thanksgiving pie politics...

This Thanksgiving I endeavored to make the pumpkin and apple pies that would follow the meal. This already was cause for a significant amount of consternation as it would mean that my grandmother wasn't making the dessert and it would be, by default, "just not THAT good". That was fine. I've dealt with this pressure before and I would have to put up with it again. I'm used to it.

To change things up a bit, I decided that it might be interesting to do a bit of a variation on the classic pies by topping the pumpkin pie with Italian meringue, and mixing in a few pears with the apples in the apple pie. Only a small part of me wanted to do this just to enrage my family of die-hard traditionalists. Maybe not that small...

I got the idea to top off the pumpkin filling with meringue from an old post by Tartelette and a desire to use my brand new kitchen torch for the very first time. I doubled the recipe for the pumpkin filling given by Tartelette, and used Jamie Oliver's recipe for pie dough, spiking it with a pinch of cinnamon to give it a little bit of extra flavour. That was all pretty standard. The dough rolled out nicely and the filling baked nicely after about 40 minutes in the oven (instead of the recommended 20). The interesting part came when I made the meringue. Now I have made French meringue for pavlovas and individual meringues, and I have made Swiss meringue for buttercreams, but I have never attempted (or seen the need for) Italian meringue. Bringing water and sugar to a boil and then up to 245 degrees (F) while beating the egg whites into peaks seemed a bit extreme. I mean, you need a candy thermometer to pull it off and meringue is supposed to be simple! Needless to say, I was a little bit aprehensive going into this.

But the desire to finally put to use my fancy new kitchen torch spurred me on.

And I was stunned at how easy it was.

I admit, it was a little bit annoying having to wait for the sugar syrup to get hot enough (it had to reach the "soft ball" stage), but once I poured it into the beaten egg whites, you could see the meringue taking shape almost instantly. The hot syrup cooked the eggs and it became a big, soft, fluffy, mass. Kind of like a soft marshmallow. And it tasted delicious. Absolutely decadent. I plopped the fluffy whiteness onto the cooked pumpkin pie, and then played with it until it looked just the way I wanted.

Then I got to fire up my torch and caramelize the edges. It smelled just like roasting marshmallows. Tasted like it too...
The reviews for this pie were mixed. I liked it a lot. It was traditional enough that it still had that same spicy pumpkin taste with a nice flaky crust, but the added soft meringue made whipping cream unnecessary and made the dish nice and light. Others, however, were not as keen on it as I was (my sister refused to eat the meringue portion of the pie in an effort to boycott change).
I thought the apple pie was pretty good too... I ate a huge piece of it for breakfast this morning.