this recipe, with many other delicious treats for thanksgiving, appears in the parlato design studio seasonal eats recipe guide! pick up your copy today in the parlato design studio store, and follow the thanksgiving2011 tag for more recipes as they become available. enjoy & thanks for being awesome!

i’ve made a lot of variations of savory pumpkin and mixed vegetable pies. when considering the recipes for the thanksgiving guide, i wanted to incorporate sweet potatoes, and i thought i’d work with a version that uses a simple breadcrumb crust rather than a full pie crust. you can pick your favorite type of bread, but i’ve tried to keep the carbs lower by using sprouted rye [i love both trader joe’s and alvarado bakery’s sprouted rye breads]. i think a whole-grain sourdough would also be really tasty.

start by roasting the pumpkin and sweet potato. i like to use cinderella pumpkins, because they have deep red-orange, juicy flesh. i also like to cut them lengthwise along the grooves for roasting in slices. cut the sweet potatoes in half lengthwise for roasting as well. roast 45 minutes at 300º on an oiled baking sheet, turning the slices halfway through, but leaving sweet potatoes cut-side down. when finished and cooled enough to handle, cut the pumpkin away from the peel and scoop the sweet potato away from the skin into a bowl. cut into large chunks and mash coarsely with a fork to break up and incorporate. this should not be in any way uniform, just break up the pieces so they can be mixed with other fillings and baked.

while the pumpkin and sweet potato are roasting, prepare your onion, garlic & spice sauté. i chose a cumin-coriander-chili spice mix, but this is the time to pick your favorite flavor profile and saute them once the onions are translucent.

preheat oven to 325º. when all the fillings have been prepared, add onion sauté to the mixing bowl along with 2 eggs and parmesan cheese, and stir in with a form to incorporate. toast the 2 slices of bread and blend them into bread crumbs in the blender. use butter or oil to grease a 9″ baking dish, spread the breadcrumbs along the bottom and shake them up along the sides to coat [it’s not critical to get a thick layer on the sides of the dish, just do what you can]. add the pumpkin filling and spread with a spoon into a level pie. bake at 325º for 1 hour.

savory pumpkin pie

1⁄4 cinderella pumpkin, cut into 1” sliced sections
2 sweet potatoes, halved
2 medium onions, chopped
2 tb butter
4 cloves minced garlic
2 tb white wine vinegar
spice mix: 1 tsp each of cumin, coriander and chili powders
2 eggs
1⁄2 cup parmesan cheese
bread crumbs made from 2 slices whole grain bread

roast pumpkin and sweet potato on an oiled baking sheet at 300º for 45 minutes. cut pumpkin flesh from peel, scoop flesh from sweet potato skins, and roughly chop each into a mixing bowl. mash with a fork to mix potato and pumpkin. turn oven up to 325º.

sauté the onions with butter, 3 minutes. add garlic and vinegar and simmer on low heat, covered, 20 minutes. uncover and add the spice mix, sauté 1 minute more, remove from heat. add sautéd onions, eggs and parmesan to the bowl. stir with a fork to mix through. grease a 9” baking dish and spread bread crumbs over the bottom. add the filling and level the top. bake 1 hour at 325º.

variations

– add mushrooms to your onion sauté
– substitute feta cheese or any hard cheese for parmesan

make it vegan
– substitute olive oil for butter
– substitute vegan parmesan [make your own!]
– substitute ener-g egg substitute for eggs
– add additional bread crumbs to pumpkin filling
– add mushrooms to your onion sauté