Food

I recently staggered onto this blog, One Hungry Chef . It's penned by my beloved's friend's husband, an American chef living in Sydney. And it's great....especially because the latest entry is pumpkin pie!

Pumpkin serves as a cultural litmus test. In New Zealand, the humble pumpkin is treated to the same ignominy as the rest of the vegetables that can't run fast enough; boiled to death, or "roasted" (read: fried) in three inches of the dripping kept in the tin under the sink.

Hangi'd pumpkin is about the only decent kiwi treatment for pumpkin, but that's because;

A) it's served with a mountain of greasy hangi'd pork, and;

B) you've already dug a man-sized hole in the ground.

Europeans are slightly more discerning about pumpkin. My predilection for the vegetable was met with a mixture of bemusement and disdain. An Italian friend who came to stay with us in NZ informed me rather snippily that pumpkin was eaten in Italy, but only by animals and immigrants. This could be because he was trying to peel one with a potato peeler at the time, with what can only be described as idiotismo.

The pumpkin refracts American cultural mores as well. Americans eat pumpkin but only when it's mixed with ten eggs, a bucket of sweetened condensed milk and an aorta's worth of cream fraiche (or whatever that what stuff was). Needless to say, this, for me, was PUMPKIN'S CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT!

Pumpkin pie is about the best thing in the universe although I've not made it since I returned south. Like pound cake, I just can't bring myself to put that many kilojoules into a bowl and not end up with an engine.

Anyway; go read this blog. And make some pumpkin pie. Mmm pumpkin pie.....where was I?...