Kai’s Recipe: Boris Portnoy’s Pumpkin Pie with walnut-brown sugar crumble

Thanksgiving is just around the corner. After a delicious dinner of turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, finish it off with this delicious pumpkin pie recipe with walnut-brown sugar crumble. The chef Boris Portnoy featured this recipe in an episode of “You’re Doing It All Wrong,” an online video series created by the channel CHOW which talks about special cooking tips.

Portnoy said that he thought that canned pumpkin is too generic for a good pumpkin pie. “For a great pumpkin pie, my favorite is the Cinderella pumpkin,” Portnoy said. “It has very bright flesh, a really rich, sweet taste, and when it’s cooked, it’s easy to scoop out the flesh.”

His recipe also includes several unorthodox spices. Portnoy claims that if you use regular pumpkin pie spice mixes, you don’t get a choice of what you put in your pie. Instead of an overwhelming amount of nutmeg and allspice, he uses a unique immulsion of different spices. “I like to use ground coriander seed, cardamom, ginger, lemon and orange peel,” Portnoy said. “I also like to toast whole cloves, cinnamon, and star anise to let all the oils and flavors out before I grind them in a coffee grinder.”

I tried out this recipe on my own and it was incredible. When he says “bright flesh,” he really means “bright flesh.” The pie was the brightest colored one i’ve ever seen and the walnut-brown sugar crumble added a lot of sweetness. I thought the only thing it was missing was a classic dollop of fresh whipped cream, which evened out the taste of the pie.

My diagnosis: Sublime. I’ve never thought about cooking my own pumpkin for a pumpkin pie before, but I am so glad I did. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to impress their guests this Thanksgiving. As Portnoy said, “If you’ve done all these things right, your kitchen will smell amazing, your pumpkin pie will taste incredible, and your guests will definitely be asking for the recipe.”

The Recipe: http://www.chow.com/recipes/27926-boris-portnoys-pumpkin-pie