Spicy Pumpkin Soup with Bacon Croutons

I have been fortunate that the lives of most of my friends and family were not upset by Hurricane Sandy. Even my parents' beach house on a New Jersey barrier island somehow pulled through okay, sitting an extra 20 inches off the ground past the top of the flood water. I do have some friends who went without power for more than a week, like the couple who run a food truck business out of their building in Red Hook. Luckily their commercial kitchen space and apartment above were fine, well as their food truck parked in Gowanus. But their basement flooded to the ceiling, and Evan spent an afternoon helping them clean while they decided what of their belongings could be salvaged and what had to be tossed.

Knowing we had a lamb roast in our freezer, we invited them over for a home cooked meal. There have been so many post-Sandy volunteer opportunities that I haven't taken part in. It's been heartening to see how New Yorkers have stepped up to take care of each other, but honestly, I am not personally a manual labor or talk to strangers kind of person. Cooking a meal for friends, however, I could do.

But this is not about the lamb - this is about the pumpkin soup we served. It feels homey and warming, perfect for this time of year when we are easing into winter, with some hardships along the way. It's a riff off a similar soup from Simply Recipes, scaled back in serving size. I originally left out the sugar, but realized it was a little too bland at the first taste. After adding maple syrup and more salt, it went straight to amazing, especially with a sprinkling of bacon bits and croutons. The hint of sweetness in the soup balances the heat of all the spices. Don't worry about sticking to the spices listed in the ingredients - throw in whatever spices you have in your cabinet that you think might be fun.

My croutons were made from stale multigrain flatbread that resulted from a failed attempt on my part to make a decent loaf of bread. My guests enjoyed their hearty and grainy crunch, but you could use any day old or stale bread. While we were eating, I imagined that fried sage would really put it over the top, and included that as a suggestion below. 

The entirety of the steps below may look daunting, but it actually feels like a piece of cake if you make the bacon and roast pumpkin the day before like I did. Then all you have to do is pull things out of the fridge to combine them in a pot, and prepare the croutons while the soup is simmering.

This time of year, Evolutionary Organics Farm has a wealth of beautifully funny looking squashes and pumpkins at their stand at the Grand Army Greenmarket. This variety is Musquee de Provence, also known as Fairytale, an heirloom pumpkin from France that  packs a lot of flesh and is well flavored for soups and pies. I got six cups of roasted puree out of this beauty, as I work on roasting and hoarding a stash of pureed pumpkin in my freezer to last me through a winter of baking. Really, though, any pumpkin or squash will work in this recipe.

Spicy Pumpkin Soup with Bacon Croutons

1 tbsp bacon fat or olive oil

1 small onion

4 cups vegetable stock 

4 cups pureed roasted pumpkin or squash

1/2 tsp curry

1/2 tsp tumeric 

1/2 tsp cumin 

1/2 tsp coriander 

1/4 tsp crushed red pepper 

1/8 tsp cayenne 

1 tsp salt 

1 cup milk 

1/4 cup maple syrup 

6 strips of bacon (1 strip per serving)

few slices of slightly stale bread

handful of fresh sage (optional)

To roast the pumpkin: 

Preheat the oven to 450. Leaving the skin on the pumpkin, slice it in half. Scoop out the seeds and set them aside (you can roast them into a snack while the pumpkin is cooking). Place each half of pumpkin flesh side down in a large baking dish. Fill the dish with about a half inch of water. Stick it in the oven for about 40-60 minutes, depending on the size. It's done when the skin has softened and the flesh can be easily mashed all the way through with a fork. Remove it from the oven. Once it has cooled off, use a fork to scoop out the roasted pumpkin flesh. If you like, use an immersion blender to puree the somewhat stringy flesh into creamy puree. Freeze extra puree in half or full cup portions for baking.

To prepare the soup:

Warm a medium size pot and coat the bottom with bacon fat (or olive oil). Dice one small onion and sautee until softened. Add the stock, pumpkin, and spices and stir to thoroughly combine. Turn the heat to high and cover until it comes to a boil. Uncover, reduce heat and let it simmer for about 15 minutes.  Turn off the heat and use an immersion blender to puree the soup until smooth (or wait for it too cool and transfer to a food processor or blender). Stir in milk and maple syrup. Add more salt to taste.

To prepare bacon croutons :

Using fresh bacon: Slice slightly stale bread into half inch cubes. Rinse sage leaves and slice roughly in half or thirds. Fry one strip of bacon per serving. Add bread cubes to the pan, and toward the end, add the sage as well, making sure both bread and sage are coated in bacon fat and cooked until slightly crispy. Let it all drain and cool on paper towels before dicing the bacon into bits. 

