American Pie

I like cuisines of all sorts, particularly Asian cuisine. And I include Indian, when I say Asian, though I tend to exclude Turkish and Russian food. I mean, generally, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Burmese, Vietnamese, and Indian foods.

But for some reason, perhaps because I grew up on desserts in the US, I don't care for desserts from other countries. I don't care for the sweets from India. I like some Chinese sweets. Overall, though, I prefer the chocolate chip cookies, the pies, and the general dessert fare in cooking Americana.

One dessert, in particular, I've taken a liking to late in life, and that's pumpkin pie. I'm sure I didn't eat much of it when I was a teen, but once I was in late high school and in college, I really like pumpkin pie.

It never quite struck me what goes into pumpkin pie other than pumpkins, and even then. If you've ever carved a pumpkin, pulled out its stringy guts, its seeds, you'd wonder how you would even eat this monstrosity.

Yet, when suitably pureed and canned, pumpkins make for a great confection. Except pumpkin pie is really a spice cookie made into a pie. Maybe pumpkin itself isnt a compelling enough dessert, or that it's too much like eating squash or some other vegetable.

But no, no, let's add spices, milk, and eggs to it. In particular, cinnamon. Cinnamon, by American standards, is seen as a dessert spice. Added to cinnamon rolls, or to spice up cider, or to sprinkle on gourmet coffees, cinnamon reminds people of sweets.

Except that it's not universally seen this way. In India, cinnamon, in conjunction with a myriad of spices, is as likely to be used to flavor meats, and so there is a cognitive disconnect between cinnamon and desserts that Indians have, which may make them shrug as to why Americans perceive it as dessert (even more fascinating is the smell of almonds, which Americans perceive as sweet, and Indians perceive as bitter, since the smell of almonds is really the smell of rotting, bitter almonds).

I wanted to figure out how to make pumpkin pie, but never did so, until I saw the cover of Saveur with its tempting cover of a pumpkin pie, slightly roasted, with the promise of a traditional Southern recipe, buried inside.

But really, the recipe is about what you'd find on the can, with the portions a little different, but the result about the tasty same.

Eggs, cinnamon, ground ginger, ground cloves, evaporated milk, sugar, pumpkin, bake, and pie.

And it's not that much more complex than buying a pie from the store. Suddenly, I'm all fascinated by foods that are much easier to cook than I had originally imagined, and robust enough to handle variations in the recipe.

Which reminds me. I need to get some pie.

Toodles!