- I was hoping you'd be able to deliver a dish
to my granddaughter's birthday party.
It's my specialty, herring and pumpkin pot pie.
- [Alvin] Hey, everyone.
Welcome back to another episode of Anime with Alvin,
and today, I'm gonna be making the pumpkin
and herring pie from Kiki's Delivery Service.
This is smoked herring.
It smells weird.
So to make that beautiful decoration that goes on top
of the pie, I'm gonna be making puff pastry from scratch,
which starts by combining 20 ounces of all-purpose flour,
half an ounce of kosher salt, four soft ounces
of unsalted butter, while slowly adding in
10 ounces of cold water.
And once the dough is a bit crackly or shaggy in texture,
it goes on to a well-floured work surface to begin shaping.
I might sound like I know what I'm doing,
but this is actually my first time making puff pastry ever,
so Kendall, our amazing kitchen producer,
is guiding me through every single step.
So what I'm doing here is rolling out the dough
into a rough rectangle, folding it over into
another rectangle, and punching it down
with the rolling pin slowly, and the goal here
is to really get a clean rectangular shape
with constant rolling and folding.
Offscreen, Kendall is silently giving me instructions
and nods of approval and nods of disappointment
when things don't go well.
I'm quite used to it because, well, I'm Asian.
Anyways, after a little bit of rolling and shaping
with a bench scraper, the butter inside the dough
is starting to get a little warm and soft,
so it does need to go on a board inside the fridge
so that it can set up nicely.
And while we wait, it's time to make the coveted
big butter block.
I think this is the heart and soul of any good puff pastry.
So what I'm doing is fusing blocks of butter together
by pounding it really hard with my rolling pin,
and when it gets a little bit too big to handle,
I fold it back in on itself so I can pound it again.
And it's so fun.
You can feel the butter getting softer and more flexible
under you after each pound, after each roll,
after each fold, and the goal is to slowly coax it
into a shape of a rectangle is slightly smaller
than half of the pastry, so this way,
it'll fit nice and snug when the time comes.
After about 10 minutes in the fridge,
it is now time for the butter and the pastry to get married.
First, I'm flouring the pastry,
and after rolling it out gently, I'm pressing it down
the midsection to create the fold line.
That's where the butter block's gonna go.
It's kind of like a butter sandwich.
Almost like a pop tart, or a hot pocket, or lean pocket,
if your parents cared about health, like mine did.
But I'm carefully using the rolling pin to get it
rolled out, and now we finally get to begin the laborious
but beautiful process of creating those hundreds
of magnificent layers.
It's actually pretty important to brush this down
with each fold so that the excess flour doesn't prevent
our layers from sticking together.
So here's the breakdown.
I started with a four-fold, rested that for 30 minutes
in the fridge, a three-fold, another 30 minutes
in the fridge, another four-fold, 30 minutes,
and a final threefold and 30 more minutes,
creating a total of 144 layers.
I'd like you all to meet my very first baby.
His name is Bob,
and I'm gonna put my baby in the fridge now.
So after my lunch break,
I decided to take on the pumpkin part for this recipe.
This is actually kabocha squash,
which in Chinese translates to "lan gua",
which in English translates back into pumpkin.
And that's what I grew up with, so I'm using it.
I decided to interpret the pumpkin and herring pie
as a pot pie filling, so I'm cutting up some leeks,
some celery, some fennel, and I just thought it'd be fun
to do a little, oh, nice catch there, dude.
For the fennel, I made sure I took out the little bit
of that hard triangular root near the base
so it's easier to dice it up.
Also, I did just get a new knife.
This was the perfect excuse to just chop a bunch of stuff up
and feel really cool.
And to cook the squash, I've placed a steamer attachment
inside a pot filled with boiling water,
steaming them for about 15 minutes or so
until they show no resistance when stabbed, just like me.
Now that they're done, these just hang out to the side
and cool off.
Well, we can't have have a pumpkin and herring pie
without herring, so after donning some protective measures
and carefully just tearing this into chunks.
I do want to be able to have some of that texture
in the final pie, but yeah,
make sure you wash your hands after this.
Now that the kabocha squash has cooled,
we have to take the skins off, so taking a small
petty knife, almost cutting it like a watermelon
in the way that you kind of take the skins off,
so that we're left with those nice soft
but still relatively firm chunks.
And finally, it's time to cook the pot pie filling.
So we're starting off with some butter followed by the leeks
that I washed in cold water and the rest of the vegetables
that we had cut earlier.
Really not trying to get these too cooked,
but we definitely want to get a little bit of this color
on the celery, and at this point,
I'm adding six tablespoons of flour
to coat all the vegetables evenly before adding the liquids,
first of which is milk,
and I'm slowly stirring it in to prevent clumping.
This gives the pot pie filling that creamy texture
that everybody likes.
And then I thought it would be fitting to use fish stock
instead of chicken stock,
'cause this is a pumpkin and herring pie.
And now the most interesting part that I was
looking forward to, putting in the herring itself
and adding in some sage and rosemary,
that'll freshen things up a bit,
hopefully lift the fish up, and salt, some black pepper,
and the pumpkin and herring filling is officially ready,
meaning it's time to slide Bob aggressively onto the table
and prepare him for one last beating.
We'll start by flouring the surface
and dividing the dough in half.
Gotta pause real quick to admire
all those beautiful layers we made.
Then, to roll out the pastry evenly, press the rolling pin
down equally across the dough before going in
and rolling it out to be a little larger
than the cooking vessel I'm using.
And I'm then using the lid to sort of mark
where I need to cut.
That way, I get a perfect shape every time.
If I recall correctly, the pie from Kiki's Delivery Service
has a fish on it, has a couple of stripes,
so I'm cutting out the pastry to try and get those shapes
as close to the film version as much as possible.
Shout out to my new knife.
This is my third one so far this week.
I've gone down quite a rabbit hole.
Someone please get me out.
This is a fish.
This is me trying to figure out
how large the eyeball should be.
I'm gonna go to Google images real quick,
I'll be right back.
So now, in a medium casserole dish,
I'm spooning in the pumpkin and herring pie filling.
I don't want the puff pastry to rise unevenly,
so I'm trying to make sure that the filling is as smooth
and as clean as possible.
It's also pretty important that the pastry goes
on a room temperature or cold filling, so that it doesn't
melt and change while it's in the oven.
Using a little bit of egg wash not only helps me stick on
the other strips of pastry, but it also helps promote
a nice golden brown look once it comes out of the oven.
And finally, I get to place on my fish.
So I'm being very careful not to disturb the other
pastry strips that I've tried to put on, using egg wash
as the glue and reassembling this fish's face.
Hey, not bad, if I do say so myself, for our first time.
Some steam vents to allow the steam to escape,
some olives, and there we have it.
Into a hot 400-degree oven you go.
45 minutes later, it looks like my fish tried to escape,
so we're gonna give it a little bit of time to deflate
and cool before I dive in and give myself a huge serving.
The pastry has a nice crackly sound to it,
and the filling honestly looks really delicious.
Let's see, first you got to give it that little...
(Alvin blowing)
The pastry is golden and buttery and delicious,
the filling is warm and comforting, and I think
it's a perfect meal to deliver to a grandkid or a friend.
I just wish this little guy could talk
so he could tell me how much he likes it.
I like you, little guy.