My dinner atPer Se ended with a tour of the kitchen, which was huge thrill for me. Now you can experience the tour – only better – with Thomas Keller himself as your guide. This video includes all of the back-room operations we didn’t get to see during a busy service.
A few things to note:
The bread is baked for each seating (5:30, 8:00, and 10:00) during service.
The room dedicated to chocolates is for non-menu items. A few may wind up on a dessert, but most of the chocolate is offered to guests after the dinner menu is completed.
I would not want to be the chef at the receiving end of Keller’s “evil eye.”
Until my recent birthdaydinner, I used to tell people that the best birthday present I ever received from She Who Must Be Obeyed was a house. We signed the closing papers on November 28, 1995 – my birthday – but we didn’t move in until the following weekend, which corresponds to this weekend.
On move-in day, I walked down the stairs to the basement, and noticed a flash of light coming from above one of the massive beams that forms the joist structure of the ground floor. I reached up to find the object, and there, buried under a thick layer of dust, was this bottle:
The cork in the bottle disintegrated as soon as I tried to remove it. Part of the label has flaked away, but it identifies the contents as a pint of Old Charmer Whiskey. There’s no date, so I assume it twas manufactured before Prohibition began in 1919 (the house was built in 1897). I have been unable to find any information about the Swallow & Fales Company of City Square, Charlestown, Massachusetts.
How did the bottle get there? When we moved in, the furnace was an original coal-burning model that had been retrofitted with an oil burner and insulating jacket (asbestos, so much to remove and dispose of). What is now a small window above the foundation line used to be the delivery hatch for the coal chute. I suspect the man of the house had to feed the furnace, and took the opportunity to fortify himself with a nip from his private stash – for medicinal purposes only.
Which only leaves the question: How did he forget about a half-full bottle?
It’s not enough that my friend Michael Goudeau is a juggler, writer, and radio host. He had to up the ante in the kitchen by making cool pancakes for his kids. His new blog, The Pancake Project, documents his breakfast creations. No Batter Blaster for him, all of his work is free-form, done with nothing more than timing and a spoon. “The Scream,” above, is a single pancake with nothing drawn on it.
Check out this pancake breakfast:
I am in awe. I just hope He Who Will Not Be Ignored never sees these photos, or I’m doomed. But that shouldn’t stop you from enjoying Michael’s journey into pancake madness.
After eating heavenly amuses, appetizers, and fish courses, we were only halfway through our meal, which continued with the meat courses.
“BLT”: Salmon Creek Farms’ All Day Braised Pork Belly, “Pain de Campagne” Melba, Violet Artichokes, San Marzano Tomato Marmalade and Watercress Puree with “Sauce Perigourdine”
Francesco Rinaldi, “Le Brunnate,” Barolo 2004
I’ve eaten a lot of braised pork belly, but this was the best by far. Crispy on the outside, meltingly tender within, with just the right amount of saltiness. The triangle leaning in on the right is a slice of “toast” – more like a papadum in texture – and it’s covering a tomato marmalade. It took a bit of cutlery juggling, but I managed to get a bit of pork, tomato, lettuce, and toast all in one bite, and wouldn’t you know it, it tasted just like a BLT. A BLT infused with rainbows and crack, to be precise.
When our waiter asked if we liked the dish, I praised the pork belly. I figured his reply of “I’ll be sure to tell the chef” was him being being polite. Little did I know…
As our plates were being cleared I overheard Mr. Programmer at the next table say “Too much food. Could we swap the rest of the menu with another bowl of the risotto?” A little more than halfway through and he was bowing out, but not without trying to scam seconds of the most expensive dish on the menu. I wanted to tell him “Pack the rest up for your dog (see here for the dog story), I’ll bet he’ll enjoy it more than you,” but civility held my tongue. I merely muttered “lightweight” under my breath.
Elysian Fields Farm’s “Selle d’Agneau Rôtie Entière”: Black Trumpet Mushroms, Eclat Onions, Melted Savoy Cabbage and Parsley Root Cream with Lamb Jus
I had to dig into my menu French to translate the name as “whole roast saddle of lamb.” The lamb was cooked sous vide and then briefly seared on the outside to brown it, a technique that produces meat that is the same perfect medium rare all the way to the edges. This was lamb with all the traditional fall vegetable accompaniments, refined to express each taste perfectly.
