 30 – 45 minutes, or until a sharp paring knife easily pierces the flesh. He lets that rest for an hour (to avoid burning himself) and then uses the ice cream spade to remove the flesh to the bowl of his food processor. He lets the food processor work on that until it is puréed. In the refrigerator, this will keep for a week. Bagged and frozen, it lasts for six months. Or, he could use some right now...

Setting the oven to 350° F, Alton lets it heat while he works on the crust. To make that he puts ginger snap cookies, brown sugar and ginger (the root) into a food processor. Once the processor has reduced that mixture to crumbs he pulses it while he drizzles in an ounce of melted butter. He pours this mealy mixture into a glass pie pan and spreads it with his fingers, then uses a metal pie pan and gentle pressure to form a crust shape. That goes into the oven, centered on a sheet pan and blind bakes for ten minutes. (Blind baking is cooking a pie crust empty.)

To make the filling, Alton brings pumpkin puree to a simmer, then cooks it for a few minutes until it slightly thickens. He works in half and half, a little kosher salt and freshly grated nutmeg, bringing it back to a simmer before cutting the heat and letting the mix cool for ten minutes. While it cools he whisks together eggs and egg yolk with dark brown sugar until the mixture is very smooth. Whisking continuously, he slowly incorporates the rest of the filling (the temperature should be down to around 140° F). He transfers that mixture to a large cup with a spout, then carefully slides the pie crust out of the oven and pours in the filling until it is near but not at the top of the crust. Then he slowly slides the pie back in to bake for 45 – 60 minutes until the center is just “jiggly”. He has some filling left over but resists the temptation to overfill the shell. The proper temperature when the pie is done is about 195° F in the center and about 205° F near the edges.

Alton lets his pie cool for three hours before he does anything with it. Cooled, it may be refrigerated or topped (Alton's choice is a few blobs of whipped cream), or served.

Another way to prepare this dessert is as smaller, individual pies. In this case the crust blind bakes for five minutes and the filling for 25 minutes. For smaller pies, Alton sprinkles the tops with brown sugar before using a common soldering torch (of the sort a plumber would use) to caramelize that and create a brûlée. That must set a few minutes before serving.

The Founding Fathers rush in eagerly to sample this new pumpkin pie, made easily without relying on canned goods, which are a clearly a French plot! As for other pumpkin puree applications... those will have to wait for another show.

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