Tofu and other pies (Thanksgiving of 2005)

Thanksgiving is one of those gloomy holidays when you are supposed to stay inside because everything is closed and there is no place you could go hang out with a laptop and work on your own cherished projects -- on one day of the year when you should be able to do so! Nary a coffeeshop is open.

So, in order to do something "different" and holiday-worthy, I cooked. But not normal food. It had to be something weird or experimental. So I decided to bake a tofu pie. Trouble is, Steve thinks a tofu pie is just wrong. While he likes some tofu dishes, he doesn't see a place for tofu in desserts. He doesn't understand why would you use tofu if you can make a perfectly good pie out of normal ingredients. And I see a point here. But "normal" desserts are kind of... banal.

Still, not to be selfish, I also baked a normal (ricotta-apple) pie for Steve. And it was not bad. But the tofu concoction was better, in my opinion. I would not have guessed that tofu is so well suitable for pies. I pureed it in a blender with an egg, lemon juice, lemon peel, sugar and vanilla, poured the mixture into a crust and baked. It was, at least in my opinion, very simple and much better than so many traditional pies. It had none of their over-the-top sweetness, heaviness and grease. It is fairly low in calorie and tastes light.

The complete recipe can be found here: http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,1637,157183-250207,00.html.

And in the end Steve actually thought it tasted good!