Wednesday, November 16, 2011

A Pumpkin Pie (and Grain!) for Everybody

This gluten-free, egg-free, and dairy-free pumpkin pie is also FULL of flavor and perfect for Thanksgiving!
As a nutrition educator and cook, I love the challenge of creating new recipes for favorite foods so that they’re free of many common allergens. Years of mixing and matching this and that have led to many tasty flat breads, cookies, biscotti and now pie crust.  

The holidays are often accompanied with many foods that contain gluten, eggs, and milk.  Today I want to share with you a quick and simple recipe for a pumpkin pie that's free of all three, using pre-made Ancient Grains Whole Grain Sorghum Pie Crusts.  It tastes just like the creamy, rich pumpkin pie that we all love, but with ingredients that will leave you feeling energized instead of heavy and tired.

Read below to learn about sorghum, one of the main ingredients in my pie crust, and to get that delicious pie recipe.

Ancient Grains Bakery Whole Grain Sorghum Pie Crust
Our pie crust is made with whole grain sorghum flour and flax seeds and sold in the frozen section of these stores.

Never heard of sorghum? You're not alone. Here are some facts that may spur your interest in this lovely, gluten-free grain. 


Sorghum
Sorghum is considered to be the fifth most important crop in the world- which means that it is the most commonly eaten food after rice, corn, wheat and potatoes.  It is also the dietary staple of more than 500 million people in 30 countries and has untapped potential for people everywhere, including here in the US.  According to The Lost Crops of Africa, “If the twentieth century has been the century of wheat, rice, and maize, the twenty-first could become the century of sorghum.”  


Image from here.
Sorghum offers many benefits:

  • a gluten-free grain
  • grows in both temperate and tropical zones, and thrives in both drought and heavy rains.
  • an incredibly versatile food: different types can be boiled like rice, cracked like oats for porridge, "malted" like barley for beer, baked like wheat into flatbreads, popped like popcorn for snack, or even made into syrup.
  • flexible growing methods: most sorghum is produced under rain-fed conditions, while some is irrigated and a little is grown by transplanting seedlings as is done with rice. Like sugarcane, it can also be ratooned (cut down and allowed to resprout from the roots) to provide crop after crop without replanting. It is ideal for subsistence farmers on the one hand and can be completely mechanized and produced on a vast commercial scale on the other.

Here in the state of Kansas, sorghum holds a small but significant role (don’t worry…we’re getting to the pie part in a minute). The Sunflower State is the country’s leading producer of sorghum, also known as milo. As a heat and drought tolerant crop, sorghum is ideal for the open plains of Kansas and Texas. The U.S. trails only Nigeria in world sorghum production, but holds the top spot in exports. (For more information about sorghum production in Kansas please visit this link.)

While the huge majority of this sorghum is still grown for animal feed, a growing gluten-free market is offering farmers a view of a possible increase in demand for the mild-flavored grain.

And now, back to that pie.
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Hilary's Gluten-Free Pumpkin Pie Recipe

Crust:
Start with an Ancient Grains Whole Grain Sorghum Pie Crust. Remove it from the freezer to thaw just a bit while the oven preheats to 375. Prick a few holes in the bottom of the crust with a fork- this prevents it from bubbling up during the blind baking. Place it on a baking sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes until lightly brown and puffed up a bit. Remove to cool on a rack.

Ingredients featuring Central Soyfoods Tofu
Now, whip up this filling that highlights Kansas’ own Central Soyfoods tofu- a leading producer of organic tofu for over 35 years.


Filling:


Ingredients
1-14oz block Central Soyfoods Organic Tofu or any organic tofu
1-15oz can pumpkin
1/3 cup organic canola oil
½ cup organic cane sugar
¼ cup maple syrup
1 Tbl black strap molasses
¾ tsp ginger and cinnamon
¼ tsp cardamom and cloves
½ tsp salt
1 ½ tsp vanilla

Reduce heat to 350.


Place tofu in the bowl of a food processor. Blend for 3 minutes, stopping to scrape down the sides a few times. This must be very smooth. Add remaining ingredients and blend thoroughly, stopping to scrape down the sides. 


Pour into baked pie shell. Smooth with a spatula. Bake for 10 minutes (tofu is cooked! and no eggs!) - this just helps it to set up nicely. Cool and then refrigerate.

*Note: If using a traditional pumpkin recipe with eggs and milk, don’t blind bake the Ancient Grains pie crust. Just fill and bake following the filling instructions.
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When I am sampling my foods at local grocery stores, I give my message over and over again: “… And this has no wheat, no gluten, no dairy, and no eggs.” Someone will inevitably say, “Well, what is in it?” 

"Plenty!"


I am enjoying this opportunity to share ideas for cooking with whole gluten free grains, minimally processed, with no eggs and dairy, and creating tasty healthy foods.  Let me know if you try out this recipe and tell me how it goes.

Thanks for joining me and eat well this Thanksgiving!