While I was away from the table, She Who Must Be Obeyed took a photo of the dish and was texting when our waiter came by. She apologized for being rude, but explained that she was sending the photo to a chef friend. On hearing that, he asked if we’d like to see the kitchen after our meal. It’s a good thing the meal was starting to wind down, because by this point I was about to jump out of my skin.
Consider Bardwell Farm’s “Manchester”: Espelette “Pain Perdu,” Persian Cucumbers and Bowtie Arugula with White Wine Poached Flowering Quince
The cheese course: two slices of nutty farmhouse cheddar draped over a peppery slab of sauce-infused brioche (I think, it was the only thing I ate that I couldn’t fully identify). A lovely transition from the savory courses to the sweets to come.
A nice palate cleanser that continued the trend of contrasting sweet with pepper. I’ve never tasted a silkier sorbet.
Although we both made the same choice at the top of the menu, we chose different desserts to end our meal.
Pumpkin-Chocolate: Mast Brothers’ Chocolate “Marquise,” Pumpkin “Bavaois” and Hazelnut Marshmallow with Spiced Ice Cream
The top left corner is brighter, that’s where my birthday candle was set. I had somehow managed to get through an entire Thanksgiving day without having pumpkin pie with ice cream and whipped cream. This dessert was the distilled essence of that holiday excess.
Pear and Caramel: Madagascar Vanilla-Poached Bartlet Pear, Caramel Mousse and Pear “Pâte de Fruit” with “Glace au Beurre Noisette”
A perfectly poached pear, a pear jelly, and browned butter ice cream. Taken together they evoked a rustic pear tart.
Our meal wasn’t quite over. We were offered a selection of hand-dipped chocolates, of which the pink peppercorn in white chocolate was the best and most surprising taste. That was followed by a selection of and-made caramels, pistachio nougat, and pulled sugar candy. By the time the check arrived with a plate of truffles, we couldn’t eat another bite.
But we couldn’t leave yet. Our water escorted us through a entrance behind our table that led to the kitchen. I was troo gobsmacked to take a photo, but I found this one:
Imagine this room filled with cooks, at least one at each station. Our waiter explained that the progression of courses was prepared in a clockwise direction, starting with the appetizers on the left and ending with desserts at the far right. All dishes were brought to the pass in the center, where they were checked and garnished before being sent to the tables.
Fifteen cooks, waiters drifting in and out, and I didn’t have to raise my voice to be heard. This was the most intense, precise cooking operation I’ve seen. Actually, it was one of two: mounted on a wall to one side was a flat-panel screen with a live satellite feed of the kitchen at The French Laundry. It was a mirror image of the one I stood in, all the way down to the five stars on the ventilation hood and the definition of “finesse” etched over the entrance.
While it might seem that I’ve used the word “perfect” to describe many of the dishes we ate, I am confident that it is appropriate. The amount of thought and care that went into each dish was unlike anything I had experienced before. Thomas Keller sums it up best:
When you acknowledge as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear; to make people happy. That’s what cooking is all about.
For my 50th birthday present, She Who Must Be Obeyed moved heaven and earth to obtain a reservation for two at Per Se, the New York City sister restaurant of Thoma Keller’s The French Laundry. I don’t know how she did it, but it had something to do with waiting patiently by the phone for the reservation line to open up, not unlike a cheetah stalking a wounded gazelle. Our reservation was for the first seating on Friday night, so the trip began with a train to Grand Central, a cab to the Time Warner Center, and an escalator to the fourth floor.
We were escorted into the empty dining room, which filled up quickly after we were seated. I didn’t take this photo, but our table was on the right.
Before our meal began, we were presented with unanticipated light entertainment: The gentleman at the table next to us (a programmer – I recognize my own kind) didn’t know how to use his indoor voice very well. He told his waiter “You have no idea what we had to go through to get a reservation.” He then produced an envelope containing a card and some photos, handed it to the water, and asked “Is Thomas Keller working tonight?”