Using leftover bacon: Chop cold bacon into small bits. On a small tray, toss the bread cubes with a little olive oil and salt and then scatter bacon bits and fresh sage around the cubes. Toast in the toaster oven for about ten minutes.

Ladle soup into a bowl and top with a sprinkling of the bacon-sage crouton mix. Makes about 6 servings.

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Ramekin Dreams

It was a certain someone's birthday last weekend. A certain someone who was turning 30 and likes cooking and has often wished for ramekins so that he can bake adorable individual desserts and dishes for guests. I commissioned my friend Andy Boswell to make a set of six as a gift for Evan.

When we were young, my dad took pottery lessons from Andy's dad. Now Andy too is a potter (or utilitarian ceramic artist as he calls himself), who shares his father's studio. His etsy shop is full of beautiful mugs, teapots, and other vessels. It is much nicer to have his unique and meaningful pieces added to our home than generic mass produced items from China.

Evan is happy that his ramekin dreams have come true. We used them for the first time last weekend to make mini frittatas for brunch for overnight guests. I plan on using a few as serving dishes for his big birthday party coming up this weekend. And I see lots of personal apple crisps in our future this fall.

Mini Fritattas

Arrange the ramekins (one per person) on a baking tray in the oven and preheat the oven to 350. Whisk two eggs per person in a bowl. Add whatever extras you would like, such as grated cheddar cheese, sauteed onions and roasted red peppers. Add salt and pepper to taste. Carefully grease the insides of the ramekins with butter. Pour whisked eggs evenly among the ramekins. Bake for about 20-30 minutes, until the eggs puff up and a knife inserted comes out only slightly wet. Let cool for at least 5 minutes before serving.

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Quinoa Salad with Chickpeas, Tomatoes and Squash

Here's a good quinoa dish that I've added to my roster of summer salads. I made this back in June for a party whose invitation jokingly requested no healthy stuff like quinoa. So of course that's what we had to bring. The salad is composed of quinoa, chickpeas, chopped cherry tomatoes, a diced yellow summer squash, diced spring onion, and fresh parsley. It qualifies as vegan and gluten free. Despite their love of meat, everyone at the party ate it up.

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Strawberry Rhubarb Ice Cream

The season of strawberries and rhubarbs has come and gone, but I've only now had time to take these photos off the camera. Evan made this ice cream, not me, but he was so enamored with it that he wanted me to share. For fruit ice cream, he likes to take the time consuming method of cooking fruits down into a jam that can be added to the ice cream machine after you've put in the plain ice cream base. Bookmark this one for next June.

Strawberry Rhubarb Ice Cream
1 3/4 cup rhubarb, chopped
1 cup strawberries, chopped
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water

Stew ingredients for twenty minutes. Puree. Return to the pot and simmer until it reduces to a jam consistency. Test to see if it's ready by using the frozen plate test (put a spoonful on a frozen plate, wait a few minutes, then touch it and see if it wrinkles).

1 cup whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup sugar

Meanwhile, whisk these ingredients together until sugar is dissolved. Pour mixture into ice cream machine to churn. After the ice cream machine has been going for ten minutes, slowly add the strawberry rhubarb jam. Let it churn for about another five minutes. Store in the freezer overnight until the ice cream firms up.

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Moving into Spring

The weekend before last, I finally left the apartment where I lived in bed bug fear and moved into my boyfriend's apartment. We both love cooking, so now that we're cohabitating, we are enabling each other to cook a lot (perhaps too much?). In the past week alone, we made quite a few excellent meals sourced mostly from the greenmarkets - because early spring vegetables are here!

Lamb burgers with the whites of ramps diced and mixed into the patties and the greens of ramps sauteed on top with melted cheddar cheese. Fiddleheads were blanched and then sauteed to ensure they were thoroughly cooked (they are poisonous raw). This was my first time trying fiddleheads, which like ramps, are foraged this time of year. I wished we had cooked them long enough to brown and crisp to add more flavor, because I found the fiddleheads too earthy and bland. There were also roasted potatoes.

Friends came over for dinner on Cinco de Mayo, so we made pulled pork tacos. The pork shoulder (from Flying Pigs Farm) was rubbed in garlic, cumin, paprika, onion powder, salt and crushed red pepper. We put it in the slow cooker fat side up with a bottle of black Irish lager and the juice of half a lime and let it sit on high for 3 hours and then low for 4 hours until it was tender enough to pull apart with a fork. For toppings, I prepared a slaw of thinly sliced cabbage and scallions; chopped cilantro; shredded cheddar cheese; pickled radishes and wedges of lime. In the past I've always made pulled pork with barbecue sauce, so this was a refreshing change of pace. Perhaps letting the rub sit overnight would have imbued it with more flavor.

