Pumpkins drying on a sunny Swiss veranda in October

We harvest 20-40 pumpkins from our Alpine garden every October, dry them for a month on the warm stones of the veranda to harden them off, then store them in a cool dark area for winter eating. We grow them at 1,100 metres altitude, on dirt mixed with a good dose of the neighboring farmer’s cow dung. These are happy pumpkins!

They are always lovely, lasting about three to four months, but the best is always the first one we cut and use in pumpkin pie. I made one for Scottish friends David and Evelyn from Geneva last weekend, and promised that rather than just sharing the instructions/recipe, I would post them here.

My recipe is an adaptation of my old recipes from the US, for Thanksgiving, but with Swiss ingredients and fresh pumpkin, something I never had access to when I lived in the States.

One small or half of a medium-sized pumpkin like those in the photo is needed for a pie. I use a cleaver to cut them into quarters and cook them in the pressure cooker, usually a couple hours before I need them. If you’re buying at the supermarket, you”ll need a couple good slices. Better: buy whole or slice pumpkin from a farmers market.

One of the secrets of a great pie is a perfect crust, which takes practice. This is why I try to bake pies regularly, to stay in practice. And because they are so delicious!

Pumpkin pie, using fresh or stored pumpkin

pie shell

1 cup white flour (farine fleur)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup shortening with some butter, Astra 10 is good as it is 10% butter
(note: this hardens in the refrigerator, where it should be stored once opened, so take it out 15 minutes before you need it. The Migros equivalent stays soft)
4-6 tablespoons cold water

If you’re already a dough pro, just read the words in bold. If  you’re a novice, the details should help.

Stir salt into flour. Use a fork or pastry cutter to cut in the shortening until half the dough is the size of peas and the rest is larger balls.

Using a fork to toss the dough from underneath, sprinkle the water one tablespoon at a time to dampen the dough. It should be sticky enough to hold together without crumbling, but if you add too much water it becomes gooey.

Using  your hands, form into a ball.

Sprinkle 1/4 cup of flour on the working surface, flatten the ball using the palm of your hands, not your fingers, until it is 1/2 inch or a couple centimetres thick. Roll out with a rolling pin, from the center, until the dough is about an inch or 2-3 cm larger than your pie pan. I run a large plastic spatula under the dough once or twice while rolling it out, to make sure it’s not sticking to the surface. Sprinkle flour on the work surface as needed to keep the dough from sticking.

Pick up the dough by draping half of it over the rolling pin, which makes it easier to transfer into the pie pan: place the rolling pin over the middle of the pan and your dough will be in the right place.

Filling

Mix, in order given:

• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• 110 grams sugar, preferably light brown sugar but Muscado from Swiss supermarkets works
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon powdered ginger, or very finely slivered fresh ginger
• 340 grams freshly cooked pumpkin: 20 minutes in a pressure cooker or 30 minutes boiled in small amount of water
• 1-2/3 cups condensed milk: 2 tubes, available in Swiss supermarkets

Pour into pastry shell. Bake 15 minutes at 210C/425F. Reduce heat to 190C/350F and bake 25-30 minutes more. If the top or crust brown too quickly, lay a sheet of cooking foil loosely over the top.

Check for doneness by inserting a sharp knife into the center. It should come out clean.

Cool on a rack. Best served cold, accompanied by a light drizzle of cream or a spoonful of good quality plain yogurt.

Enjoy!

Gooseberries on a freezer tray: leave for 2 hours, then top and tail easily

Here’s a shortcut a wine grape grower’s wife shared with me, for topping and tailing gooseberries. We use them in jam and pies, both of which I love, but it’s always seemed unfair to me that you first get pricked by the thorns and then you have the tedious job of topping and tailing them.

The trick is to place them on a freezer tray for 2 hours immediately after picking them. The bits on the ends break off easily when frozen, and you’ll save about 20 minutes of work per pie. Better yet, you need slightly less sugar in the jam because freezing the berries concentrates their own sugar, in much the way cryoextraction is used to make sweet ice wines.

A word of caution: don’t refreeze! Use them right after topping and tailing.

