Ginger Custard Pie (with Mocha Sauce)

This was my first custard pie. If you've never made custard or pondered the ingredients, custard is essentially all kinds of cream heated (perhaps with the addition of sugar) and then allowed to cool into a pudding - it just might be humankind's greatest invention.

But in a pie? Well... I have to admit that while everyone agreed this pie was super tasty, it just didn't do it for me last night. I mean, the ginger is a wonderful flavor! It's feels so very autumnal and has the wonderful properties spicy-ness and a hint of the savory umami quality - it can be sweetened and soured and add subtly to a traditionally not-so-spicy dish like my butternut squash apple soup. But all by its lonesome, I'm not so sure I like it. (Although everyone else really loved that their lesser experiences with ginger were swayed by the creamy toning down of the flavor they often found overwhelming!)

Ultimately, I have decided that my disappointment in this pie really comes down to my expectations in texture being failed. The last three pies I've made have been dense and filled with with the fruit of trees or squash. This one was so light and fluffy, after all, it only had a handful of ingredients and most of them were milk products. But I also didn't refrigerate it overnight as is often done with custards.

I think I also may have simply been in the mood for more spices - not just ginger (although this is my favorite spice of all!).

All in all, the pie turned out splendidly, and if you are in the mood for something light and fluffy and less appropriate for dessert AND THEN the next four meals (which is what happens in this household when we don't have friends around to help taste test our pie!)

The best part by far, however, was the absolutely sinful mocha drizzle - cocoa and ginger are the combination of all time! And I suppose it did help that the mocha glaze was essentially espresso grounds in butter/heavy-cream/chocolate chips in this ratio 1:4:4. I just can't keep my fingers out of it!!!! I gave half to our neighbors eat or burn to just make sure we all keep our arteries in tact at the Sheean house.

The first thing I ever filmed.

I used to be a performing arts geek. I loved being on the stage for band, choir and the annual high school musicals - but when I broke up with my boyfriend my senior year (who was involved with most of these things and, thus, had lots of friends in the same classes as me) I had a really hard time losing myself in these interests with his and his kind involved at equally intimate levels.

Luckily, I had tricked my parents into signing a form that emancipated me in the eyes of the public school system! I spent a lot of time ditching those classes for "dentist appointments" and "family issues." Then, one day, I found an unassuming, unencumbered, and secretly compassionate teacher in detached classroom on a part of the campus I had never, ever visited. As it turns out, our high school had a video production program, and he was the king of it! I don't know if I started to go to the classroom after I was asked to perform in one of his students' videos or after I realized my choir period was his prep period and he didn't care if ditched in the video studio - but in case it was love at first sight.

WITH VIDEO!!

(Uuugghh, did you think I was talking about a student-teacher affair!? Gross. Not cool. Shame on you.)

Anyway, at the end of the fall semester I switched into one of the video classes and played catch up with more zeal than I had ever known myself to have. I plotted and practiced and story-boarded and shot and re-shot until I was satisfied with this - the very first video I ever ever ever wrote or shot or edited or produced:

Honey Pumpkin Date with 'Mallow Topping

In a nutshell: 1) Thoroughly blend all the ingredients together, taking care that the dates are cut to bite-sized bits. 2) Pour into your prebaked graham cracker pie crust, distributing date pieces evenly 3) Bake at 350 F for 20 min, rotate pie, bake for 25 more min at 450 F 4) Remove, let cool, place in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours just before serving, 5) cover chilled pie with mini-marshmallows and place in the broiler for 2-3 minutes - MAKE SURE YOU WATCH THE MARSHMALLOWS AS THEY BROWN!! If you take your eyes off for even a few seconds, you'll end up with an ugly burnt mess.

Pumpkin, dates, eggs, heavy whipping cream, full-fat sour cream, honey, molasses, cinnemon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves!

One thing I am learning about pies is that for all their variety in flavor, filling, crust and occasion, they are pretty darn straight forward to make.

However, one thing I underestimated is the value of some TLC. This pie, relatively simple and easy in writing, required a significantly greater amount of time to prepare (and practice). And I am a lazy person - if I had planned a little better, I might have been a little less frustrated, but perhaps you can benefit from my strife and discovery:

Stuff I learned this time around:

1) Let ingredients (like eggs) reach room temperature
2) Your own squash puree is easy! But not instantaneous...
3) Cool a pre-baked pie shell in the fridge OR unthaw a frozen one in the fridge before using
4) If the recipe says the pie should cool -

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE TIME TO LET THE PIE COOL!

