My grandmother's name was Celia. She was the most important person in my early life, a quiet force to be reckoned with, tender and tenacious. She was curious, and instilled in me a love for learning. She cared for the earth, taking the time to pull out weeds with awful prickly burrs and feed them to the cattle. No need for poisons or weed killers, just pay attention to the way the world works, she said, and sure enough the cattle would come running when they saw Grandma working the yard with her weed fork and bucket, standing at the fence waiting for her to come over and hand feed them. She also had a sense of humor and hated having her picture taken. My favorite picture of her is one taken in the kitchen of the house next door - my grandparents moved into the house next door to us when I was a toddler - Grandma is in her kitchen as usual, probably making bread, and when asked to look up for a picture she pulled a face and stuck out her tongue. Silly Grandma!
My oldest daughter is named for my grandmother, and like her namesake is tender and tenacious. She's also firm in her convictions, but true to the times, she is freer to speak her mind. And just like her great-grandma, she highly values the right to vote.
For Thanksgiving, she's voting for pie! So, for the Thanksgiving table, here is the pumpkin pie recipe I use most often. It comes from my 1956 Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book - which I recently discovered is valuable enough to be part of the University of Houston Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management's library archives!
Make pastry for one crust pie.
Step one: go to the Shaw's and buy Crisco sticks. Get the blue packages, not the yellow ones. The sticks are easy to measure and less messy. If you don't have a pastry blender, pick up one of those too. It's not expensive and really helps.
Mix together 1 cup sifted flour (I use store brand unbleached all purpose flour) and 1/2 tsp salt.
Cut in with pastry blender 1/3 cup shortening.
Sprinkle with 2 Tablespoons cold water. Mix with fork until all the flour is moistened. Gather dough together with fingers until it cleans the bowl, press firmly into a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and let rest in fridge.
Some bakers will at this point flatten the dough into a disk (not rolling out) and then wrap and let rest in fridge.
When the filling is ready, roll out the dough and ease into your pan. Leave at least 1/2 an inch overhanging the edge. Betty Crocker says to "build up a high fluted edge" and then to "hook points of fluted edge under pan rim to help prevent shrinking during baking". You can make a fluted edge by placing your left pointer finger on the outer edge of the rim and your right thumb and pointer finger on the inner edge and then pushing your fingers together, creating a "v" shape in the pie crust.
Tips for how to fill the crust follow the filling recipe.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Beat together with mixer:
1 3/4 cups mashed cooked pumpkin (in 1956 I guess they didn't use canned as much! I used Libby's Pumpkin when I used this recipe)
1/2 tsp salt
1 3/4 cups milk
3 eggs or 4 yolks
2/3 cup brown sugar (packed)
2 Tblsp granulated sugar
1 1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
Pour most of the mixture into the prepared pan. Open oven and pull out the rack. Place pie pan on the rack, and finish pouring the filling (this will help prevent spilling). Bake 45 to 55 minutes. The center make look soft but will continue to set. Serve slightly warm or cold.
Enjoy!
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