My son just graduated from college, from UBC in Vancouver. What better way to celebrate his homecoming than with yet another pie, our standard way for the past four years of welcoming him home to Switzerland from abroad. The rhubarb in the garden turned out to be exactly right, and when I asked if that would be acceptable for a pie I had an enthusiastic yes!

Pie in our house means the slightly salty American variety, a crust made from scratch, rolled out by hand.

Notes on ingredients: I keep my shortning in the refrigerator. Migros brand shortning is softer and easier to use, but Astra 10, which I buy at the Coop, is 10% butter, which I prefer. I take it out to warm up slightly, 15-20 minutes before I need it. My brown sugar is the soft variety from the US or UK, which you can find in several specialty food shops. Cooking butter or beurre cuisine is clarified butter, easy to find in supermarkets.

Rhubarb straight from the garden

• cut it just before you use it, to avoid woodiness developing
• make sure the stalks you cut are all about the same thickness and choose the reddest ones
• cut them off at the base of the plant and lop off that giant leaf at the top, leaving it on the ground if your clump is in a hidden corner of the garden, as the leaves are rich in nutrients
• try to select stalks from different parts of the rhubarb clump so it gets more light and air
• if you see any stalks about to flower or that are flowering, cut them off – the plant will give you rhubarb all summer if you keep it from putting its energy into flowers.

Preparing rhubarb in the kitchen

Wash the rhubarb but don’t scrape off the strings if you’ve just picked it.

Cut into pieces about 1/2 inch or 1cm long.

Sprinkle with:

1 cup (250 ml measuring cup) of sugar and 1 T brown sugar if you want it tart, or 1.5 cups sugar if you want it sweeter
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup (60 ml) flour
1 T butter, slivered.

Toss gently to mix.

Perfect American pie crust

Set aside the rhubarb, and prepare a two-crust pastry:

2 cups (500 ml) white flour
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup (160 ml) shortening
4-6 T cold water, more in drier areas such as the mountains.

Cut with a fork until some of the dough is the size of peas, the rest slightly larger lumps.

Sprinkle with 4-6 T of cold water, one spoonful at a time, tossing lightly and quickly from underneath with a fork to mix.

Note that the less you handle pie pastry the better.

Make a ball, which should be slightly sticky to the touch.

Use the heel of your hand to flatten it to a circle that is about 4 inches or 10cm in diameter.

Roll it out on a flour-covered surface, always rolling lightly from the middle of the circle, trying to maintain a round shape.

Dough should be about an inch or 2.5cm larger than your pie pan, which should have sloping sides.

Fill the crust with the rhubarb mix, to just higher than the top of the pan.

Roll out the second crust and cover the mix, turning under the edges.

Crimp by pushing the crust up against an index finger, moving around the edge of the pie.

Alternatively, cut strips and weave them for a lattice-top pie (see photos).

Sprinkle a few drops of milk on the top crust, then a couple pinches of sugar over the crust, to give it a crisp finish.

Bake at 210C for 10 minutes, lower heat to 185C and bake 25-30 minutes.

Crust should be golden, inside bubbling gently.

Cool for an hour before eating.

The hardest part about baking a garden-fresh rhubarb pie is letting it cool!

The menu includes pumpkin soup with pumpkin seed oil, apple and walnut salad with cranberry vinaigrette, roast turkey and giblet sauce with fig stuffing, mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream and vanilla ice cream for CHF 55, not including drinks.

The Thanksgiving meal will be served from 12:00 to 14:30 and from 19:00 to 21:30 on Thursday only.

Reservations are recommended.

The perfect fruit pie recipe that can be adapted for use with a wide variety of fruits. Photo courtesy of Rick Jaworski.

Stephanie Jaworski’s methods for making fruit tarts are perfect for the fruits that are now in season in the Lake Geneva region. What’s interesting is that she presents a method that is versatile and can be applied to various fruits. It is a sort of mix and match approach, which leaves you room for creativity.

In addition, the seasonal fruits she uses often coincide with those of the Lake Geneva region, for example the berries in the Geneva region and the apricots from hotter regions such as the Valais. Stephanie’s recipes are a mix of British, Canadian and American influences, which also makes them interesting.