People of the Pie

Sweet potato custard pie. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

I came to pie later in life. My people were cake people you see, skilled in the language of layer cake pans, 10X sugar and sprinkles. My first cake was carrot cake, made from a recipe in the venerable, verdant  Farm Journal cookbook. There were forays into pound cakes, with detours through sour cream, chocolate and lemon before deciding on my standard shattery-crust cream cheese pound cake. Rich cheesecakes would follow, chock full of candy, eggs and dairy goodness. But pies eluded me until marriage, when my husband presented me with a set of hand-turned walnut rolling pins. An angled pastry pin, perfect for rounding out a disk of pie dough. The too-pretty-to-use decorative pin with the lovely rounded ends. And my favorite, the Clydesdale of the kitchen, ideal for thwopping a resistant pizza dough or pounding out super-chilly puff pastry.

Rolling pins. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

The gift of the rolling pins, seen here in their display case in my kitchen along with grandma's red-handled rolling pin (perfect for Kitty's Beaten Biscuits) and Little Bit's pint-sized pin, gave me the encouragement I needed to tackle pastry crust. At my husband's suggestion, I made a buttermilk chess pie from Southern Living magazine, and have been turning out pies ever since. Apple pies, peach pies, blueberry pies. Lemon meringue, French silk, and the pie my family looks most forward to each January, Bellwether's Kumquat Pie.

So what pie should I bake for my friends, the monthly #LetsLunch crowd? I intended to bake up a Southern peach pie with the late season fruit I bought at an interstate off-ramp vegetable stand. Those peaches became roasted peach jam instead, so I turned to my second favorite pie, sweet potato pie. Truth is, every Thanksgiving, I'd rather have sweet potato pie than pumpkin or pecan pie. This recipe is adapted from Damon Lee Fowler's charming and reliable cookbook "Beans, Greens and Sweet Georgia Peaches."

Sweet Potato Custard Pie. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Sweet Potato Custard Pie

Pie Crust

These are instructions for making pie crust in a food processor, my favorite way to blend the fat into the flour. I keep a small can of Crisco in the bottom drawer of my refrigerator, so it’s always well-chilled for pie crust making. No excuse not to make pie, right?

2 cups all-purpose, unbleached flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

½ cup vegetable shortening, very cold

About 1/3 cup ice water

1.     1.   Place the flour, salt and sugar in the bowl of the food processor. Pulse five times to mix the dry ingredients. Add the shortening, pulsing until the flour resembles coarse meal or grits. Add a few tablespoons of ice water and pulse. Continue adding ice water until dough comes together.

2.      2.  Lightly flour a clean counter top and remove dough from bowl of food processor. Using a light touch, press dough into a round disk, wrap in plastic and chill for at least an hour or overnight. After chilling, the pie crust is ready for rockin’ and rollin.’

 

Sweet Potato Custard Pie

About five or six medium sweet potatoes

1 cup sugar

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

3 large eggs

A pinch of salt

1 generous tablespoon vanilla

1.       To roast sweet potatoes: rinse off tubers, place them on a foil-lined baking sheet and prick the tops with a fork. Roast in a 400 degree oven for about an hour. Let the sweet potatoes cool, then remove the pulp from their jackets. Mash the pulp.

2.       Stir together the sweet potato pulp, sugar and softened butter in a bowl. Add the eggs, salt and vanilla, stirring well. Pour into a pastry-lined pan and bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for 40 minutes. Let cool, then slice and serve. 

#LetsLunch is a fine group of food bloggers who post monthly on a given subject. I'm hosting this month and I chose the theme of pie. There is power in pie and here are the stories to prove it:

