For Thanksgiving this year, we had the usual feast with a very small group of family – which meant there were a LOT of leftovers. Except for pumpkin pie. Lanakila Kitchen’s annual turkey fundraiser included a perfectly cooked 22 lb turkey with homemade stuffing, gravy, corn on the cob, sweetbread rolls, and seasoned roast potatoes, and one little 8″ pumpkin pie. Hardly enough pie to feed the family and nothing left to give away.

This made pie become an almost obsession for Aunty. I really wanted to have a big piece of pumpkin pie – and pal Kay’s picture of Art’s pumpkin pie started a quest to bake one of my own.

I started with my mother’s pie crust recipe. She used to make the BEST lemon chiffon pie from scratch, mixing the chiffon part into the lemon pudding for a wonderful light texture.  Her crust was divine.  MmmmMmmmMmmm.

She would refrigerate the knives and bowl – to ensure the crust is flakey.

Grannie’s Pie Crust (makes 2 very small or 1 large pie crust)
2 cups sifted flour
3/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup shortening
4-6 TBS cold water

Put sifted flour and salt in a large mixing bowl.  Cut in the shortening with 2 cold steel butter knives until sort of mixed.  Add cold water, a tablespoon at a time and mix with spatula until dough forms. Roll into 2 balls. Flatten out with rolling pin. Drape over pie crust, trim, and form ridges along edge. Bake in a 450° oven for 15 minutes.  Cool.  I used just one dough ball and refrigerated the other for another pie another day.

The pumpkin puree can called for cans of evaporated milk – which I did not have.  But, because daughter #2 loves to put sweet condensed milk in her drinks, I did have cans of that, so found an easy recipe from Baking Bites.  I made some changes with the spices and also in how I cooked it at a consistent lower temperature for a longer time (because it was easier).

Sweetened Condensed Milk Pumpkin Pie
(or Four Ingredient Pumpkin Pie)

1 15-oz can pumpkin puree (approx 1 3/4 cups)
1 14-oz can sweetened condensed milk
2 large eggs, room temperature
2 tsp pumpkin spice ( I used 1/2 tsp each of ground cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger)
2 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

1 tsp worchestershire sauce (update on 2nd pie)

Preheat oven to 325F.
In a large bowl, whisk together pumpkin puree, sweetened condensed milk, eggs and pumpkin pie spice. Add in vanilla, if using. Pour into cooled crust.
Bake for 60-70 minutes, or until the pie filling is set and jiggles only slightly when the pan is jiggled.

My first pumpkin pie

How was it?  Not sure.  The crust was really flakey, which I like a lot.  The pumpkin filling was “meh” because I baked it for 60 minutes and by the time I checked on it, it didn’t jiggle at all.  Overcooked it.  This recipe was double enough for an 8″ aluminum pie pan so I will bake another one soon and keep the cooking time down.

Still, I would consider it a success because it is edible and tastes like a pumpkin pie.  And maybe it was easy, for a person who doesn’t really cook.

Update three days later

I backed another pie with the other half of the crust dough (me thinks I need to find a marble slab for rolling ease) and I added worchestershire sauce to the pie filling, just to try a zapper.  I also didn’t bake it for an hour – just 45 minutes in the oven – and it still was past jiggling.

However, I think it was a success!!!  Aunty can bake pies!

Aunty likes the Korean kim chee from Costco – it used to be Choonga and now it is called Joonga.  The big squarish bottle with the green plastic cover.  SO ono but TOO much.   I eat it with rice or saimin, or sometimes I would make it with spam – Ann Corum’s recipe.  But I can’t finish most of the bottle so it starts to get old and more potent and sits in the refrigerator until I guiltily throw it away after a few weeks.  So wasteful.

Jalna did a post about putting it in hamburger.  It looked really good and I still have to try it.

Recently I was watching a new Korean drama on Netflix called Mystic Pop Up Bar.  It is a cute show about a punished shaman’s daughter who has to save 100,000 people because of what she did 300 years ago.  Anywho, one of the characters shared a recipe with her using old kim chee.  It goes like this:

Rinse ripened kim chee.  (I also squeezed it out so it was like a big golf ball).  Chop it up finely and add shoyu and sesame oil.  Plop it on noodles and pour anchovy sauce over the bowl.

Sounds good and easy, doesn’t it?  So I made it tonight, but I didn’t have anchovy sauce.  (What is that anyway?)

It was karai, sour, and sweetish.  Strange but very delicious!  Perfect for a hot bowl of noodles.  And good for my digestion because kim chee is full of probiotics.  So glad to find another good kim chee recipe, especially for old kim chee.  No more waste, woo hoo!

Aunty doesn’t cook BUT Hawaiian Airlines has some neat local articles and one of them was chef Wade Ueoka sharing a recipe.  I used to get take out orders from him at the Farmer’s Market way before he and his wife opened the popular MW Restaurant.  That restaurant has unreal fancy food and desserts to die for.  However, truth to tell, I liked the homestyle cooking from his humble tent better because I like simple and cheap.

The Hawaiian Airline’s site has other local recipes and even videos.  I liked this recipe because the ingredients are what I have in the refrigerator.  Chicken, carrots, daikon, onions, ginger.  But it is not what I expected when the title said “shoyu chicken”.  I figured shoyu chicken is easy – chicken, ginger, shoyu and sugar – so I checked it out, watched the video, thought to myself, that looks like easy Nishime, and tried it tonight.

And you know what?  It was good – tasted healthy, light – and was easy!  I like how he cut the carrots.  I like how he shows us how he puts the chicken in and the other stuff and then takes the chicken out to chop.  I added shiitake mushrooms because I like shiitake mushrooms.  I also added tsukoshi (little bit) hondashi.

A really good cooking lesson.  I know he doesn’t know me, but I want to shout out, “Tanks, eh!” to chef Wade and Hawaiian Airlines.  He made a cook out of me!