BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 27 Nov 07 - 09:51 PM

My comments on the East Indies origin of the word ñame or yam are based on the information in the Oxford English Dictionary, as I posted somewhere far above. Not my speculation, but their conclusion based on 16th c. records.

The possibility of the name being carried to Africa from the east Indies by traders is my speculation, although I qualified it with the possibility of coincidence in different languages.

The sweet potato-yam was just as important in the East Indies as it is in Africa.

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Janie
Date: 27 Nov 07 - 11:38 PM

I'm gonna try vinegar in the crust. Thanks, Jeri.

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: PoppaGator
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 05:31 PM

Man, I wish I could find the material I read a while ago regarding the differences, or lack therefore, between "yams" and "sweet potatoes," at least in the US.

Here's a summary of what I remember. Disclaimer: I can't swear that I remember all of this perfectly, but it's the best I can do.

The two terms ARE used interchangeably for the same root vegetable here in North America. In some cases, in some regions, there is ~ or used to be ~ a meaningful difference between the two.

The word "yam" was at one time used among Louisiana growers, to the exclusion of "sweet potato." Here's where my memory starts to falter: I think I recall something about an effort on the part of Louisiana farmers to copyright or otherwise reserve the word "yam" to distinguish their supposedly superior product from the "sweet potatoes" grown elsewhere. But whatever they may have tried to do, they did not succeed.

In any event, I've never heard anyone use the phrase "yam pie." It's always "sweet potato pie" ~ even when the main ingredient was purchased from a vendor who called it "yam."

I grew up white in New Jersey eating pumpkin pie after all the great holiday dinners, and never even heard of sweet potato pie until adolescence. I probably never tasted one until even later, after finishing collge and moving to New Orleans.

Pumpkin and sweet potato pies both use the same spices, etc., and are pretty much the same color ~ sweet potato just a little browner, pumpkin just slightly orange-er. I find the flavors sufficiently similar to enjoy either one. Sweet potato is a little sweeter and smoother in texture than pumpkin, but since different cooks will use different quantities of sugar/sweetener, and apply different amounts of "elbow grease" to the mixing process, these differences can be very slight.

Therefore, I can't understand anyone claiming to like one of these pies while disliking the other for any culinary reason; that is, for any reason except ethnic solidarity ("our people always make the pie from this vegetable, not the other").

Now, I'll concede one point: sweet potato pie is usually made from fresh yams, or at least whole peeled-and-canned yams. Canned pre-pureed pumpkin is undoubtedly used for many times as many pumpkin pies than is fresh pumpkin. So, insofar as fresh is generally preferable to processed, the typical pumpkin pie could be seen as less desirable than its sweet-potato counterpart.

But then again, I don't discern a critical difference between lime-meringue and lemon-meringue pie, either. Maybe I just don't have a sufficiently discerning palate...

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Wesley S
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 05:49 PM

"For the record, I am prepared to meet Wesley any time or place to beat this wrong-headed unholy alleagence out of him. I consider it my duty as a Christian...like an intervention. Don't thank me. I don't do it for personal glory."

For the record - I am willing to allow Skivee to wallow in his ignorance. I can only assume he's a lowly type - perhaps even a bodhran player. Perhaps someday his taste buds will mature to the point that he will be able to enjoy the subtle flavors of a good Key Lime pie. Until that time - let him eat lemons.

As to his claims that he sampled Key Lime pie in Key West - I imagine that his navigational skills actually led him to New Jersey instead. Where they consider a pie to be a cheese pizza!

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Azizi
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 06:37 PM

Therefore, I can't understand anyone claiming to like one of these pies while disliking the other for any culinary reason; that is, for any reason except ethnic solidarity ("our people always make the pie from this vegetable, not the other").
-Poppagator

Ethnic solidarity has nothing at all to do with my preference for sweet potato pies over pumpkin pies. They may look alike, but they darn sure don't taste alike to me.