Salad of smoked trout from Max Creek Hatchery, pickled radishes, arugula, lightly oiled and toasted homemade croutons with a dressing of apple cider vinegar and olive oil.

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Make Your Own Mustard

When I went to my make mustard for my father's holiday gift this year, I realized that I've never posted the go-to recipe I've been using for years now. The concept behind making mustard is very simple: soak mustard seeds in a vinegar-based liquid and then blend it. That liquid can be just vinegar and water, but I like to use beer or wine for more flavor, as well as honey for some sweetness to offset the spiciness. You can also add whatever spices your heart desires for endless variations. Despite using white seeds, which actually look yellow and are supposed to be the most mild of the types of mustard seeds, this comes out hotter than the storebought stuff and takes a few weeks to mellow out. I also recently learned you can heat the liquid first, which will cut the mustard's bite, but I haven't tried that yet.

Mustard seeds can be found in the spice section of most grocery stores. Some seeds I've bought are harder to blend than others for no apparent reason and result in a coarser mustard - just a warning. This makes a very simple gift, which you probably wish I told you a few weeks ago, or is a simple way to impress barbecue guests, or is just a good thing to have in your fridge since the anti-bacterial properties of mustard mean it will last for months.

Also, happy holidays!

Homemade Spicy Honey Mustard

1/4 cup white mustard seeds
1/4 cup beer or wine
1/4 cup white vinegar
1 tbsp whole peppercorns
1 tsp salt
1 tsp tumeric
1 tsp mustard powder
1 tbsp honey

Combine all ingredients in an empty jar* and put in the fridge for a week. One to seven days later, blend the mixture until seeds are mostly ground and it reaches your desired consistency, adding a little water a tablespoon at a time if necessary.

* It is suggested that you rinse and save salsa and peanut butter jars since they are perfect for homemade condiments.

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Pumpkin Ice Cream

I made pumpkin ice cream last year and never posted about it here, which was silly. Because ice cream with fresh roasted pumpkin puree, fall spices and crunchy walnuts feels homey like pumpkin pie. So here it is now. I like mine with walnuts, but not everyone does, so that's optional. I recommend roasting your own pumpkin rather than buying a can at the store, unless you like BPA in your food. Roasting a pumpkin is easy - you just cut it in half, stick it in the oven, take it out a while later and scoop out the puree. More on that over here. Plus you'll have extra pumpkin leftover for other baking and you can make roasted seeds for snacking.

According to my boyfriend, this ice cream was at its best the day after it was made - creamy with a subtle texture from the pumpkin flesh. But by the time I tried it a few days later, it had frozen too hard, similar to how my hand-churned ice cream comes out. Maybe the pumpkin puree affected the way the creaminess ratio held up in the freezer?

If you want to go extra fall, this ice cream makes an excellent ice cream sandwich inside my pumpkin snickerdoodle cookies.

With all the ice cream I've made since I originally posted my standard recipe last year, I've updated my recipe in a few ways. First, just use the whole two cups of heavy cream that come in a pint, because that's how cream is sold and it's silly to have a little cream leftover. Second, you don't need to get the cream-milk-sugar mixture that hot to dissolve in the sugar, which also means you don't need to wait as long before adding the eggs. Third, cooking it into custard can take upward of 20 minutes and is an imprecise science. Sometimes I'm not sure if it got thick enough so I just give up after a while and the ice cream still turns out fine.

Pumpkin Ice Cream
2 cups heavy cream (1 pint)
1 cup milk (I use 2%)
2/3 cups sugar
3 egg yolks
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger
3 whole cloves
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)

Warm cream, milk, and sugar in a saucepan and stir vigorously until sugar is nearly dissolved and just before steaming. Remove from heat and wait approximately 10 minutes to let cool. Whisk three egg yolks in a separate bowl. Slowly whisk half a cup of the milk mixture into the eggs, and then another half cup, to temper the eggs. Then, slowly whisk the egg mixture into the saucepan. Add spices. Cook over low heat for approximately 20 minutes, stirring constantly, until custard thickens enough to coat the back of a metal spoon. Remove from heat, and let cool. Remove cloves. Transfer to an airtight container in fridge overnight to chill completely.

Prepare according to ice cream machine directions, or hand churn by putting container in freezer and removing to whisk every 30-90 minutes over the course of a few hours until it reaches the desired consistency. Stir in walnuts if you want. Scoop. Enjoy.