A little about each:

1) Letting the ingredients, like eggs & butter & even milk, really does help mix and bake the filling to the proper consistency!

Room temperature ingredients allow for the emulsion of fat and liquid which cannot otherwise mix. If you add cold ingredients, like eggs from the fridge, to a room temperature filling, you may end up with not-so-yummy descriptions of your mixture like curdled, chunky or grainy. This is particularly annoying if you are mixing or whisking by hand.
Also, your mixture will likely not hold its form as well - a good looking pie is even across the surface and not cracked or sunken. Sinking is a particularly disheartening result of chilled ingredients.
(PS I know the FDA says this isn't true, but you can leave eggs out of the refrigerator for up to two weeks, depending on how fresh they are. It's true! That's how they do it in EVERY OTHER COUNTRY except America. Ask you European or African friends (I did). There isn't an in-between for a good egg and a rotten one and so long as you aren't storing your eggs in the top cabinet with the California winter-heat beating on them, they'll do just for for a while.)

2) You can cook any squash like this:
Cut in half, de-seed, put in the oven in a half an inch of water (any way you like) with some loose foil over for about 35-40 minutes at 350 F. That's it. Pumpkin, Delicata, Spaghetti, they can ALL be cooked this way. If you want to forgo the canned pureed squash you stick the results (without skin!) in a blender. VIOLA!

3) Once again, don't be lazy like me. Prebaked pie shells are the bomb! And easy. So just do it, you don't need to always buy pie shells... but you do need to cool them and not use them straight from the oven. If you do, you might make a mess of your pie in one or several of theses ways: cooking the outside filling faster on the hot crust, crust can absorb the filling and get mushy, the taste might change, the exposed edges will likely cook more & dry out than the covered ones and ultimately, the crust (depending on the kind) can really lose its shape - refrigerating it keeps it firm.

4) This is probably the singularly most important experience I had during the baking of this pie.
The filling for this pie used a lot of liquids and had a very low viscosity (rather runny); in addition to this new factor in pie-making, the recipe called for this pie to be baked at two different temperatures in the first half and last half of its time in the oven. I did my best to follow the recipe to the "T" (after not doing so and creating delays as I ran into the aforementioned discoveries) and baked as instructed. But at the end of the 45 mins, the pie still seamed to be quite liquid. I baked for an extra 20 minutes, just to be sure, but the consistency did not change much. I didn't want to risk over-cooking, so I removed the pie and let it cool to room temperature.

This pie is best served chilled with freshly warmed marshmallows. Prepare this pie the night before or very early in the day to alot time for cooling...
Allow the pie to cool thoroughly; then place the pie in the refrigerator for 3 hours or over night.

Despite the hold-ups and a little bit of cheating on the instructions - the pie was incredible. So delicious and so vacant of any processed foods (san marshmallows!). The ingredients DID NOT include sugar except what was in the dates and honey! Another successful Pie of the Week.

The party we attended was pretty fantastic, too! The treats were especially fun:

Potato Brains!	Mummy Dogs!	Baby Burrito!

I learned about Japanese mayo.

This weekend we got some Meghan Janssen. In honor of this getting, we made a jaunt to Little Tokyo to look for manga art supplies and prepare our moods for Japanese dinner and My Neighbor Totoro!

The weather rapidly changed from rainy to sunny during the short jaunt down I-110 from Pasadena to the heart of LA. It made for some wonderful pictures:

Upon returning home, unsuccessful in acquiring neither art supplies nor boba, we received Meghan who cooked for us her Japanese students' favorite dish: Omuraisu (pronounced roughly oh-moo-rys-oo... or "omelette rice oo" said really fast.) On our fried rice omelette we drew faces with ketchup and Japanese mayonnaise. Another friend of mine once told me that Japanese put mayo on everything green - no uncooked, un-mayonnaised veggies for the Japanese! And Meghan told me that there is a special Japanese word for someone who has extra love for mayonnaise. Having now tried this incredible condiment, I think understand why!

Japanese Mayo > any other kind of mayo.

I'm not sure I could tell you why... perhaps its the slightly more tart/sour flavor - but in any event, it stands a fact!