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Neil D
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 07:10 PM

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Azizi - PM
Date: 26 Nov 07 - 08:15 PM

Here's a question for ya:

That Food Timeline: pie & pastry website whose link I provided in my
25 Nov 07 - 03:09 PM post includes pizza in its list of pies/pastries.

So is pizza the same thing as a cheese pie?

    Someone once told me that pizza is actually the Italian word for pie. I don't know if this is true. Any Italian speakers out there?
I know in NY pie is slang for pizza. As in: Hey woulda ya want on yer pie? Pepperoni or sausage?

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Skivee
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 07:12 PM

To Wesley, that sad allegient to his anctient religion of Citrufarianism, I say, "There are none so blind as those who will not not eat Key Lime pie."and,"If thine pie offends thee, chuck it out."
As for your accusation that I am a bodhran player, it is a badge I wear proudly...or at least I don't cover it up with more than two layers of black gaffers tape.
We were INDEED in Key West. Our navigator did the navigation, and I trust her like the back of my hand. The pleasently scented breezes blowning past the garbage dumps and chemical factories certainly add to the flavor of the island.
As to the pie itself: It was a visually perfect pie with the merangue lightly browned, and the tomato sauce on top of it was gayly* festooned with tropical pepperonni, island mushrooms and key lime mozarella.
My friends all told me that I was a brave boy for trying it in spite of my past experiences. I blame the French.
You, sirrah, are a deluded husk of a man. If my pity wasn't shot off in the war, I would pity you.
Key Lime Pie is just nasty. This is a proven scientific fact, not opinion. Praise FSM.



*That's how I knew it was Key West.

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Sorcha
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 07:16 PM

LOL! Hey, bros, wanna fight? ROF
Now, as to yams and sweet potatoes....we actually have yellow skinned in our grocery right now! Usually, just the brown skinned/orange flesh ones, always labeled 'sweet potatoes'.

The yellow skinned ones are actually being called........YAMS!

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Azizi
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 07:47 PM

I just went to my cupboard to check the label of the 2lb can of sweet potatoes that I purchased the other day to make a sweet potato pie.

Lo and behold, I found out that the label said Bruce's Yams!

LOL!

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 08:25 PM

Both the orange-fleshed and yellow-fleshed tubers are varieties of sweet potatoes, of the genus Ipomoea (morning glory) family, mostly of temperate climes. The orange-colored are sometimes called yams but are not related to the 'true yam' (Dioscorea) of tropical Africa and other tropical areas.
See pictures here: yam and sweet potato

I was wrong in my posts above- I thought the orange-fleshed ones were the Dioscorea type or true yam. I should have checked before posting my 'gems of knowledge'.
Checking other websites, including that of Ohio State University, they agree with the material stated in the linked website.


The Dioscorea yam is not grown in the USA. All sweet potatoes here are Asian varieties of Ipomoea which have become very widespread in planting. Selection of varieties and selective breeding has led to several varieties in grocers bins.

The Dioscorea (true yam) needs a tropical to subtropical climate and is not suited to the United States. It is widely grown in tropical parts of Africa. Any post that states that the yam in North America is an import from Africa is wrong; some are grown in the West Indies but not in the USA. I have made this mistake in some of the posts above.

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 08:29 PM

Sorry, I got the website with the pictures incorrectly linked.
Sweet potatoes

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 08:36 PM

Too much wine with dinner? The Ohio State link:
sweet potato

Dunno how the entire note on the OSU site got turned into a link. Oh, well, colored ink is purty.

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Sorcha
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 09:17 PM

Now I'm REALLY confoozeled! LOL!

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Azizi
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 09:36 PM

Well, as Bob Marley sung "We're yammin'. We yammin'...I hope you like yammin' too"

:o)}

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiktFkwfE2o

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: frogprince
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 11:57 PM

Wesley, you said key lime pie is "the best thing you can enjoy that involves keeping your clothes on". Why should eating pie necessarily involve keeping your clothes on??. Heck, if you drop some in your lap, skin washes easier than pants. If you're really lucky, someone will help you clean it up!