I already knew the answer to that question: No. The chef de cuisine at Per Se is Jonathan Benno. The gracious (and soon to be very patient) waiter explained: “Chef Keller is always working. He’s in town for the week, but he’s not cooking.”
Mr. Programer gestured at the card, which the waiter opened. He looked at the photos, then asked “This is a dog, yes?”
“Yup. That’s our dog. We named it Thomas Keller. We sent the photos to the French Laundry, and that’s how we got the reservation here. We came all the way out from Santa Barbara.”
After a bit more polite chat, the waiter drifted away. I leaned over and said “I couldn’t help but overhear. You named your dog after Thomas Keller so you could get a reservation?”
“Yup. How did you get yours?”
“With a telephone call.” Running through my head at this point was Laurence Olivier’s advice to Dustin Hoffman: “Try acting, dear boy.” If I had to guess, the booker at The French Laundry sent this couple to New York to get them as far away from Keller as possible.
We were presented with personalized menus (top photo) for a chef’s tasting, an offal tasting, and a tasting of vegetables. Although the offal tasting was tempting, we both chose the chef’s tasting. We didn’t request a wine pairing, but asked the sommelier to choose a few half bottles to accompany the meal. It’s not to often I hear “I’ll recommend a champagne to start, which will work well through the caviar course.”
“Cornets”: Salmon Tartare with Sweet Red Onion Crème Fraiche
I was so happy to see this, the little amuse that put Keller on the culinary map. You’re unaware of the crème fraiche until you bite into the cone; it’s the filling that holds up the salmon tartare. It was playful, precise, and flavorful – two little bites that set the tone of the entire meal.
Gruyère Cheese Gougères
I was thinking “Oh yeah, the gougères, I’ve made these.” (They would be the only thing on the menu I had come close to replicating.) Mine were the size of golf balls, these puffs were an inch in diameter. And when I took a bite a realized that they had been injected with warm gruyère. I’ll remember that trick.
“Oysters and Pearls”: “Sabayon” of Pearl Tapioca with Island Creek Oysters and Sterling White Sturgeon Caviar
You can see the oysters and the caviar, the tapoica pearls are hiding under a perfect chive butter sauce. The dish plays with three textures that should be similar but are not. The poached oysters melted in my mouth, the tapioca had a slight bit of al dente bite, and the caviar popped open with a warm, salty gush of brininess. We both wanted more, which would be a constant throughout the rest of the meal: three perfect bites, and on to the next perfect dish.
(I thought my eyesight was failing me when the room dimmed after the previous course, but it was the staff turning down the house lights. The rest of the photos were taken under low-light conditions and color corrected. Yes, I turned off the flash and the sound in my camera. I’m not that rude.)
She Who Must Be Obeyed loved the anarchy “A” on top of her slab of foie gras. I’m used to a sweet fruit pared with foie, but I’ve never had apple, which was an ideal fall complement. We spread the stuff on thick slices of toasted brioche, making open-faced foie and jelly sandwiches, with huge smiles on our faces as we remembered childhood days in the kitchen. Halfway through the course, a server offered to replace the remaining broiche with new warm slices. Now that’s service.
This course was one of two on the menu which presented us with a choice. We could have had a hearts of palm salad or a carnaroli risotto with shaved white Alba truffles ($130 extra), but we chose the foie ($30 extra), knowing that the $260 spent on risotto could buy us a truffle of our own.
Crispy Skin Fillet of Pacific Sea Bream: Pickled Ajà Dulce Peppers, Holland Eggplant and Cilantro Shoots with Meyer Lemon-Niçoise Olive Puree
Yves Cuilleron, “Les Chaillets,” Condrieu 2007
A perfectly cooked piece of fish with crispy skin, set against traditional accompaniments of olive and lemon presented in a novel fashion, with a surprise bite of heat from the peppers. Everything you love about Mediterranean fish preparations in a single dish.
