- 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.