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 29 Nov 07 - 12:24 AM

I'm more than confoozled today. I know nothing about this recipe, and have added cautions in ( ) from other sites, but to counter Bob Marley, here's a more palatable jam:

SWEET POTATO JAM

Sweet potatoes, 1 kilogram (2.2 lbs)
Sugar, 2 cups
Cinnamon, 1 stick
Cloves, 2
Grated orange peel, 1

Cook sweet potatoes with the grated orange peels. Peel them and strain to avoid sweet potato fibers. Mix the sweet potato, sugar, a piece of the grated orange peel, cinammon and cloves in a pot. Put it on the heat and mix it until it acquires a jam consistency. Continue mixing so that it does not stick on the bottom and remove from heat. Bottle it hot (in sterile jars) and let cool. Place in refrigerator (perishable, not a good keeper). (When a jar is opened, serve within a week).
Sweet Potato Jam

In the foreign food sections, Filipino purple yam jam (Halayang Ube) may sometimes be found in jars. There also are Caribbean yam jams.

American Yam Jam may be ordered from this supplier of Cajun foods:
Yam Jam
Ingredients- Sweet potatoes, brown sugar, corn syrup, lemon juice, vanilla extract, spices, orange extract.

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: maeve
Date: 29 Nov 07 - 08:05 AM

I'm enjoying the meanderings of this thread.

I have recipes for Chesse Pie and English Cheese Pie. Neither contains any cheese. Both were clipped from American newspapers at least 60 years ago by an unnamed woman whose box of recipes I bought at a yard sale.

English Cheese Pie ( From Eliza Acton, an English food authority, 19th century England)

Grate the rind of one large lemon. Mix it with 1/2 cup (white) sugar. Add well-beaten yolks of 3 eggs and the well-beaten whites of 2 eggs. Beat together thoroughly. Add 4 tablespoons cream, 1/2 melted butter, and the strained juice of the lemon (this should be stirred in rather quickly). Add a touch of orange flower water or, if you find this difficult to get, a little grated orange rind. Line 8-10 small tartlet pans with flaky pastry and half fill them with the mixture. Bake for 30 minutes in a 350-degree oven.

Chesse Pie

Cream 1/2 cup butter with 1 cup light brown sugar. Beat in 2 eggs. Stir in 1/4 cup thin cream or evaporated milk, 1 cup chopped walnuts, 1 cup raisins (or raisins and currents, or dates), 1/4 teaspoon vanilla and 1/3 cup orange or grape juice or sherry. Spoon into 8-12 patty pans or a nine inch pie pan lined with your favorite pastry. Bake at 450 F 15 minutes, then reduce to 325 F for 20 minutes longer. For the tarts, bake at 450 for 5-6 minutes, then at 300 for 7-10 minutes longer, depending on the thickness of the filling. Cool on a rack and serve slightly warm.

maeve

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Azizi
Date: 29 Nov 07 - 08:40 AM

I'm enjoying the meanderings of this thread.
-maeve

Me too. But I have a confession to make-

I prefer coconut cake to any type of dessert pie.

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 29 Nov 07 - 09:49 AM

I find it interesting that a virtual pie fight has broken out on this pie thread. A Key Lime pie fight. For the record I love Key Lime pie. The ice cream stand next door offers Key Lime ice cream which I find to be a quite refreshing treat on a hot summer day, something I am already nostalgic for as winter sets in.

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: maeve
Date: 03 Dec 07 - 09:16 AM

The new pie recipe we tried and enjoyed this year consists of a layer of smooth, tasty pumpkin filling, covered by a layer of pecan filling. Lovely!.

By the way: I bought 1/2 cup bags of chopped pecans at a local health food store recently for $4 each (Ouch!). I bought a bag of fresh Alabama pecans in the shell at a flea market here in Maine for $3 on Saturday. Yippee! We must find a place for a couple of hardy pecan trees!

maeve

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Dec 07 - 02:17 PM

Whole raw pecans in the baking-spice sections of larger groceries here are about $10/kilogram (2.2 pounds).

Pecans in the shell have appeared in the groceries here in western Canada, but none of the papershells we used to get in the southern states. Are they insufficient in quantity to be shipped?