Butter Poached Nova Scotia Lobster Mitts: Buckwheat Streusel, Peanut Potatoes, Celery Branch and Field Mizuna with Smoked Egg Emulsion
Apparently “lobster mitts” are lobster claws from which the pinchy bits have been removed, and “peanut potatoes” are potatoes that have been turned to the size of peanuts.) I was having difficulty figuring out how peanuts could be integrated into this dish.) Yet another play on traditional preparations – lobster with celery and potatoes – these perfectly poached claws are made extraordinary by the smoky egg emulsion. I’ll be stealing that trick as well.
We’re at the halfway point on the meal, which I’ll continue with in the next post. Stay tuned, learn about how we got to see the kitchen, and more!
I thought that my Macquarium was the finest example of what could be done with a Macintosh that had reached the end of its useful life. Then I saw the iTerrarium constructed by Paul Riddell of the Texas Triffid Ranch, and knew that I had another example to add to my collection. When Paul announced that it was for sale, I snapped it up before anyone else could grab it.
The box arrived last week, and, after some careful unpacking and assembly, I am now the proud owner of a Nepenthes alata, a small Asian pitcher plant native to the Philippines. When the plant has established itself in my new home, it will develop pitchers in a complimentary color to the case.
Paul did an exceptional job excavating the Apple guts from the case, and converted the handle on top into a removable access hatch. The green-cored glass beads you can see near the front glow in the dark!
Given that the plant is carnivorous, I thought it needed one more decoration: a victim.
I knew that one day I’d have a use for the Intel Inside figure. I like that it looks like it’s cowering away from the plant.
When life gives you guanciale, make fettuccine alla carbonara. Not the Olive Garden crap with cream and bacon, but the real stuff made with egg and home-cured pork. Since I had just retrieved a slab of piggy goodness from the Salumeria della Belm, I thought I’d attempt a true carbonara.
Working from the recipe in Mario Batali’s Molto Italiano cookbook, I started with three eggs, 3/4 pound of pasta, six ounces of diced guanciale, and 3/4 cup of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.
I brought six quarts of salted water to a boil. While I waited, I rendered the guanciale in some olive oil over medium heat until it was crispy. I moved the pan off the heat, leaving the fat.
I cooked the fettuccine until just al dente, reserved 1/4 cup of the cooking water, drained the pasta, and added it to the pan of guanciale. I tossed the pasta over medium heat for about a minute.
I beat the eggs, then added the reserved cooking water to temper them. This would prevent the eggs from curdling when added to the pasta.
I removed the pan from the heat and added most of the grated cheese and some black pepper.
Finally, I added the beaten eggs, stirring constantly to combine without having the eggs scramble.
I plated the pasta, leaving a depression in the center. I warmed up the three extra slow-poached eggs I had left from the Chicken and Egg dinner and nestled them into the bowls. A few more grinds of black pepper, the rest of the cheese, and it was time to eat.
I’ll confess now that I had never eaten carbonara before. When I had seen it served, it looked like glorified alfredo with bacon and hard-boiled eggs – an unappetizing, gluey mess. I’m glad I held out, because this was one of the best pasta dishes I have ever cooked. The sauce wasn’t too heavy, the pasta was perfectly cooked, and the guanciale was an amazing blend of sweet and salty, with just a hint of the thyme in the background.
The poached egg might have been a bit over the top, but I was improvising on Batali’s serving method, which calls for adding just the egg whites with the pasta and placing the yolk on top of the finished dish, to be mixed in just before eating. I’m coming around to the viewpoint that just as there can’t be too much bacon, there can’t be enough egg.
I found two hog jowls in the Belm Research Kitchen Deep Storage Facility. Guess what’s next?
What was next was making guanciale, which is done by salt-curing and drying the meat from a hog’s jowls. It’s a simple process that requires little in the way of ingredients, but much in the way of time.
The recipe I used is from Mario Batali’s Molto Italiano cookbook, which in turn is the recipe he uses at his Babbo restaurant. I started with one large hog jowl, 1/2 cup each of sugar and kosher salt, 15 black peppercorns, and the leaves from four thyme sprigs.
I combined the dry ingredients in a small bowl.
I covered the jowl with all of the cure.
