55/365: Pumpkin Pie

I know, Thanksgiving was two weeks ago and it's still three weeks till Christmas, but tonight I made a pumpkin pie--from a pumpkin. Novel concept, eh? Two weeks ago at the cx race, I was talking with Lo about cooking and she said she had grown pumpkins this year. I told her I would love to have one and she brought it to me last Sunday. Now, I can only remember having pumpkin pie made with fresh pumpkin once. I remember my mom peeling and cooking the pumpkin and saying she couldn't taste the difference and it wasn't worth the work. It's cold though, and whenever it's cold I move into a cooking and baking mode. Besides, how else would one spend a Saturday night. (yes, I know I'm lame.)

So the process began with cutting the pumpkin in half and cleaning the seeds. As you can see, I got my jack-o-latern scraper out for the event. Then you peel and and cut it into small pieces. Now, you can roast it in the oven whole and scoop it out of the peel, but I've burned myself more than once doing that with butternut squash. I then steamed the pieces. I had to break it into five batches because the pumpkin was that large. After it came out of the steamer it was into the food processor. I ended up with 14 cups of pumpkin puree. I froze all but three cups because I really don't need that many pies around my house at the same time.

The hardest part of this whole process was finding a recipe that called for fresh pumpkin. Anymore the recipes just call for a 16 ounce can. I know that stuff is uber pressurized, so I wanted to find a true measure. I found a great website that gave a great recipe, with modifications if you wanted. I ended up having enough filling for a pie, plus two small dishes without a crust. The flavor was slightly different than pies I've made from canned pumpkin. It wasn't as sweet and seemed more mild. The filling itself seemed lighter to me as well.

The whole process wasn't as much work as I expected. It was messier than using canned pumpkin, and dirtied many more dishes. But it's something I'll do again.