Pumpkin pie

I have chosen this recipe to post on my blog for two reasons.  One it is soon thanksgiving In America and as a lot of the people who look at this blog are American I have devoted this recipe to them.  I must admit that apart from turkey I really do not know what is traditional and what is not.  Apart from a time when was invited to a thanksgiving dinner I have not really had a lot of experience of them.  The other reason for posting this recipe is that it uses pumpkin.  Halloween time is soon here and in the UK we get a pumpkin make a lantern out of it and that is the only time you have a pumpkin in the kitchen.  Well as far as I know this is a authentic recipe and the pastry part alone is a good one to copy.  You can use almost any kind of nut and it gives that pasty such texture as well.

125g/4½oz plain flour

55g/2oz demerara sugar

55g/2oz butter

2-3 tbsp cold water

40g/1½oz crushed pecans 

For the filling

450 g/1lb pumpkin flesh

2 large eggs plus 1 yolk

3 oz/75g soft dark brown sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

½ level teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

½ tsp ground allspice

½ tsp ground cloves

½ tsp ground ginger

10 fl oz/275 ml double cream

First, get your pecan nuts and crush or chop them.  You can do this in a food blender but you want them to be fairly ruff chopped.  To fine and you do not get the right texture.  What you are looking for is big crunchy nut bit in the pastry but not too big that it make the pasty to hard to handle as it rips every time you move it. Just sift the flour and add the butter rub them together to make a breadcrumb consistency.  Add the sugar and the nuts and combine it all together, them add the water.  Add the water a little at a time until you get a dough forming.  You might need to add more water or less it all depends. Then once you have your pastry made rap it and pop it in the fridge to rest for about twenty minutes.  

Take the pastry out of the fridge, roll, line a tart dish then line the pasty case with greaseproof paper, and put some baking beans on the paper.  Blind bake it for about 15 minutes at 200c/392f then remove the baking beans and bake for another 5 minutes until the pasty is cooked.

While you are baking, you can start on you filling. Steam you pumpkin and then pass or push it through a course sieve.  What you want is a pumpkin puree. Then take your eggs and whisk them together.  Take most of your cream, sugar and all of your spices, put them in a pan, and bring it all to the boil.  Then take of the heat ,  now add the little cram you held back to your eggs, along with pumpkin puree.  Mix it all together then add the hot cream spice and combine every thing together.

Now set your oven to 180c/350f pore the filling in to the pastry case and bake for about 35 to 45 minutes.  It is cooked when it starts to puff us around the edges but is still soft in the middle but set not liquid. Then remove and cool on a cooling rack.

It is best served chilled with a good ice cream or just whipped cream. I do not know if this is a classic thanksgiving dish but I do know it is really worth making, as it taste grate.