Monday, November 24, 2008

My, my, sweet potato pie

I'm working the 2 Party system for Thanksgiving: Party at my sister's for lunch, party at my parents for dinner. I'm assigned the green bean casserole for lunch and volunteered for sweet potato pie for dinner. I'm not a huge fan of the green bean casserole. But I understand other people are, and accept it as one of those things I have to tolerate at the holidays. Like football.

Why am I bringing sweet potato pie? Because I like it. I like it enough to say "Forget you, yankee. Eat mincemeat" to anyone who doesn't like it. And even though I grew up in Texas, I never had sweet potato pie until I was almost 30. And then I wept for all the Thanksgivings that I had wasted on pecan pie. But even though I've been trying to make up lost time since then, and there's a lot of pie gone under the bridge. I've never actually made one myself.

So, I'm cruising the food sites looking for a likely candidate. And may I say, some people have some very strage ideas of what constitutes sweet potato pie. Rachel Ray adds a banana. I know. It's appalling. I knew the bitch was crazy, but I didn't think she was that crazy. And I saw several recipes that called for 4 eggs, or more, for some sort of custardy filling. And y'all are just nasty. If your sweet potato pie wiggles to the touch, it. is. wrong. Shame on you. Shame!

But I found one that seems to balance the egg to sweet potatoe ratio. And calls for what I consider a healthy amount of spices. I'm going to go off the reservation a little and do a nut crust, instead of the regular. I've got a gluten sensitive guest. So, I'm going to violate my own purist credo here. But not giving a guest a raging case of IBS is the hallmark of a courteous cook, in my humble opinion.

2 comments:

WashingtonGardener said...

Do NOT, I repeat DO NOT go to Rachel Ray for ANY dessert tips, that gal has NO idea how to bake or deal with any sweet stuff.
For good Sweet Potato Pie go for the Soul Food cookbooks - thi sone looks decent: http://www.soulfoodandsoutherncooking.com/sweet-potato-pie.html
I can get SPP year-round here at any soul food joint or even at my nearby Giant (where it is suprisingly decent) so I have not made it myself either.

BTW Pecan Pie? We always do Pumpkin in our family - maybe add an apple one too. Pecan t o me is much later in the season - Xmas or after.

FirePhrase said...

Rachel Ray isn't my favorite. But I did get a surprisingly good frozen mojito recipe off her once, so I took a crazy chance at looking at her sweet potato pie recipe. Did NOT pay off. Banana? Still don't get it.

Pecan pie is in the regular rotation with my family at T-Day. I haven't been able to eat it in years. Kind of makes my teeth hurt. But the rest of the fam is die-hard loyal. And my Mom has insisted on making the bastard of all pies - pumpkin/mincemeat. Ugh. But she who makes the pie, makes the call. So I get what I want this year.

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