A Pie You Set on Fire

Apparently the Northend cousins have an affinity for the same nautical themed spirits - namely Sailor Jerry's (and NOT Captain Morgan's - blegh). Matt and I discovered Sailor Jerry's in the midwest (far away from any bodies of water) when we accidentally missed some obscure "blue law" window for alcohol purchases at the grocery store. We were looking for Bicardi Black - a spiced rum with a high enough proof to light on fire - for a surprise dessert for my mom and dad who were on vicarage there in Kansas. We managed to find a liquor store willing to sell some of their stock just before closing but no Black was to be found! What ended up going home with was better tasting than anything I've ever lit on fire before.

This pie was a serendipitous combination of last-minute Pie-of-the-Week cooking and last year's nectarine harvest. Mamma Sheean had sent us home from our visit last weekend with a big box of vegetables and huge vacuum sealed bag of frozen nectarines. I was determined to use them in a pie, but my Pie book doesn't have any nectarine recipes. In keeping with my unique-pie pursuit, I tried Googling different nectarine recipes and came up with a "Cajun Nectarine Pie" - but the only spice every iteration of the recipe called for was cinnamon. Yum! But boooooorrrrriiinng. With the nectarines almost completely defrosted on the counter top, I was running out of time to make a decision.

And that's when the bottle of Sailor Jerry's toppled from the cabinet onto my head. INSPIRATION STRUCK! Well... that would have been the ideally dramatic way of inspiration striking - but truth be told there was simply a very large bag dark brown sugar sitting next to the sink BELOW the open cabinet with Sailor Jerry's inside NEXT to the melting nectarines which had somehow ended up next to lighter. True story.

With "cajun" still in my mind, I found myself wondering if Bananas Foster had ever been Nectarine Foster... and then, of course, if anyone had ever put it in a pie... and VIOLA!

Danica's Nectarine Rum Pie.

(If this gets famous, I'm makin sure my name is in the title!)

ingredients:
4 lbs of frozen nectarines (the juices will cook off and diminish the weight)
1 c of firmly packed dark brown sugar
1/2 c, 2 Tbsp of butter
4-5 shots of Sailor Jerry's (or spiced rum of 90 proof + 1 tsp of vanilla + tsp of nutmeg + 1 tsp of ground cardamom)
1 partially baked bottom pie crust shell
1 unbaked top pie crust
*2 Tbsp lemmon
*2 Tbsp of flour

In a nutshell:

I started by draining off all the water from the frozen nectarines. I didn't squeeze the juices off, but drained them pretty throughly and saved about 1 cup for later.

I browned a 1/2 cup of butter in a large 12" sauce pan and added the brown sugar and the nectarines, sautéing as best I could and adding juice as I saw fit to keep things moist and create a syrup, over about 5 minutes.

I continued adding juices as I needed to as well as an extra 2 Tbsp of butter, and stirred the mixture while things started to caramelize.

(NEXT TIME I made this pie I will sautee the nectarines without the brown sugar.)

When the consistency was such that I could scrape the nectarines and juices with a spatula and reveal the clean bottom of the pan for a few seconds I removed the pan from heat and spread the nectarines evenly over the surface. Then I added about 2.5 shots of Sailor Jerry's over the entire surface and lit it on fire! When the fire died out (after about 3 minutes), I stirred the mixture and repeated with another 2 shots.

Then I added 3 tsp of cinnamon and 1.5 tsp of ginger while I let the mixture cool, just a bit, before putting it into a partially baked pie crust.

I botched placing my top crust & added sprinkled brown sugar which ended up looking burnt =/

I also didn't rotate the pie half-way and burnt it a smidgeon.

I topped the pie with new, uncooked crust, poked some holes and stuck it in the oven for 20 minutes at 400 degrees and broiled on high for an extra 3 minutes to brown the top crust.

I highly recommend Sailor Jerry's over any other spiced rum!! It has hints of vanilla and cloves that compliment the simply spices added by hand so very wonderfully.

It tasted PHENOMENAL.

*Next time, I want to add 2 Tbsp of flour to the caramelized mixture just to give it a tiny bit more body, although.... the nectarines were super juicy and soft because of their previously frozen state. I imagine fresh ones will require that flour. I would also recommend adding 2 Tbsp of lemon juice in this stage - I didn't have any, but I imagine that it would really bring out a wonderful gingery pucker with the incredibly sweet nectarines.