Apologies for the strage juxtoposition of iphone and DSLR photos.

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Sweet and Spicy Sriracha Brussels Sprouts

While I've been away from the blog over the past few weeks, I have been dealing with a NYC rite of passage...bedbugs. My inconsiderate downstairs neighbors got them first but didn't tell anyone so we didn't take any precautions, and my landlord didn't take proper action (which is to spray all apartments in the building immediately and simultaneously), so they escaped to the rest of the building. You don't have to throw out your mattress, but you do have to put it in a cover, run all of your clothing and shoes through the dryer (and yes, as I've learned, even wool and most "dry clean only" garments and shoes and bags and purses will make it through a dryer unscathed if not washed first), and then live out of plastic bags for several weeks, and do your best to clean all other objects and furniture and the floors with alcohol and vacumming, and hope for the best. One good thing is that our exterminator used a potent spray of essential and mineral oils rather than a pesticide. We're now in between sprayings and hoping for the best. When I'm home, I feel like I should be cleaning, or I'm spending way too much time sifting through the plastic bags of clothing, or else I escape to my boyfriend's apartment where it hopefully seems the bugs have not spread.

In these past few weeks, it has also become late fall-almost winter. There is no choice but to embrace vegetables like brussels sprouts. Simply roasted sprouts is one of my favorite winter vegetable preparations, but here we sought to recreate the Vanderbilt's honey and sriracha brussels sprouts. This combination works just as well at home, taking it up a notch with a playful sweet and spicy flavor. They were paired with Wilklow's deliciously fatty pork chops and cornbread using bacon drippings, from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, which unfortunately and surprisingly was a dense let down.

Sweet and Spicy Sriracha Brussels Sprouts
Preheat the oven to 425.
For a pound and a half of sprouts, trim the ends and chop in half.
In a large bowl, whisk together about 2 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp honey, 3 tsp sriracha and salt and pepper. These are the measurements I remember, but you may need to add more honey or sriracha to taste.
Add the sprouts to the bowl and stir until they are all coated.
Roast about 40 minutes, until browned and crispy. But I like mine totally browned and softened and overdone. If you like yours with some green vigor and crunch left in them, check around 25 minutes.

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Fall Locavore Dinner

My gentleman friend's father hunts deer, so his freezer is stocked with various forms of venison (like pepperoni and bologna!?) and sometimes we get to enjoy venison steak. It's a lean meat that reminds me of bison. This back strap cut was particularly tender and added to what felt like an indulgent yet wholesome fall locavore dinner.

I thought a bunch of sage I had picked from my mother's garden would be a nice flavor accompaniment to mashed sweet potatoes, and it certainly was. I wasn't sure how to best incorporate it, so I decided to chop and sautee the sage and then add to the mash. He said the pieces of sage were off-putting in the otherwise creamy mashed potatoes; I didn't mind. Next time, I wouldn't bother cooking the sage and would more finely dice it. On the side was also kale, simply sauteed with olive oil, salt and pepper, because sometimes that's all it needs.

For dessert, we made apple crisp using fruit from the annual upstate apple picking adventure and topped it with vanilla maple ice cream. The boy loves ice cream so much he eats it every day. I love making ice cream and taught him how. Now he's got himself an ice cream machine and can achieve creamy perfection (especially thanks to Milk Thistle Farm), that my handchurn technique can't quite reach.

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Heirloom Tomato Salad

What do you bring to a dinner party at summer's end? We originally planned to bring a green salad, but like many New York area farms impacted by Hurricane Irene*, Evolutionary Organics farm had no greens to offer over Labor Day weekend. Instead, we selected a variety of their tomato beauties, as well as a cucumber and red onion from the market. The vegetables were thinly sliced and carefully layered -  a layer of tomatoes topped with a layer of cucumber, followed by scattered onions and parsley, a sprinkling of salt and pepper and a dash of olive oil and red wine vinegar. Continue to add layers until you've used up the goods and then give it a few hours to marinate. It was part of a impressive spread that included oysters, sweet roasted tomato, honey and ricotta crostini, sweet potato and bacon hash, pork ribs three ways, and peach cobbler (I regretted not bringing my camera to the party). Yum!

* Check out GrowNYC's campaign to help local farmers recover from the losses wreaked by hurricane flooding.

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Hurricane Dinner

I decided to spend Hurricane Irene weekend upstate at my parents' house, although it turns out I didn't need to leave Brooklyn since the flooding was apparently minimal and the power didn't even go out. Flooding is going to be more of a problem in my journey through New Jersey to get back to the city tomorrow. With a lot of time on my hands, I cooked dinner for my parents on my second night here: a zucchini parmesan casserole and cantelope sorbet for dessert.