Annabelle‘s Chocolate Pie at Glass of Fancy
Anne Marie‘s Apple Pie Sandwiches at Sandwich Surprise
Betty Ann‘s Calamansi Pie at Asian In America
Grace‘s Easy Apple Pie with Lard Crust at HapaMama
Jill‘s Guava and Cream Cheese Empanadas at Eating My Words
Lisa G‘s Sweet Ricotta Noodle Pie at Monday Morning Cooking Club
Lisa K‘s Great-Grandmama’s Chocolate Pie at The Little Good Ride
Linda‘s Biscoff Banana & Pear Galette at Spicebox Travels
Lucy‘s Sweet Potato Custard Pie at A Cook and Her Books 
Mai‘s Caramel Apple Pie Sundae at Cooking in the Fruit Bowl
Margaret‘s Cushaw (Squash) Pie at Tea and Scones, Too
Nancie‘s Edna Lewis’s Tyler Pie at Nancie McDermott
Naomi‘s Huckleberry Pie Ice-Cream at The Gastro Gnome
Rebecca‘s Summer-Fall Hand Pies at GrongarBlog
Sara‘s Herb Pie from Ottolenghi and Tamimi’s “Jerusalem” at Three Clever Sisters
~~~

Cumin-kissed sweet potato soup



Sweet Potato Bisque with Cumin by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books


It’s hotter than H-E-double hockey sticks outside, and I’m in the mood for soup. Since the highs are in the upper 90s with Code Orange smog alerts, we venture out in the early mornings and evenings and soak up chilled, conditioned indoor air through the heat of the day. It may not be cool enough indoors for a sweater, but a bowl of creamy, light soup seems just right for lunch.

In honor of the Code Orange smog alert, (and I may be making that up, because it reminds me of the terror alerts, so I’ll just say that the outside air is bad), I made a creamy vegetable soup with roasted sweet potatoes, scented with cumin and finished with plain, non-fat yogurt. I really want to call this soup a bisque, even though a proper bisque uses a seafood broth. The milky, peachy hue is reminiscent of a shrimp bisque.

This soup comes together easily, especially if you use leftover roasted sweet potatoes. When dinner’s in the oven, I’ll pull out a few potatoes, prick them with a fork, place them on a baking tray (or in a foil packet) and let them cook alongside the meal, 30 minutes in a moderate oven usually does the trick. The cooked potatoes can be wrapped up and refrigerated for a few days before creating this soup.

Sweet potato bisque with cumin


The cumin gives it a little zip, but if you’re not a fan, just leave it out and perhaps experiment with something else from the herb garden or spice rack. Thyme? Cilantro? Lemon verbena?


1 lb. sweet potatoes

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 large shallot, minced

3 cups water

1/2 vegetable bouillon cube

1 teaspoon cumin

1 cup non-fat plain yogurt

1. Preheat oven to 350. Pierce sweet potatoes with fork or knife and place on baking sheet. Bake at 350 for 30 to 45 minutes, until tender. Test for doneness by inserting a knife or fork into the tuber – it’s done when completely tender. Remove from oven and let cool enough to handle.

2. Meanwhile, in a saucepan, heat olive oil and sautee shallot until tender. Add water, bouillon cube and cumin and bring to a boil. Remove from heat.

3. Squeeze sweet potato flesh into bowl of a food processor fitted with blade. Process for 30 seconds, to create a smooth puree. Gradually add seasoned broth to puree, processing until smooth. Add yogurt and process for about 10 seconds. Adjust seasoning and serve. Garnish with fresh herbs – I used parsley from my porch garden.

I used vegetable bouillon, one of my favorite shortcut tricks to add flavor to soups. If you have homemade vegetable or chicken broth, go right ahead and use that. Water will work fine, too.

Text and images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.

Sweet potato gingerbread with cream cheese frosting

If you're like me, you may have some extra sweet potatoes lurking in the vegetable drawer. They didn't make it into the Thanksgiving sweet potato casserole or maybe you regularly bake sweet potatoes and have some leftover baked sweet potato on hand. This cake is a great way to use them up. Just like banana bread takes care of surplus bananas, yielding a tender, spicy cake, this gingerbread uses sweet potato mash to add moisture and flavor to a tasty autumn treat. This makes a nice afterschool snack with a glass of milk or a mug of hot tea.

 

Sweet Potato Gingerbread with Cream Cheese Frosting

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar

3 large eggs

1 cup baked, mashed sweet potato, at room temperature

1 tablespoon Grandma's molasses (or equivalent mild molasses, don't use blackstrap)

1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda


1. Preheat oven to 350. Place rack in center of oven. Lightly grease a 9-inch square baking pan.

2. In a medium bowl, combine brown sugar, oil, and eggs and using a mixer, whisk until the sugar is dissolved. Add sweet potato, molasses, grated ginger, salt, cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg. Add the flour and baking powder and soda to the batter and combine just until blended.

3. Pour batter into pan, using a spatula to evenly spread the batter. Bake until about 45 minutes (I use convection and it was spot on, 45 minutes.) A toothpick inserted in the center will come out quite nearly clean.

4. Let cake cool while you make:

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 (8 oz.) package1/3 less fat cream cheese
1/2 stick (2 ounces) unsalted butter, softened

2 cups confectioner's sugar (10X)

1 teaspoon vanilla

1. In a mixer, combine the butter and cream cheese and whip until smooth. Gradually, on low speed, add the powdered sugar until the frosting reaches the desired consistency. I like this frosting soft and melty.

2. Spread the frosting on the cool cake. Can sit out for a few hours, but put leftovers in the fridge. Subsequent servings from the fridge can be zapped for 10 seconds or so to remove the refrigerator chill.