Dreaming of Fall Food

Dreaming of Fall Food

The real New Year begins in the fall, not on any specific date, but you know it when it's here. You know it from the cool nights and hot-but-not-too-hot days. You know it from kids going back to school and sample ballots and fall catalogs arriving in the mail. You know it from leaves turning and from apples and chestnuts and pomegranates and persimmons in the farmer's market. But you know it especially from the apples. There are so many kinds, and just so many, period. They speak of plenty.

My ritual fall harvest feast--which I have by myself--is the first perfect apple with cheddar cheese and red wine. I'm not particular about the wine, as long as it's cheap, because that's my rule. And you can substitute peanut butter for the cheese if you want. But the apple has to be just right, and in the fall it finally is--crisp and tart and sweet and crunchy, usually a golden delicious or, even better, a pink lady, queen of apples with her startling white flesh.

In the fall it’s suddenly no longer too hot to cook, and I realize that I'm starving. Not that I start actually cooking. But I start fantasizing about it.

For several falls in succession I've been fantasizing about a variation on pumpkin pie that I call pumpkin flan with piecrust cookies. It's a recipe born of a problem: to make a piecrust that stays in one piece you need to use enough water to make the dough stick together. But too much water makes the crust tough. My innovation--keep in mind this is all in my mind, we're not talking about actual cooking here--anyway my innovation is that you use and a little more fat and a little less water, and the dough rolls out all crazy and messy with tears and fissures, but it doesn't matter because once it's rolled out you just cut out little rectangles, sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar and bake them in a hot, hot oven for about seven minutes, and they're wonderful. That's the piecrust cookies part.

The pumpkin flan part is just pumpkin pie filling (follow the recipe on the Libby’s can) cooked in custard cups lined with caramelized sugar. You could give the caramelized sugar a ginger kick by boiling about half a cup of water with slices of fresh ginger, taking out the ginger, adding about two cups of sugar, then cooking until caramelized. Or you could put cardamom in the sugar. Anyway, you do the caramelized sugar however you want, swirl it in the custard cups, then add the pumpkin filling and cook in a water bath for about an hour. Then you eat the pumpkin flans with the piecrust cookies on the side. And you are completely happy.

I've been having this fantasy for so long that actually cooking it might ruin it. But since I've set out to write about my fantasy pumpkin flan, I think I also have to cook the darn thing. So I’ll do that and report back.

Results: Before I get into the actual results, I have to explain something about my history with piecrust. I used to make wonderful piecrust. My mom and I were piecrust cultists, horribly competitive. And now I don't know how to do it anymore. Perhaps it's age, the inevitable coarsening of character, the loss of a light touch--and a light touch is everything in piecrust. But that makes no sense because my mom still makes good piecrust. She wins.

Anyway, the piecrust cookies were awful. I used butter because that was what I had on hand. I no longer keep lard and Crisco around as staples, and it's very sad. Butter is wrong for piecrust. I know this. And I used it anyway. But the pumpkin flans were a little too sweet what with all the caramelized sugar. Next time I'll cut the sugar in the filling to balance out the sweetness in the caramel. Even so, the flans were pretty good. Almost as good as pumpkin pie.