I was always skeptical of sweet potato pie.  I’m not sure why.  I’d say it was the idea of vegetables in my dessert, but I got over that for the delicious Indian dessert made with carrots cooked down in milk, gajar ka halva*.  I had it at a few different restaurants, still just trying a bite of my wife’s pie selection, since I didn’t want to commit to a whole slice.  I liked it.  It usually had a blend of spices similar to pumpkin pie, and a texture, well, a lot like pumpkin pie.  Some were bland, some were dry, and most had horrible crusts.

Pie crust is hard to get perfect all the time.  I’ve made some really good ones and some less-than-stellar examples of crust, but if nothing else they all tasted good.  The crust that went into this pie was a simple 3-2-1 ratio (as codified by Michael Ruhlman in his book, appropriately titled Ratio) of flour to butter to water.  I won’t go into the gory details of pie crust particulars as there are plenty of other people who can do it very well, like local food lover Anna Barnes in her Smile Politely piece Perfecting Pumpkin Pie.  Ruhlman also gives a lot of great tips in Ratio, and if you love to cook, I highly recommend this book.

The pie crust was initially made for Halloween night, as my wife and I dressed up as Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd from the 2007 Tim Burton musical film.  If you haven’t seen the movies or seen the stage musical, Mrs. Lovett is known for making little meat pies (possibly the worst pies in London) out of Mr. Todd’s unfortunate customers.  Not being a demon barber myself, I made cute little apple pies perfect for two people (or one glutton).  I didn’t remember to take pictures of those pies, but they were cute and delicious (probably the best pies in CU).  If nothing else, we won the costume contest at the party we went to, thanks to my wife’s expert costume-making skills.

I froze the rest of the pie dough, until one day I found myself in possession of two largish sweet potatoes that I had gotten from the farmers’ market.  For whatever reason, sweet potato pie sprung into my mind and I scoured the web for recipes.  I rarely give about.com much attention, but this time it seemed like the best recipe I could find was there, titled Mississippi Sweet Potato Pie.  I sliced the sweet potatoes and boiled them until soft, then (mostly) followed the recipe.  I reduced the sugar, increased the cinnamon, and added a little bit of some of my favorite fall spices like ginger and cloves.  I mixed it up with my immersion blender and got my crusts ready.

The recipe says two pies, but I didn’t believe it.  I think I was just in denial because I could only find one pie pan.  I made one pie and had some of the filling left over.  It wasn’t quite enough for a whole deep pie, but it was enough for a tart!  Thankfully, there was more than enough pie dough to go around, and so it went.  The pie turned out delicious and creamy.  It was moist and sweet, but lots of flavors coming through from the spices.  We’re still working on the last of the pie (which was unanimously loved by all in the house), and the tart will be sold tomorrow at our daughter’s school in their fine arts bake sale.  Since I mentioned it earlier, there’s already at least one person interested.  Here’s a sneak preview of what the buyer can expect.

* I know you might have been thinking pumpkin pie, but pumpkin’s actually a fruit!  I’m sure I didn’t know that as a child, but hey, it was covered in whipped cream.

I’ve been thinking about this new “molecular gastronomy” concept for a while, and have wanted to take a taste of what it can teach me about food. So many times you see very complicated or very expensive preparations that were beyond my resources. I saw a post on Michael Laiskonis’s blog, Workbook, that convinced me I could at least try something that I’ve seen many chefs do.

The basic idea that I got caught up on was creating little balls of something that tasted good. In this case, the subject is orange juice. Chef Laiskonis’s version seemed so simple, yet so effective. I like orange juice, I could get the necessary ingredients. I’ll give it a try. An image of his little pearls, atop a star anise-infused milk chocolate cream bon bon, is shown above. I would recommend reading his post about the bon bons, titled Star Power, to learn more about the other flavor pairings he made.

The pearls are created when you have a viscous liquid dropped into cold oil. The viscosity in this case is created by agar agar and locust bean gum. Agar agar is derived from seaweed. It’s similar to gelatin, but has a few differences. First, it needs to be heated much hotter to dissolve into liquids, but once thickened, it can withstand heat (gelatin melts). It can also be grainy, instead of silky smooth like gelatin. Locust bean gum (from carob seeds) is also used for thickening and gelling.

I halved the recipe from the original Workbook formula. After lots of measuring and mixing, I had a slightly thick liquid in front of me that I needed to drop into some cold oil. I couldn’t find a syringe, so I scavenged around and found in my daughter’s science kit a pipette (similar to the plastic ones seen on Wikipedia). I tried to widen the opening, but it still made very small drops.

Things were looking pretty good at this point. Once I had a bunch of those little beads at the bottom, I drained and rinsed them. Then I had a spoonful of them to try.

They looked a lot like the original. I was still a little skeptical about what they would taste and feel like. I tried some, and they tasted of pure orange juice, and the texture was soft, but each pearl was well-defined. It’s something that I think could be put to good use elsewhere, but not much more than a bite or two.

I continued with making more little droplets. The pipette I had was just too small to proceed at a good pace, the mixture was already setting and I had only done a few spoonfuls.

I poured the rest of the orange goo into a small dish, covered it, and set it in the fridge. This morning, I unwrapped and plated myself an orange juice breakfast gelée. It was just as delicious, soft but had a slightly coarse texture. Not as appetizing as a soft, smooth gelatin version would be.