I transferred the jowl and cure to a covered container and let it sit in the fridge. After seven days, the meat had shrunk and was sitting in a brine of the salt and water that had been drawn out of the jowl. I dried it off the prepare for the next step.
I wrapped the jowl in a thin layer of cheesecloth. It’s not called for in the recipe, but I didn’t want any dust to collect on the meat while it dried. I tied some twine around the cheesecloth to hold it in place.
I hung the bundle of porky love in my basement to dry.
After three weeks, the jowl was firm and dry, with a slight give. I untied and unwrapped it, revealing the final product:
Now I had a pound of home-cured guanciale. What to do with it? That’s the subject of the next post.
Because I don’t live in New York city and because I have no connections in the New York restaurant scene, I have not had the pleasure of eating at any of chef David Chang’s Momofuku restaurants. If I could figure out how to wake up and get online in time to snag a (online only) reservation, I’d be on the next Fung Wah bus out of Boston, drooling in my seat in anticipation of eating the ramen or pork buns.
Until that day arrives, I’ll have to satisfy my cravings by reading through the recently-released Momofuku, the cookbook for Chang’s three (and counting) outposts: Noodle Bar, Ssäm Bar, and Ko. Based solely on the opening paragraph of the recipe, I decided to start with “Chicken and Egg:”
Momofuku’s “Chicken and Egg” was inspired by a rendition of oyako-don (oyako means “mother and child,” referring to the hen and its egg) that I ate at a yakitori house in the Kappabashi district of Tokyo. A pile of rice filled the bowl. It was brushed with a tare that was smoky, salty, and very sweet and on top of it sat a pile of scallions, an egg, and a single boneless chicken leg grilled over bincho-tan charcoal, with crisp, dark skin and just-cooked flesh that was delicate but had an amazing char-grilled flavor. Italian sea salt crowned the chicken, and a plate of oshinko — the Japanese name for a plate of mixed pickles — rode shotgun.
I’ve eaten oyako-don before, but not as good as what Chang described. What better way to test out the book than to make this relatively simple dish?
I started by boning out three very large chicken legs. The bones and trimmings went into the freezer for stock.
I prepared a brine of a cup each of sugar and kosher salt in 8 cups of lukewarm water, stirred to dissolve, then poured the brine into a bag with the chicken.
While the chicken soaked for two hours, I located some rendered pork and chicken fat in the Belm Research Kitchen Deep Storage Facility. I heated the fat to liquefy it, then kept it warm on the stove.
I removed the chicken from the brine and patted it dry. At this point the recipe calls for cold-smoking the chicken, but I wasn’t prepared to set up an Alton Brown cardboard-box-and-fan cold smoking rig, so I went with the second option: bacon. I packed the legs into a dutch oven, laid two slices of thick fruitwood-smoked bacon on top, and then poured in the liquid fat.
While the chicken confited in a 180° oven for fifty minutes, I prepared a “ghetto sous-vide” rig to cook some Slow-Poached Eggs (a separate recipe in the book). I filed a 12-quart heavy bottomed stock pot with hot tap water (my tap runs 130° at its hottest). I droped an inverted steamer basket into the pot, then set a wire mesh colander on top of that. The contraption was set on top of my stove’s low simmer burner, set at its lowest heat. I ran the probe from my digital instant-read thermometer under the colander.
The steamer basket elevated the eggs above the base of the pot, which would be hotter than the water at the center. After fifteen minutes of tweaking the burner, I had a constant 140°, which is when I added the eggs, which cooked for 45 minutes.
When the eggs were done, I removed them to a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. Did I re-enact the Daryl Hanhah hard-boiled egg scene from Blade Runner? You know I did. (140° is hot tub temperature, no harm done.)
While the eggs cooked, I made four cups of cooked sushi rice in my trusty Sanyo “fuzzy logic” (but still smarter than me) rice cooker. That’s a chunk of dashi konbu, an essential ingredient to flavorful sushi rice (as is a splash of sake).
And, while the rice, eggs, and chicken all cooked, I made a quick pickle by slicing a seedless cucumber into 1/8 inch thick discs and tossing them with a tablespoon of sugar and a teaspoon of kosher salt.
