Thursday, November 21, 2019

the meal continues to form

The "pumpkin" pie filling, which is actually made from my buddy Charles's favorite fruit, the kabocha squash, a.k.a. what Koreans call dan-hobak (단호박), or sweet squash:


The above filling is missing one ingredient: eggs. I'll put them in tonight when I bake the pie. Charles has expressed his deep, deep love for this particular dessert on multiple occasions, so I'm dedicating this effort entirely to him.

Next up: taters! Behold:


Ingredients: potatoes, heavy cream, butter, salt, pepper, cayenne, powdered onion, powdered garlic. Subtly seasoned so as not to overwhelm the taters.

Below: apple-pie filling to be mixed into the cornbread stuffing:


Last but not least: corn pudding!


So the taters are in the freezer; according to online sources, potatoes don't usually freeze well, but mashed potatoes that have been made with plenty of fat (such as the aforementioned heavy cream and butter) actually freeze just fine. The pumpkin-pie filling and the corn pudding are in the fridge, along with the apple-pie filling that's going to end up in the stuffing. I very badly wanted to try a bit of corn pudding, but I resisted temptation.

Tomorrow, we make the stuffing and the pumpkin pie. I'm not at all worried about the stuffing, which always turns out delicious, but I'm nervous about whether the pumpkin pie will come out cracked. Cracking apparently has much to do with rapidity of cooling; the secret to avoiding cracks in the pie, according to the experts, is to remove the pie from the oven before it has completely set. We'll soon know if that's true.



2 comments:

Charles said...

You're right: I love pumpkin pies. They are a lot of fun to throw off of rooftops.

Also, that corn pudding looks suspiciously like corn bread. Which made me realize that I've never actually had or seen corn pudding before, so I looked it up. Fascinating.

Kevin Kim said...

Yeah, I'm using the Chef John version. You can look up the video on YouTube by typing "Food Wishes corn pudding" into the search window.