 

My mom has grown some massive squash in her garden this year. The snake-like one is called a cucuzza squash and is common in Italy, but I chose to use the oversized zucchini - and I actually only needed to use half of it to create two create two casserole dishes. I breaded zucchini slices and lay them in a glass baking dish, which I topped with tomato sauce, stale pieces of bread, and shredded mozzerella cheese and baked for a half hour. It was fine, but a bit mushy. I recommend either frying the breaded squash first for a crisper texture, although it's time consuming, or going more deconstructed by dicing the zucchini and combining it with the bread pieces (but no bread crumbs), sauce and cheese rather than layering.

I also made sorbet out of an overripe cantelope that was too mushy for eating. We blended cantelope pieces and then added 2/3 cups of orange juice and 2/3 cups of simple syrup. It came out with a large ice grain texture, which could be improved by cutting down the OJ and syrup and using an ice cream maker instead of my handmade stirring method.

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Making Cheese

Following butter, next in the homemade dairy adventures was cheese! As I've mentioned, I get raw milk from the Bushwick Food Coop. I find that the raw milk goes sour tasting faster than I can drink it. I was ready to throw it out, until a fellow coop member filled me in on the fact that soured raw milk is still edible and can be saved for other uses. Apparently, raw milk has beneficial bacteria and enzymes that make it more easily digestible and kill pathogens, so it continues to be safe and nutritious after it starts to taste sour. In contrast, pasteurized milk extends the initial shelf life and eliminates disease risk, but becomes putrified and unsafe after it goes sour. I don't fully understand it, but you can find more information on this here and here and here.





I looked up uses for sour milk - I don't like yogurt so that was out. I wanted to make cheese, but nothing complicated involving rennet. Then I remembered Rachel's simple paneer from Heart of Light. Sold. Then poking through some old magazines I stumbled across directions for making ricotta in an old Diner Journal (offbeat food publication made by the folks behind Diner restaurant in Brooklyn). The directions for both are quite similar, one calling for lime juice and the other for vinegar. After making it, the texture reminded me of the goat cheese my mom made when I was young, and sure enough, she said she used the same process but calls it "farmers cheese." So whatever you want to call it, it was a snap to make.







Heat whole milk until nearly boiling, add an acid such as vinegar (which is what I used) or lime juice, and then let the curds (solids) separate and rise to the top from the whey (liquid). My instructions told me the whey would turn clear, which it never did. I also found curds hanging at the bottom of my pan in addition to the top, so maybe I didn't cook it long or hot enough for them to separate sufficiently. Not sure. Regardless, I spooned out the curds with a mini colander (or slotted spoon would work) and then laid them in a rag (any thin dishcloth or cut up sheet or cloth napkin etc would work here if you don't have actual cheesecloth) over a larger colander and let drain for a half hour. Then twisted the rag around the curds to strain out more liquid and let it drain another half hour before putting in the refrigerator to firm. I added the olive oil and rosemary later, mashing it up into small pieces which is the texture you see below. My cheese was still good in the fridge a week after making it.



Coming from soured milk, it had a little sour tang, and then I thought it still needed a litle something extra, so I mixed in rosemary and marinated it in olive oil. It tasted great on pizza and melted well. I think I will make cheese again next time I have sour milk, although I will play around with a different final preparation.

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Making Butter

I recently joined the Bushwick Food Coop, which gives me access to raw, organic, grass fed dairy from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania. I was strangely craving ice cream last week despite the cold weather, so I ordered heavy cream in addition to my usual milk. However, feeling lazier this week and having run out of butter, I decided to give a whirl at turning my cream into butter instead. You can theoretically do so by shaking a mason jar of cream over a half hour, but I don't have an empty jar to spare right now (all are housing bulk goods), and butter can be made in just a few minutes in a food processor or stand mixer.

I followed Kelly's lead over at eat make read. Sure enough, the transformation went through all the proper phases as I paused the food processor every minute or so to check on progress: cream turned into thick white whipped cream and then into yellower crumbly soft butter. Next, liquid began to spray the sides of the food processor as the buttermilk separated from a mass of solid butter.

I strained the buttermilk to save for baking. The final step was to rinse the butter in extremely cold water while kneading it a bit until the water ran clear and then to dry it in a paper towel or cheesecloth. A pint of cream will give you about one cup of butter, good in the fridge for roughly one week.

I'm going to a potluck this weekend. What should I make to highlight this tasty butter? Bread to serve with herbed butter? Buttermilk scones or biscuits? Empanadas? Any other ideas? Help me decide!

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