Make the Bread, Buy the Butter - Jennifer Reese [98]
Cost comparison: This recipe costs about $1.25 per cup to make. An equivalent amount of Princella canned yams costs $0.67 per cup.
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter
1½ pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into round slices about ½ inch thick
Pinch of kosher salt
⅓ cup maple syrup
1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Put the butter in a small casserole and slip it into the oven to melt.
2. When the butter is melted, pull out the casserole and turn the sweet potatoes in the butter until they are well coated on all sides. Add salt and turn again.
3. When the oven is hot, roast the potatoes for 15 minutes.
4. Pull out the casserole, pour the syrup over the sweet potatoes, return to the oven, and roast for 15 minutes more. The potatoes should be completely tender, the edges starting to carmelize.
Makes 4½ cups, to serve 6
PUMPKIN PIE
The very existence of Libby’s canned pumpkin throws Barbara Kingsolver into a tizzy. “Come on, people,” she laments in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. “Doesn’t anybody remember how to take a big old knife, whack open a pumpkin, scrape out the seeds, and bake it? We can carve a face onto it, but can’t draw and quarter it? Are we not a nation known worldwide for our cultural zest for blowing up flesh, on movie and video screen and/or armed conflict? Are we in actual fact too squeamish to stab a large knife into a pumpkin?”
I had always used canned pumpkin for pie, because it was what my mother and grandmother used. In my family, canned pumpkin is traditional. But I liked the idea of starting with a whole food rather than a can, and what if canned pumpkin turned out to be just as inferior as canned sweet potatoes and I just didn’t know better?
I baked two pies, identical except for the source of the pumpkin. Pie number one contained the flesh of a sugar pie pumpkin that I roasted for an hour, peeled, seeded, de-stringed, and forced through the food mill. Pie number two contained the flesh of a pumpkin that Libby’s had processed in a plant and I scooped out of the can.
Results: The canned pumpkin was (obviously) more convenient, and I did not have to wait for it to roast. It was also slightly more expensive—about $0.50 more than the whole pumpkin. But those were fifty cents well spent, because it made a superior pie—the flavor was bigger, rounder, more pumpkin-y. I have no idea how you get more pumpkin-y than an actual pumpkin. According to the label, Libby’s canned pumpkin contains nothing but pumpkin. Did I just have a dud pumpkin? Confusing.
My advice: When you’re standing at the supermarket the day before Thanksgiving pondering your pumpkin options, grab the can and get in the checkout line before it grows any longer. You’re not being squeamish, you’re being sensible.
However, you should absolutely bake your own pie.
Make it or buy it? Make it.
Hassle: Once you have the crust, it’s just stir, pour, bake.
Cost comparison: Homemade: $3.68. Sara Lee frozen: $5.99. Safeway in-house bakery: $8.79.
1¼ cups canned pumpkin puree
2 large eggs
⅓ cup granulated sugar
⅓ cup light brown sugar, packed
⅛ teaspoon ground cinnamon
⅛ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
⅛ teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup half-and-half
One 9-inch pie crust, partially baked
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl combine the pumpkin, eggs, sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and half-and-half and beat until smooth. Pour into the crust.
3. Bake for 35 minutes. This is incredible served warm out of the oven, and almost as good cold.
Serves 8
WHIPPED CREAM
Although it’s fun to spray and makes an exciting sound, most aerosolized cream tastes fake. Because it is. Reddi-wip, for instance, contains eight ingredients, including mono- and diglycerides and corn syrup. At least it contains a modicum of dairy. Cool Whip is essentially hydrogenated oil churned with corn syrup, and while I don’t find it disgusting, it’s nothing like freshly whipped cream. I always assumed synthetic whipped cream was