Eggs ready, rice ready, pickles ready, it was now time to extract the chicken, reserving the pot of fat for later. I added the chicken to a pre-heated skillet over medium heat. Since the recipe doesn’t specify what to do with the bacon, I added it to the pan as well, because it was bacon.
I weighed down the chicken with a heavy dutch oven (not the same one full of fat, I didn’t want a grease fire) to press the skin into the pan. Once the skin was deeply browned, I removed it to a cutting board and sliced it into 1/2-inch-thick slices. I chopped the bacon onto small bits.
For the final plating, I portioned the rice into bowls, making a shallow depression in the center. I fanned out the chicken along one side, the pickles along the other, and sprinkled on the chopped bacon.
I quickly reheated the eggs under hot running tap water for a minute, then cracked each egg into a smal saucer, pouring off the uncooked whites.
I tipped each egg out of the saucer and into the center of the bowl, garnished with sliced scallions, and served.
This dish was amazing. Even though the chicken had been nowhere near a grill, nor had it been patiently glazed in yakitori sauce, it tasted exactly like grilled yakitori chicken: juicy, sweet, smoky, and salty. The bite of the scallions and sweet pickles cut through the fatty unctuosness of the egg.
She Who Must Be Obeyed and He Who Will Not Be Ignored both agreed that I need to make this dish frequently. There are a lot of simple steps involved, but the most time-consuming bits — the chicken confit and the poached eggs — can be done days ahead of time.
And I wound up with an extra gift when the meal was over:
That’s two cups of smoky pork and chicken fat blend. That stuff will improve anything to which it is added. Even bacon.
I don’t bake pies; I am explicitly forbidden from doing so by article seven, section four of the non-alignment treaty I signed with She Who Must Be Obeyed when we were married. Crisps, refrigerator pies, tarts: all of these are permitted under section five, but I’m not allowed to prepare and bake a true pie crust.
I’m comfortable with the arrangement. She Who Must Be Obeyed is a much better baker than I am, and I’ve had no inclination to bake a pie for 25 years, when I witnessed how a simple idea — “Let’s make a pie!” — could go horribly, horribly wrong.
It was October of 1984. I lived in a house with three Harvard grads, but on the weekends the place was usually overrun with friends since we had huge attic space we had dedicated to gaming. Walt (housemate 1) thought it would be a good idea to have an official Halloween party at which we served desserts. After a bit of discussion, I decided to make Julia Child’s bombe aux trois chocolats, a chocolate cake dome filed with bittersweet chocolate mousse and glazed with chocolate ganache. Walt had figured out how to work with plain and chocolate sugar cookie dough to make a log that would bake up into pentagrams when sliced into individual cookies. Rick (housemate 2) was a medical resident, so he offered to contribute to the expenses.
Not to be outdone, Russell (housemate 3) said “I’ll make pumpkin pies!” It sounded like a good idea, but we advised him to use frozen pie crusts in order to eliminate any kitchen angst. Even though Halloween was on a Wednesday that year, we scheduled the party for the following Saturday so we’d have a week to prep and bake. I had the bombe completed on Wednesday, Walt had the cookies rolled and ready to cut on Thursday (to be baked a la minute Saturday evening), and Russell… waited until Friday night to begin his pie making.
If I filed for a special exemption and was granted a one-time permit to bake a pumpkin pie, I would expend most of my effort on creating a good crust and use high-quality canned pumpkin puree as the base for the filling. Relying on the quality of fresh pumpkins could be a recipe for disaster.
You can imagine our surprise when, gathered around the kitchen table, eating dinner (I don’t remember what I cooked), we saw Russell burst in through the back door. At least we thought it was Russell: his hat peeked above and his legs protruded below a huge pumpkin that he cradled in his arms. He plopped the pumpkin on the floor and dragged in a few shopping bags with the rest of his mise en place.
There is a variety or size of pumpkin referred to as a “sugar” pumpkin that is ideal for baking. It has a thicker, softer wall and a higher sugar content that your garden variety jack-o-lantern pumpkin, which has been bred for low interior volume and durability. It was clear that Russell had bought a massive example of the latter.
