お料理（パンプキンパイ）

I decided to try making pumpkin pie, even though there is no canned pumpkin here, and I didn't have any of the spices I needed. But I ordered some canned pumpkin from here, and went to a special international market to get the spices. The market was nice (reminded me of a very small Whole Foods), but extremely expensive, not to mention far away. But whatever. At least I could now make pie. I needed to choose a recipe that didn't use evaporated milk, so I settled on one from Paula Deen here. My comments are in italics.



Pumpkin Pie

Yield: 1 pie (6-8 servings) (This really made more like 1.5 pies.)

Ingredients:

• 1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened (226.8 g)
• 2 cups (1 can) canned pumpkin, mashed
• 1 cup sugar (American cups aren't equivalent to Japanese cups. 1 cup in this recipe is around 240 mL.)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 egg plus 2 egg yolks, slightly beaten
• 1 cup half-and-half (This amount would make it too watery. I used a little over 1/2 cup (~120 mL) whole milk instead since I couldn't find any half-and-half.)
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
(Note: You can buy pre-ground cloves, though they apparently lose their flavor quickly, so it's better to buy whole cloves and grind them yourself. You can use a coffee grinder, though then all your coffee from then on will taste like cloves. I tried crushing the things myself with a bowl and wooden spoon handle which REALLY didn't work. Cloves are really, really hard, as I discovered. I did the best I could, then picked out the biggest chunks and added what was left. It tasted fine, so don't worry if you can't get them ground very well.)

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350°F (~175°C)

Place 1 piece of pre-made pie dough down into a (9-inch) pie pan and press down along the bottom and all sides. Pinch and crimp the edges together to make a pretty pattern. Put the pie shell back into the freezer for 1 hour to firm up. Fit a piece of aluminum foil to cover the inside of the shell completely. Fill the shell up to the edges with pie weights or dried beans (about 2 pounds = 0.9 kg) and place it in the oven. Bake for 10 minutes, remove the foil and pie weights and bake for another 10 minutes or until the crust is dried out and beginning to color.

(I used a Betty Crocker crust mix ordered from here. I prepared it the same way as in this recipe, though I didn't let it sit in the freezer since I was too impatient. It still worked out fine.)

For the filling, in a large mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese with a hand mixer. Add the pumpkin and beat until combined. Add the sugar and salt, and beat until combined. Add the eggs mixed with the yolks, half-and-half, and melted butter, and beat until combined. Finally, add the vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves, and beat until incorporated (I was pretty generous with the spices, so don't be afraid to go a little over the specified measurements).

Pour the filling into the warm prepared pie crust and bake for 50 minutes, or until the center is set (Reviewers of the recipe online suggested covering the edges of the crust with tin foil after 20 minutes or so to prevent burning, but my pie was way too hot to put on the tin foil. Mine turned out fine anyway. People also recommended cooking the pie for an extra 15-20 minutes, but mine was done after about 40 minutes, so just keep an eye on the thing.). Place the pie on a wire rack and cool to room temperature. Cut into slices and top each piece with a generous amount of whipped cream.

***

There was a lot of filling left, so I put it in a greased glass dish and cooked it after the pie was done. Both the pie and this secondary dish burned a bit on the top, though the pie tasted fine. I'm not sure what I did wrong. I think the cooking time really depends on the size of your oven since mine is very small (a combination microwave/oven), and the pie cooked very quickly.

Since I couldn't buy ready-made whipped cream here, I decided to make my own.

Whipped Cream

Yield: Enough cream for 2 pies

Ingredients:

• 1 cup heavy cream (~240 mL)
• 1/4 cup sugar (~60 mL)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Preparation:

Whip cream until almost stiff. Add sugar and vanilla; beat until cream holds peaks. Spread over top of cooled pie or dollop on bread pudding, gingerbread, cobblers, or other desserts.