Kelsey

By the time I got around to making these dumplings, which was maybe a few months after Kelsey filled out my handy Google form, she had forgotten what this was for and how she was involved. Which probably made it confusing why I needed her to be free to eat dumplings with us. But that's why we love her - happy to go along with it anyways [when it involves people who don't suck]. Kelsey identifies as White - very Irish. I met her after I had to return to work from my Italian vacation after dramatically contemplating faking my own death and hitchhiking to a small olive farm where I could bottle olive oils and eventually fall in love with a handsome farmhand. She had just started, and I was, of course, intimidated by her. Luckily somewhere between asking if she wanted to take home a bunch of protein powders and sending her daily memes about how men are trash, I roped her into the center of my life.

So Kelsey's dumplings were really born of two key All-American Thanksgiving feast staples: pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes. It felt too easy to make another potato based dumpling, so I basically subbed in mashed... pumpkin... and folded them like pelmeni. Which was more a practical choice than intentional one because the pumpkin filling could not be contained.

The pumpkin filling was cooked down with butter and ras el hanout. Ras el hanout is an Arabic spice blend that can be made up of 30 or so spices (btw look at this pretty plate of spices), including cardamom, cumin, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, allspice, ginger, chili, coriander, peppercorn, paprika, fenugreek, turmeric, lavender, rosebuds, etc. Ras el hanout literally translates to "head of the shop" or "top shelf" - so basically a mix of the best a spice merchant has to offer. So every family and/or person has their own variation, and I really couldn't tell you what's in my version. Depending on the blend, it can be bitter, woody, pungent, and warm from all the "sweet" spices. It's used to season savory dishes or as a marinade for meats and fishes in stews and tagines.

Pumpkin  piespice, then, is like a subset ras el hanout mix - made up variations of the bolded spices.

But how did pumpkin spice even become a thing? And who got it in their heads that Starbucks PSL's should have actual pumpkin in it? Pumpkin spice was always supposed to refer to the spices that go into a pumpkin pie - McCormick had been selling a pumpkin pie spice blend since 1934, but it didn't explode in popularity until the 2000's when Starbucks debuted their PSL. After some time, it somehow became controversial when consumers were outraged the PSL didn't actually contain any pumpkin. Which leads us to the question of how things are flavored anyways. Even if pumpkin was meant to be an ingredient in the latte, it wouldn't be as simple as just blending in a scoop of roasted pumpkin.

In general, flavor chemistry and mass producing a consistent product is not that simple, especially when it comes to real spices that have natural variation in flavor and strength. So these flavorings are often synthesized. There are a lot of components that make up cinnamon and a lot of ways we can experience cinnamon, so developing a pumpkin spice mix isn't as easy as one compound. There are hundreds involved, but we can fill in the flavor blanks if given 10% of the compounds - like cinnamaldehyde in cinnamon, sabinene in nutmeg, zingiberene in ginger, and eugenol in clove.

Anyways, seasoning my pumpkin filling with ras el hanout felt like the perfect substitute for pumpkin spice to get that pumpkin pie air but with savory vibes. Then pan fried in more butter to form a nice toasty crust. Oh yeah, also... I made the wrappers with yogurt as a final nod to the yogurt cups Kelsey used to get in her lunches.

Things I would've done differently: make the filling thicker, fold into half moons for easier frying and/or roast instead of pan frying.

Kelsey's complete list:

pumpkin pie

mashed potatoes (so many mashed potatoes)

yogurt cups with the attached sprinkles in her lunches