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Bee
Date: 03 Dec 07 - 02:49 PM

Oh for the old days, when Florida relatives could blithely throw a fifty pound sack of pecans or tree ripened oranges into the delivery system and have them actually be allowed into the country and brought to our door!

What my grandmothers accomplished, pastry and otherwise, with those fruits (and nuts) of the South is unimaginable in these days of Keeping Our Borders Safe from Terrorist Fruits and Vegetables.

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Dec 07 - 04:36 PM

Pecans can ship to Canada- but not oranges.
I miss the large, winy Anjou pears from Oregon that we ordered when we were in the States.

I found a couple of sellers who ship papershells to Canada. Might try for a bag.

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Bee
Date: 03 Dec 07 - 05:44 PM

Those pears sound good. Another fruit we never see anymore, and I've no idea where they came from - south, I would think - were very large, very juicy and sweet clingstone peaches. They were available in season until the seventies, then gone. I'm always disappointed by peaches now, as they are either dry, tasteless, or rotten around the stone, or unpleasantly sour.

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Dec 07 - 07:51 PM

Peaches here are terrible as well. Nectarines sometimes good, and we get apricots for about 3 weeks. Never see the large, sweet Elberta peaches anymore.
The demand for fruits that ship easily and have a long shelf life has caused many of the good varieties to disappear from the market.

Another peeve- bananas! One used to be able to buy a 'hand' of 8-12 and they would keep for over a week. Now 3 days in the house is as long as we can keep them before they go brown and soft. We like to buy groceries for the full week, but can no longer do that with bananas.

Getting back to pies, we used to make good ones with peaches, but they taste flat now.

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 04 Dec 07 - 11:14 AM

Do you sometimes wonder why one never sees the huge stalks of bananas that used to appear in stores, where you or the store employee would cut of what you wanted?

I used to think it was pure merchandising that caused the change to individual hands of bananas being shipped, only. Not so.

Those bananas, back in days of yore, were a different breed or strain. I don't recall the name of that strain, but what we get today are called Cavendish. There was a blight that attacked what I'll call "the stalk bananas", and either wiped them out or made major quality problems, so the Cavendish was developed or discovered. But the Cavendish is too tender, and can't stand the handling of the whole stalks in shipping, so it HAS to be shipped in individual hands.

That's okay, I suppose, but here's the bad news: There's another banana blight going around, which attacks the Cavendish strain. The banana industry is doing what it can to limit the blight's spread, but it looks like the Cavendish strain may be wiped out worldwide in not too many years.

Now here's the real bummer: Bananas are not grown from seed, but from cuttings, and it's difficult to develop a new (hopefully blight-resistant) strain. We may see a time when sweet dessert bananas, as opposed to the not-too-sweet cooking bananas called plaintains, will be unavailable.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 04 Dec 07 - 11:15 AM

"bananas called plantains", even.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Bee
Date: 04 Dec 07 - 11:48 AM

Uncle DaveO, there are many other kinds of bananas, some of them sweet, with varying textures. The yellow mini-bananas we get in ordinary grocery stores are not Cavendish, for example, and have a quite different texture than the usual yellow eating banana. Red bananas are sometimes available, and they too are different. Yes, we will likely never see the Cavendish again after a few years, and it will be hard on banana growers, having to switch to different breeds. The moral of the story, which no one appears to have learned the first time round, is don't raise cloned mono-crops.

Subject: RE: BS: American Pies-Questions & Answers.
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 04 Dec 07 - 03:37 PM

The mini-yellows are my favorite. We went bananas over them when we went to Hawai'i. Only rarely do they show up here in western Canada. They kept well, too. Before we got into our hotel in Hawai'i, we would stop at a grocery and buy a hand, a round loaf of Hawaiian brown sweet bread, small papayas, and dark honey. That, plus milk we kept in the mini-fridge, was our morning breakfast. The little ("lady") bananas would keep for a week.
I think that they are available in the Caribbean, but don't know for certain.