Pumpkin Pie, From Scratch!

On my way into the grocery store this week, my eye was caught buy some festive Jack-O-Lantern-type pumpkins outside that were priced at a mere 29 cents per pound.  Thinking that I could could toast off the pumpkin seeds for a snack, I bought a couple of them.  After I got them home, I noticed that the two pumpkins I had grabbed were definitely different species.  One of them was, in fact, a jack-o-lantern pumpkin.  The other one was a rather large sugar pumpkin that is meant for cooking. Naturally, it occurred to me, this is a sign that I should make a pumpkin pie.
I asked my SO (Significant Other) if he would like to try it, since he is the only one of us with a sweet tooth.  Oh no, I only eat the pumpkin pies from Costco.  I don't like homemade pumpkin pie.  "You may not have liked other homemade pies, but you know that I am a good cook" (I am the same person that decided five years ago to take on a full Thanksgiving dinner for the first time, which included a giant turkey, with all the fixings, and somehow managed to have all 6 dishes end up almost picture-perfect).  I guess I would try it.
Armed with the meekest consent, I set about figuring out how I am actually going to do this.
Fuck, most of Gourmet magazine's recipes for pumpkin pie call for canned pumpkin.  If the most prominent authority on food suggests just skipping fresh pumpkin and just going for canned, maybe I should just give up.  Oh well, here is a recipe for fresh pumpkin puree.  That worked well enough.

At this point, it is time for bed.  I scoop out the flesh from the five pound pumpkin and put it in the fridge for the next day.
I start the morning out by going to the grocery store to buy the ingredients that I don't already have from this recipe.  Unfortunately, it seems that my local 24 hour grocery store is populated by crackheads at 5 in the morning.  As I am waiting in line to pay for my purchase, I get to listen to this exchange:
"Did you steal hair dye?", "Um, what man? no", "So if we checked your pockets right now we would not find a box of hair dye?", "No", "Debit or credit?", "I don't know", "If you don't have ID, it needs to be debit...it was declined, you entered the wrong PIN", "What, isn't it the same as the expiration date?"
I am not typically the kind of person to confront people, but it is early in the morning and I am just trying to pay for my pumpkin pie ingredients, yet I can't, because a klepto crackhead doesn't know the right PIN.
"YOU CLEARLY DON'T HAVE AUTHORIZATION TO USE THAT CARD.  YOU NEED TO LEAVE!"  "huh?" "YOU NEED TO LEAVE."
The crackhead grumbles a little bit before leaving without her energy drink(but probably with her purloined hair dye).  "I  didn't know that you get such nutjobs at this time of night," I tell the cashier.  "You have no idea," he responds.

Armed with my ingredients, I start to prepare my first pumpkin pie.

Unlike most reasonable people, I feel the need to use a whole cinnamon stick and a microplane to constitute my teaspoon of cinnamon.

 Incidentally, the scent of freshly grated cinnamon can be quite intoxicating.
When I have all my pie fillings nicely blended, I pour them into my store-bought pie shell. My pie goes in the oven for the prescribed amount of time, then I pull it out to cool on a rack.
The result:

It may not look like the pumpkin pie that you could buy at Costco, but I swear it is better.  Creamy, rich, and spiked with fresh spices, it beats the hell out of some pie that has been made by rote.

Actually, I would prefer a rabid squirrel!

Pedestrian Gourmet,

I can do Wednesday at 1:00pm. We pay a flat compensation of ---- an hour for starting servers. Let me know if you still would like to meet.


Thanks,

-----

Hi ------,
Thanks for getting back with me.  I am actually surprised that you bothered to contact me about the position in the first place.  As my resume indicates, I have over a decade of experience as a skilled professional in this industry.  As a result of this, I know that the wage that you are offering "for starting servers" is only a small fraction of the service charge that you take in on each event.  Rather than an interview, I feel that my time might be better spent being attacked by a rabid squirrel.
If ------ ever changes their policy of unfair labor practices, feel free to get in touch with me.
Regards,
Pedestrian Gourmet

Banh Mi-ssfire at Tamarind Tree

First off, this is not a review of Tamarind Tree.  This is a snapshot of a single dining experience put in the perspective of a larger view of the restaurant.
Tamarind Tree has a special place in Seattle's food scene as a sort of Shangri-La.  The whole process of reaching this place, which is jammed into a very no-nonsense working class ethnic strip mall.  Only after passing by the nail place and the generic grocery store with cases of produce stacked right in front at it's "loading dock" do you enter this magical land with tranquil fountains drowning out the urban decay.  You get a tidy, packed dining room with nice lighting and a minimalist decor.  The last thing that sets this place apart from other very good asian restaurants is one more detail-it is patronized by more people who are not of Vietnamese heritage than those that are.  Tamarind Tree is so hyped because it has great food-interesting, thoughtful, with plenty of small plates of well executed food with shockingly good sauce pairings.
On a recent visit, Tamarind Tree showed that its east meets west approach can also be its Achilles Heel.
I arrived with a friend around 7 on a Tuesday night and was brought to a table fairly quickly, the hostess apologetically saying that she owes me a menu because they don't have enough. Glancing at the next table over, I could see there were 2 menus waiting for members a larger party that had not yet arrived.  Even though I have been in this industry forever, I really don't like to bring attention to myself when I eat out, so rather than grabbing the menu that was clearly not occupied, I waited meekly for our server.  When he did finally arrive, he wanted to know if he could get me something to drink.  "Actually, I would love to have a menu!"  He scrambled to find a menu and ended up taking the menu that I had already been eyeing... oh well.
We ended up ordering the mushroom satay, the prawn satay, the grilled la-lot leaf rolls, the crispy prawns baguette, and the bean sprout mushroom. The mushroom satay were great-shiitake mushrooms were marinated in a very worcestershire-like concoction that really adds the fifth flavor that the Japanese describe as umami.  The prawns were overcooked, as they tend to be if not watched carefully, but they also came with a sauce that was described as a tamarind fish sauce that was bright and really brought out the seasonings on the prawns.
We continue to enjoy our food and cocktails, but something weird happens.  Our server never returns.  My companion has been waiting for his Tamartini to arrive, and the rest of our bigger plates don't come.

"I'm not eating that," are the words that  I blurt out when the Banh Mi Tom Bot Chien, also called Crispy Prawns Baguette is placed before me.  Banh mi is a simple, fresh, even pedestrian food.  Some of the best ones are produced by places that only serve one thing - banh mi, with different proteins.  A french baguette filled with fresh cilantro, cucumber, jalapeno, other veggies, and a seasoned sauce, it is the opposite of haute cuisine.  So when a monstrosity of hunks of baguette topped with one prawn each and then given a tempura-type batter and deep fried, lazily topped with sriracha straight from the bottle (that is the best you can do? I am looking at you too, Toulouse Petit) and some hoisin sauce arrived, I was naturally surprised.  It seems the term Crispy Prawn Baguette was not only referring to the prawn being crispy.  Banh Mi is a term many people know, and when you see it on a menu, one naturally expects certain things. Perhaps the menu should explain that quite plainly or, even better, remove this awful dish altogether.
In the end, Tamarind Tree ended up missing on all the points that has made it  so successful.  Eating there is usually a special experience where you feel pampered.  Good service comes together with interesting food at a reasonable price.  When they fall short on just one of those points, the artifice of the restaurant starts to show.  When they fail on both food and service, one quickly starts to wonder why they bothered going there in the first place.