Pumpkin Impossible Pie: "impossible" because it's inedible

For a few years, I've had a found-on-the-Internet recipe called Pumpkin Impossible Pie in my recipe box, waiting for the right time to try it out. I was always a bit curious about Impossible Pie since reading the recipe on the back of the Bisquick box as a kid.
Bisquick Impossible Quiche
Bisquick Impossible Cheeseburger Pie
I may even have eaten one of these before, come to think of it, but I forgot what it was like. My husband met my announcement of the plan for dinner with enthusiasm, declaring he had always liked Impossible Pie when it was served during his childhood.

Being all excited about a crazy new idea for dinner, I didn't follow the recipe exactly and decided to dress it up a bit. When I found the recipe, I was attracted to the idea of a totally vegan, low-fat pie without the hassle of making pie crust on a weeknight. The basics remain the same, but instead of using sugar and pumpkin pie spices, I went for a rosemary-flavored savory pie with caramelized onions and just baked the pie in the skillet I cooked the onions in.

After 60 minutes of baking, the pie had a crust on the outside, was not done at all in the center, and appeared to be underdone on the bottom as well. I used a plate to flip it over so the bottom would be on top and, hopefully, bake more fully.

After 80 minutes of baking and an attempt to remove a piece for eating, here's what it looked like:

The end result? Pie that is about to burn on the outside, but is still undercooked on the inside. Disastrously undercooked. It tasted salty like baking powder and starchy like uncooked flour. The texture was gummy. Additionally, the rosemary was so strong it was astringent and medicinal, and the brown and savory onions had nothing positive to add. To sum up, below is a recipe NOT to follow.

Impossible-to-eat Pumpkin Pie, or How to Ruin the Happy Nostalgia Your Spouse Had for Impossible Pie

2 Tbsp vegan margarine
2 medium-sized onions
pinch salt
1 1/2 c soy milk
1 Tbsp Ener-G egg replacer
1/4 cup water
1 Tbsp cornstarch
2 c pumpkin puree (perhaps my thawed frozen pumpkin puree was part of the problem? it still had a little moisture, which the original recipe recommends against)
1/2 c rice flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp crushed dried rosemary

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Melt margarine in 10-inch oven-proof skillet. Slice onions thinly and cook slowly until lightly caramelized and tender. Whisk or blend soy milk with Ener-G, water, cornstarch, then whisk/blend in the rest of the ingredients. Pour pumpkin mix into the skillet with the onions and bake 50 to 80 minutes until top and edges are browned and the center begins to set. Allow to cool, then discard and eat something else for dinner.

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Soy substitute week

This week has been a week for experimenting with soy products to stand in for eggs and dairy. The impetus and guide for the experiments was the book Tofu and Soyfoods Cookery by Peter Golbitz, specifically the recipes Mock Sour Cream Tofu Dressing and Scrambled Yuba.

Experiment 1: vegan mushroom stroganoff sauce, with Mock Sour Cream Tofu Dressing based on silken tofu standing in for sour cream. The basic ingredients are silken tofu, oil, lemon juice, and salt. I served the sauce over no-yolk egg noodles. I am perfectly comfortable putting vegan sauce on non-vegan noodles, but I would have used other noodles if I were serving actual vegans.

The results here were mixed. The sauce's flavor, which I initially thought was too lemony, settled down by the time I ate leftover noodles the next day and I liked how closely it tasted to sour cream. Better than other packaged soy sour creams I've purchased in the past. The texture was disappointing. The oil tended to separate out, making the sauce greasy instead of creamy and smooth. I think if I were going to make this dish again, I'd prepare the mock sour cream with a stabilizer like cornstarch or mustard or something and do it a day ahead to let the flavors blend.

Experiment 2: scrambled yuba, which I served on toast. This no longer seemed like a breakfasty scrambled egg dish when I added carrots, onions and mushrooms, nor did the garlicky tamari-flavored seasonings recommended scream breakfast to me. It was a nice light dinner.

Major challenges included finding yuba and making it taste like something when I didn't have all the ingredients called for in the recipe.

First, how I found the item. The owner of my favorite local Asian grocery had dried yuba on hand, but he didn't know it right away because he was not familiar with the Japanese name yuba for the product. His native language is Chinese, but he understood exactly what I wanted when I described it in English. Yuba is the skin skimmed off of boiled soy milk. I wasn't prepared to make gallons of homemade soy milk and skim its skin to get fresh yuba, and frozen just isn't available in my area.