While we ate, he fired up the oven to blind-bake the frozen pie shells. He was in a hurry, however, so the shells didn’t thaw completely before he threw then in the oven. After the prescribed baking time, he had two shells that were crisp on top but scorched on the bottom. “No problem,” he said, “the filling will hide the burnt spots.” With the shells out of the way, he turned his attention to the pumpkin.
I will now reproduce, in its entirety, the pumpkin pie recipe from The Joy of Cooking, the 1974 Signet two-volume paperback printing of the Revised and Enlarged 1964 edition that sat on the shelf over the kitchen table Russell had commandeered:
About Pumpkins
To cook pumpkin, wash and cut in half, crosswise. Remove seeds and strings. Place it in a pan, shell side up, and bake it in a 325° oven for 1 hour or more, depending on size, until it is tender and begins to fall apart. Scrape the pulp from the shell and put it through a ricer or strainer.
Pumpkin Pie
Prepare: A baked Pie Shell, page 296
Mix in the top of a double boiler and cook over, not in, hot water until thick:
1 1/2 cups cooked pumpkin or squash
1 1/2 cups undiluted evaporated milk or rich cream
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/8 teaspoon cloves
4 slightly beaten eggs
Cool slightly and add:
1 teaspoon vanilla
Pour the mixture into the baked pie shell
That’s it: make a pie crust, cook the pumpkin, make a seasoned pumpkin custard, pour it in the shell, let it set, then serve. The pie crust had already failed, now we were all curious to see how the pumpkin cooking would fare.
Russell cut up the pumpkin, scraped out the strings and seeds, and filled a large roasting pan with huge canoe-shaped sections that comprised only a third of the entire pumpkin. After an hour in the oven, he checked for doneness by poking the pumpkin canoes with a large metal spoon. On contacting the pumpkin, the spoon made the same sound that a knife makes when cutting into a watermelon. “That doesn’t sound done to me,” I suggested. “It needs to be much softer.” An hour later it was clear that the canoes were still not cooked all the way through, but Russel was growing impatient: “I’ll just scrape off the soft stuff from the outsides; that should give me more than enough.” So, using the metal spoon, he proceeded to scrape off the “soft stuff,” which separated from the sections in huge stranded bundles, not unlike what you get after roasting a spaghetti squash. He filled a large mixing bowl with the strands, which began to ooze, leaving a pale orange puddle at the bottom of the bowl.
He looked at the recipe and asked “What’s a ricer?”
“It’s kind of like a scaled-up garlic press, but we don’t have one. I suggest you push the pulp through a strainer with a wooden spoon.”
I handed him my coarse-mesh strainer and watched him have at the pumpkin. After half an hour he hadn’t managed to push his first handful of strands through the strainer, although the pulp that was produced seemed to have the proper consistency. The impatience kicked in again: “This is taking too long. What else can I try to get more pulp?”
Walt said “You can try my blender.” Russell filed up the blender carafe with more strands and hit the “pulp” button (between “chop” and “liquefy,” I believe). The strands immediately got tangled in the blades and spun around in the carafe without breaking up. Russell’s impatience quickly became frustration.
Before he could ask, I offered my food processor: “It has a bigger bowl and a sharper blade, you might have more luck with it.” More strands went in, same result: madly spinning stuff, no pulp. Russell’s frustration was now turning into rage.
It was Walt’s turn again: “I suppose we could try the meat grinder attachment for my mixer.” Five minutes later, Russell was pushing the rest of the strands through the coarse-grind plate of Walt’s Kitchen Aid mixer/meat grinder. At long last he had a bowl full of oozing, pale orange, coarse pulp.
With the pumpkin cooking out of the way, it was time to make the custard. The recipe recommends using a double boiler as insurance against curdling, but my double boiler wouldn’t hold the doubled proportions needed for two pies. I advised Russell that he could make the custard in a larger pot, but that he’d have to stir it constantly at low temperature to make sure the eggs didn’t curdle. He added the eggs, cream, and spices to the pot, and then scooped three cups of pumpkin out of the mixing bowl and added it to the pot, but didn’t attempt to press out any excess water, which was still oozing out into the bowl.
