Makin' Pumpkin Pie in Kampala

I had a proper and delicious Thanksgiving meal with the American Chamber of Commerce last week. So when the official day came around the only thing I really wanted was pumpkin pie. But I couldn't go to a bakery and get one (even if there was one that sold them I would hesitate to trust that it would be what I expected it to be). There is also no canned pumpkin. There are no pre-made pie crusts. So this was a serious undertaking. I don't know if you all appreciate how much work goes into this kind of pumpkin pie creation, so let me lay it out for you.

On wednesday I hit the markets: produce is best bought in open air markets or from sellers on the streets, so that's where I got my pumpkin. It was huge and I paid 4,000UGX (currently that's $1.48), which was probably still too much, but I haggled the woman down from 6,000 so I felt ok about it. There are no orange "pie pumpkins" here, but having eaten the pumpkins here before I knew they were pretty sweet and would do the trick, even if the taste was not exactly the same. Then to the nearest super market, where fortunately I can get things like canned evaporated milk, canned condensed milk, unsalted butter, and dried ground ginger and clove. Since I only recently moved into my house and we are still working on equipping it, I also had to buy a pie plate and rolling pin. I hit a snag though when it came to whipped cream. I expected I would not find a can of whipped cream and would have to get a carton of whipping cream and whip it myself, but the market was out of it! My first thought: it's like I really am at home trying to shop the night before Thanksgiving. It was nice to have an excuse for something being out of stock though, after living in Gulu I learned to never count on anything being in stock. I would have to try somewhere else. But not tonight, I was already walking home with what felt like 50lbs of goods to carry! Eggs I bought the next morning from one of the small shops near my house. They generally have a stack of full egg crates and you just tell them how many eggs you want.

All told, here was my expense list:

Pie Plate: 20,000UGX

Rolling pin: 10,000 UGX
cling wrap: 4,500 UGX

evaporated milk: 4,500 UGX

condensed milk: 5,000
Unsalted butter 500g: 10,500 UGX

ginger spice: 2,000 UGX

clove spice:  4,800 UGX

4 eggs: 1,200 UGX

pumpkin: 4,000 UGX

whipped cream: 8,000 UGX

Then the work begins. The skin on the green pumpkins here is like wood. It took some serious effort between myself and my butcher knife to get the thing cut up. I only cut half of it, which turned out to be more than the 3 cups I needed for my recipe. After cutting it into chunks, I steamed it. After letting it cool, I peeled off the skin (note in the picture how the pieces of skin are still whole? Wood, I tell you.) Then I mashed it up as best I could with a fork, and set it aside to be mixed with everything else the next day.

On Thursday morning I started the crust. It is quite a process. First, cut the butter into pieces and place in the freezer  for about an hour to get hard, so it won't melt when mixing it into the flour. After waiting about an hour I start working on flaking the butter into the flour. A lot of butter. I didn't have a choice but to do it by hand, but I had read that if you do it by hand and flake it (rather than clumping it which I guess happens with a food processor) that's how you get a flaky crust. Once that is done you form the dough into 2 discs, and put it back in the fridge to chill. 

While the dough chilled, I mixed the pie filling. After waiting about two hours, I pulled out one of the discs to start rolling it out. I did this on the counter top. I floured the counter top, and moved the disc several times, but by the end it still had thoroughly stuck to the counter top. Trying to get it off was a total disaster, so I had to roll it back into a disc and put it in the freezer to start over again while I worked on the second one. This time I rolled it out on plastic wrap. Much easier. Placing the crust in the pie plate is also quite challenging! You don't want it to break or fold over on itself or get scrunched up or be too far over on one side so there isn't enough dough on the other side. Seesh. But finally I got it all sorted.

Now for the baking: hoping that the power doesn't go out as it had briefly twice already. And in an oven that is barely even big enough to fit 2 pies in. I should have just done them one at a time, but I was inpatient. Since both pies were very close to the top and bottom burners, I just kept switching between them (have the top one on for a while, then turn it off and turn the bottom one on) to prevent burning. It was working pretty well until I left it too long and the top pie burned. At this point it was cooked, so I took out to cool off and left the other to cook, this time putting it on the top rack and leaving the bottom burner on. I was able to peel the burnt top layer off the first pie, but it wasn't very pretty and I wasn't sure if it would taste burnt, so I was hoping I wouldn't end up serving it to my friends! The other pie cooked beautifully. 

Now to go after that whipped cream. I went to another super market near by: again nothing. So I had to go further afield, but not too far and to a market that was huge and surely must have it. So I get on a boda after serious negotiation (he wanted 3,000UGX to bring me there, but he finally agreed to take me there and back for 3,000). Luckily, not only did I find whipping cream, but cans of whipped cream! Hooray for Capital Shoppers Ntinda.

My friends all thought the pie was delicious, and it was suggested that I not wait for Thanksgiving to make it again. Now that I've figured our how to make it happen, I just might. It took hours of labour, but my craving for Thanksgiving pumpkin pie has been satiated!