Happy Fall becoming Winter! This is a repost to get everyone in the mood for baking and the holidays to come-if you’re not already there!
Photo by Natalia Y on Unsplash
It was five o’clock in the morning and there was a beautiful orange pumpkin waiting for me on the kitchen table. It was my yearly ritual to buy pumpkins for myself, my son and daughter just before Halloween. The ceremonial selecting and purchasing of the cultivars; that Liberty Hyde Bailey would have been proud of, officially issued in the fall season. Once they were collected from the local organic market, we would precede into the holy gates of holiday land. It was a season lasting three months with four holidays in a row. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. It was a time of light and joy filled with giving and love. All of my favorite things in life.
Sometimes we had a carving party to create Jack O’ Lanterns and sometimes we did not. This year we decided not to carve them, but to save them to make my original recipe for Chai Pie. Chai Pie was an organic pumpkin pie with selected seasonings from a recipe for the celebrated east indian beverage, Chai. I was raised on a traditional recipe of pumpkin pie that was delicious and utilized a famous brand of processed filling. As the years passed times changed and people were embracing natural foods and a healthy lifestyle. I happened to discover cooking with a pressure cooker during this time. I wanted to use real pumpkin to make my pie, but the process of extracting the hard meat from the core of the pumpkin didn’t seem practical. One thought led to another and the pressure cooker materialized within my mind as the solution to extracting the precious core of the orange, round, squash varietal.
So here I was, in the darkness of the early morning hours, poised with my butcher knife ready to quarter the pumpkins and submit the quarters of thick, orange, stringy flesh to the pressure cooker for a thorough steam bath. So I chopped and steamed. An earthy fragrance filled the cold, still air of my kitchen and provided an organic steam heat. My lungs filled with the nutritious air and a sense of calmness and well-being descended over my groggy person. I remembered reading somewhere that pumpkin was an aphrodisiac and responsible for the typically high birthrates in August.Thinking of this made me smile and I continued to steam away. Once the quarters were steamed and scraped and the blender filled with vibrant,steaming hot pumpkin flesh, I tipped in half a cup of evaporated milk and then it was time to mix the spices.
I loved the task of measuring and mixing the exotic spices of this dish. Each spice represented a slice of world geography. I was suddenly traveling the world without setting a foot out my front door. My plan was to mix in a teaspoon of each of the five worldly spices.
Photo by Agnieszka Kowalczyk on Unsplash
Cinnamon was first. It was the spice of kings. It was bold, luxurious and warming. Cinnamon was grown in Sri Lanka; the pearl of the Indian Ocean. A land of ancient fortresses and prehistoric mysteries.
Then it was Nutmeg’s turn. It was nutty, sweet and soft. Nutmeg was a spice that harmonized with both sweet and savory foods. It was known in the plant world as Myristica Fragrans and it was grown on the island of Grenada in the West Indies. Grenada was a land of windswept white beaches and clear blue waters. The wild coastline bathed in warm caribbean seas.
The third spice was ginger. Ginger was spicy, fragrant and healing. It was known throughout the world for it’s healing properties. It soothed the gastrointestinal lining and contributed to the blood stream’s immunity. It was mostly grown in China, but the highest quality of ginger was from Australia. Ginger was often considered a root, but was actually an underground stem. It was a funny and lovely spice full of juxtapositions.
My next two ingredients were cloves and cardamon and my favorites. These spices were the most fragrant and aromatic of the recipe.
Cloves were imported from the Spice Islands. The Spice Islands were a land of pirate coves and clear blue lagoons. The location of the spice islands and the rare spices found there, was carefully guarded by the Dutch for centuries. Cloves were the aromatic flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae, Syzygium Aromaticum. They had been used in indigenous medicine the world over for centuries. An essential oil was derived from cloves to create a pain killer often used in dentistry. Cloves were also utilized to improve the digestion and move food through the digestive tract in a very pleasant and natural way.
Now it was time for cardamon. One of the world’s most expensive spices; it was grown in Guatemala. It was used around the world in delicious recipes created by the people of India, Scandinavia, The Middle East and Asia. Cardamon was mixed with coffee, tea, sweet breads and rice to accent savory dishes as well as sweet dishes. In our country, cardamon was used a breath freshener in chewing gum.
My morning world tour was complete; a teaspoon of each lovely spice was tipped in and mixed with salt and a cup of cane sugar.
This mixture went into the blender with three eggs and I let the blender mix away. Seconds later everything was perfectly blended and poured into two pie crusts. The pies were initially baked at high heat for 10 minutes to set the base and then the heat decreased to the range of 250 degrees to 300 degrees for the next 40 minutes.
Chai Pie was rustic and delicious. It was a lovely pie that could take one around the world in one bite. It warmed the belly for the season of cold weather to come and prepared us for the coming celebrations of love and light.