Adventures: Pecan Kumquat Pie

A fellow food adventurer invited me over for pie-making. She had acquired some kumquats from a co-worker who had brought them back from his parents' tree at their home in Florida. She had discovered a Pecan Kumquat Pie recipe in Tartine and wanted to use the pecans from my tree that we had shelled together. So, pie we made, and it is delicious. It's like a regular pecan pie, in that you basically make a custard, but with the addition of the kumquats that bake into little candied treats. With local-ish kumquats, local pecans and eggs, it satisfied enough requirements to make us proud to make a local winter dessert. Plus, I got to eat a kumquat for the first time. It is eaten whole, skins and all. Taste adventure, indeed.

The recipe is from the Tartine cookbook from what appears to be a lovely little bakery of the same name in San Fransisco. Alice Waters wrote the forward, which is a testiment to their local food support. In the words of Tina Fey: I want to go to there.

This particular recipe addressed their claim that pecan pies are notoriously too sweet. True, but the Tartine pie is pretty darn sweet. However, this is a pecan to make without the traditional Karo syrup, that high-fuctose nastiness we all should be staying away from. Instead, it uses maple syrup and corn syrup, the more natural kind. We substiuted rice syrup for some of the corn syrup, because it made us feel better for some reason.