After an hour the custard showed no signs of thickening and had acquired a nasty grayish color, probably due to the less-than-fresh spices and some oxidation of the pumpkin pulp. Again, his impatience surfaced: “This is taking too long. I’m going to increase the heat and see if I can cook off some of the excess water.”
“Give it a shot, but keep stirring or you’ll screw up the eggs,” I reminded him.
After another half hour, he decided that the custard was ready. He poured it into each of the two pie shells, only to discover that the pumpkin pulp had settled to the bottom of the pot. He had to spoon it out into the shells and stir the messes together to produce a semblance of a homogeneous mixture. Thus assembled, the pies went into the oven in an attempt to cook off more moisture.
Our kitchen floor was so out of level that the feet on the stove couldn’t be adjusted enough to compensate. Walt and I had taken to wedging rolls of foil under pans in the oven and using a level to ensure even baking, but Russell couldn’t be bothered. After an hour in the off-plumb oven he declared that the pies were done and removed them to a cooling rack on our table.
A pumpkin pie is supposed to look like this:
There can be variations in color and doneness of the crust, but it would be safe to say that the Platonic ideal of pumpkin pie requires tan-to-golden crust and filling that falls in the orange-to-yellow range of the visible spectrum. What sat on our table met neither of these requirements. The crust was either white (dry) or black (burned), and the filling was a sickly grayish yellow. In addition, the pumpkin pulp had pulled away from the edges and massed in the center of the shell, leaving a liquid moat around the perimeter.
When the pies had sufficiently cooled, Russell smoothed out the filling as best as he could, then placed the pies on the bottom self of our fridge. Which is where I discovered them the next morning, quivering malevolently, still not quite set.
The party that evening was a smashing success. Our guests marveled at Walt’s pentagram cookies, my bombe resulted in my being offered two marriage proposals (I had not yet met She Who Must etc.), and the pie… sat on the table, ignored by all. Russell, clearly jealous of the praise being heaped on Walt and me, loudly announced “I’m going to have some pie!” We all watched him cut a small slice onto his plate, then waited for him to take a bite, all thinking go on, try a bite, I dare you. He took a bite, said “This is great!,” then walked around for a while, plate still in hand. Half an hour later I found the plate ditched behind a speaker, with only the one bite taken out of it.
The cookies and the bombe were gone by the party’s end, but the pie — with one slice missing — was returned to the fridge where it sat next to its mate for another week. Eventually both pies took on a greenish cast, and soon after that they disappeared.
We didn’t have good pumpkin pie, but I had an awesome pumpkin pie story. My friends made me tell the story to anyone who hadn’t been at the party. I got really good at telling it, joking that I intended to make it part of the family oral tradition, something to be passed down from generation to generation.
Coda:
Almost a year later, while at a gaming convention, Robin, a friend from Maryland who had heard the story, told me she had a surprise for me. She made me wear a blindfold and sit in a chair in the middle of a room full of our friends. I heard her say “open our mouth,” which I refused to do, not wanting to be the butt of a practical joke.
“Okay, but keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them.” I felt her remove the blindfold, then heard her pull up another chair in front of me. “Open your eyes.”
She was sitting in front of me, holding a grayish, malevolently quivering pie. It looked exactly like the former denizen of my fridge. “I made a pumpkin pie for you, using Russell’s method. Don’t you want a taste?”
I wouldn’t try any until someone else tasted it first. When he didn’t run off to the bathroom after five minutes, I relented and tried a bite. And it tasted just the way a pumpkin pie should taste. I wound up eating a whole slice.
Robin explained: “To make the pie lumpy I stirred in walnuts and marshmallows. To create the cracks and fissures I scored it with a knife before cooking it. Oh, and I lightly brushed the edge of the crust with butter so it would be blackened after baking. And, of course, assorted food colorings to make it gray.”
So that’s The Pumpkin Pie Story, a tale that will be passed down to He Who Will Not Be Ignored, and maybe someday to his children. I know that I wouldn’t make any of the same mistakes if I attempted a pumpkin pie, but why violate a treaty that’s been observed faithfully for 16 years?