Second, yuba does not naturally taste like anything. This ingredient is mostly about texture, like tripe or oatmeal. To borrow a phrase from Douglas Adams, it is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike scrambled eggs. No fluffy softness. No eggy richness. No buttery finish. Not even yellow, more like beige. In the pan, it vaguely looks like slices of very thin fried egg whites. I had run out of nutritional yeast flakes and forgot to get some for this dish, so therefore I didn't have the most essential flavoring called for in this recipe. I decided not to worry about it and make it taste entirely different. I used sweet soy sauce (kecap manis), garlic powder, chicken broth powder, the above-named vegetables, and sesame oil and fresh parsley for garnish.

If the goal here is to make something that is like scrambled eggs for breakfast, the experiment failed. I believe it would continue to fail even if I had followed the recipe exactly but with my dried yuba. Reconstituted dried yuba does not look, feel or taste like egg. I don't know whether the fresh or frozen could entirely take care of these issues, but it would at least probably be closer in texture to slightly overcooked eggs. The nutritional yeast flakes would have lent a more cheese-like flavor. If the goal is to make a yummy protein and vegetable dish with a new food, I think the experiment was successful. My husband and I like yuba enough to try it again sometime in the future. The possible flavors to combine with it are endless, so we'll keep trying new ways of preparing it.

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Breakfast skillet today

Something easy, warm and comforting for a late breakfast on a day full of chores today. This one is a nice mishmash of leftovers I had in the fridge. The basic recipe is not a really strongly flavored breakfast and could probably use some chili-garlic sauce or fresh herbs or salsa to dress it up.

Veggie breakfast skillet
for one very hungry person or two lighter portions

1/2 cup liquid egg substitute
a splash of milk or soymilk
1 or 2 tsp dijon mustard
1 or 2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp chopped green bell pepper
6 oz fresh mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup leftover cooked rice
salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Whisk together the egg substitute, milk, and mustard in a bowl. In a large skillet, heat the oil and saute the mushrooms and green pepper. When tender, add the cooked rice and cook, stirring, until rice is heated through. Pour the egg mixture over the contents of the skillet and stir occasionally to scramble the eggs. Sprinkle with salt and pepper just before the eggs are done.

Ideas for additional vegetable add-ins: roasted red pepper, leftover cooked broccoli or carrots, onions, tomatoes (at the end of cooking), leftover stir-fried vegetables

Eggs and meat are a classic combination and this breakfast would also be good with bits of leftover sausage, ham, bacon, steak or roast beef or pork. Keeping the same amounts of other ingredients, meat packs enough calories to make this a recipe for two or three servings.

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Easter dinner and other springtime foods

Mmmm, I like serving springtime food at Easter. There is always a fun mix of stuff that has kept over the winter and new spring produce.
Here are some photos of our Easter foods.

The food above is called Osterbrötchen in German, and they are a yeast-raised bun with dried fruits. I serve them as a breakfast food about every other year, alternating with a German cake (which is not served for breakfast), Osterlamm. The cake is baked in a lamb-shaped mold. Here I am with last year's cake, which has homemade chocolate frosting for a black sheep.

At this year's Easter dinner, the first course was a deceptively "cream"-y soup (soymilk thickened with a little roux) filled with carrots, spinach and peas, accompanied by blanched asparagus with a faux bernaise sauce. I found another application in which Ener-G egg substitute is a terrible idea. The sauce texture was sticky and elastic, meaning that it acted a bit like melted cheese when we dipped asparagus in it. It had a lot of lemon juice, which tasted nice on the asparagus, so at least it was edible. Here's the table shot before we eat the soup and asparagus. Daffodils are from the backyard. The wine is Beaujolais.

And for the main course at Easter dinner, I had planned something that wasn't an Easter ham, but did have ham in it. I had some minced ham left over in the freezer after ham pie, and I wanted to add it to fried potatoes. I boiled sliced potatoes in salted water, then fried them, and although they tasted fully cooked and well-salted like I wanted them to, I had to adjust to a new textural reality from what I had in mind. The potato slices fell apart when I turned them in the pan, so now I had potato hash. No big problem. The hash tasted great with the ham bits and a generous sprinkling of fresh-ground black pepper.

Also wonderful in springtime are mangoes and the new crops of berries. Of course, none of these items grows anywhere near here in April, so they are an occasional indulgence until the local fruit appears in May or June. This week, Andrew mixed blackberries with the banana slices I had in the freezer for an impromptu fruit salad.

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When not to use egg substitute

Spectacular failure this week gives me another addition to the list of dishes where my favorite egg substitute Ener-G is just not acceptable: homemade pasta. My pasta dough didn't even begin to come together into something kneadable, even after squeezing it for 15 minutes and adding a little water.

My list so far:
1. custards
2. omelets
3. rosettes
4. peach pie filling (really, just another custard)
5. egg-drop soup
6. pasta

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