Tag

pumpkin

Mini Pumpkin Pies Four Ways

written by Ali

Like many American families, my family had distinct Thanksgiving traditions and rituals, particularly around food. This mini pumpkin pies blend new traditions and old, giving a nod to healthier eating with small portion sizes, along with sharing two traditional pumpkin pie recipes from my maternal and paternal grandmothers.

As a child, I had a weird relationship with pumpkin pie. I can remember being as young as three or four and absolutely hating pumpkin pie – I don’t know if it was the texture or the taste that was the problem, but I was not having it. Somewhere around the age of five, though, my maternal grandmother decided to tell me that pumpkin pie was really chocolate pie. I could buy it – the color was right, and that year, I ate pumpkin pie. I don’t know exactly when they told me the truth, but I do know that by the time I was older, pumpkin pie was one of my favorite holiday treats.

I was very close to my maternal grandparents and less so with my paternal grandparents. My grandma on my mom’s side was the primary Thanksgiving chef, though it was my grandfather’s responsibility to mash the potatoes and my mother usually made a pumpkin praline pie each year to contribute to the feast. My grandma made the most perfect pie crust and it wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized her secret was adding in just a bit of apple vinegar to help the crust puff. Her pumpkin pie had more sugar in it – I’ve cut the sugar down quite a bit, as too sweet is not to my taste.

The pumpkin praline pie was my paternal grandmother’s recipe. It’s not a recipe I’ve seen widely reproduced, so I’m not sure if she got it from her mother or from a cookbook or a friend. I do know that it is a rich, beautiful recipe that blends brown sugar, pecans, and butter in a layer under the pumpkin, giving the pumpkin a hint of nuttiness. My paternal grandmother would make the recipe with either walnuts or pecans. The variation with walnuts was born of thrift – pecans could be too expensive for the era in which this pie was conceived.

This year, I decided to create a homage to both grandmothers and to both my younger and older selves by making mini pumpkin pies with four variations: a pumpkin pie using my maternal grandmother’s recipe, a praline pumpkin pie using my paternal grandmother’s recipe, a chocolate pumpkin pie (for my five year old self), and an eggnog pumpkin pie to celebrate changing tastes and the fact I’m old enough to buy and add booze to my pie. Note that if you choose to make all four variations, you’ll end up with a lot of mini pumpkin pies – each variation makes approximately 36 pies. You can, however, take the basic pumpkin pie recipe and make three of the four variations from the one pie recipe: the basic pumpkin pie, the praline pumpkin pie, and the chocolate pumpkin pie. Simply split the basic pumpkin pie mix into three bowls, leaving one without add-ins, adding the praline mixture to the base of one, and adding the cocoa powder and crème de cacao to the third. The really good news about the mini pumpkin pies is that they freeze beautifully and can be made in advance of Thanksgiving. Simply let them sit in the fridge for a few hours before dinner and they will be ready in time for dessert.

Mini Pumpkin Pies
Makes 36

Perfect Pie Crust
3 cups flour
1 ½ cups salted butter (if using unsalted, add ½ teaspoon salt to the dough)
1 ½ teaspoons apple cider vinegar
½ cup cold water

Mix the flour and the salt (if needed). Cut the butter into chunks and add to the flour. Using a fork, a pastry cutter, or your hands, mix the butter into the flour so that there are pea size chunks of butter throughout. Don’t over mix. Add the apple cider vinegar and a tablespoon of water at a time until the dough starts to stick together. Use a spoon or your hands to mix the dough until it sticks together and is manageable. Put the dough in the fridge for two hours.

Basic Pumpkin Pie
½ can of evaporated milk
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 egg
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and stir until they are combined.

Split your dough into 36 small balls of roughly the same size. Flatten each out and either roll or stretch until they are large enough to fill a mini-cupcake/muffin pan cup. Flute the dough around the top of the cup. Pour the pumpkin pie mix into each cup, filling to the top. Note: if you have only one mini-cupcake pan, put 12 of the dough balls into the fridge, along with the remaining pie mix and bake in two separate batches.

Bake for 40 minutes or until the pie mix is set (or a knife inserted into a mini-pie comes out clean). Let cool completely. If not eating right away, either freeze or store in the refrigerator. Enjoy!

Variations

Pumpkin Praline Pie
Basic Pumpkin pie mix from above
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup chopped pecans
2 tablespoons butter

Combine the brown sugar, pecans, and butter in small bowl. The mix should form a crumb. Fill the muffin pans with dough as above. Place a scant teaspoon of this mixture at the base of each dough cup. Fill each cup with the basic pumpkin pie mix and bake as directed above.

Pumpkin Chocolate Pie
Basic Pumpkin pie ingredients from above
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon crème de cacao

Add the cocoa powder and crème de cacao to the basic pumpkin pie mix. Fill the muffin pans with dough as above and fill each with the pumpkin chocolate pie mix. Bake as directed above.

Eggnog Pumpkin Pie
¾ cup eggnog
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 egg
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon rum
1 teaspoon nutmeg

Combine all ingredients and mix well. Fill the muffin pans with dough as above and fill each with the eggnog pumpkin pie mix. Bake as directed above.

Note – if you don’t want to make mini-pies, each recipe and variation above will make one pie. If you are making one full-size pie, reduce the dough ingredients to 2 cups flour, 1 cup salted butter, 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar and ¼ cup cold water. Baking time will be 50 minutes for a full sized pie at 350 degrees or until set.

This post is linked to the Saucy Saturday #71 Linky Party. For more wonderful holiday recipes, check out the hosts’ sites:

Take Two Tapas, La Petit Chef, Mid-Life Croissant and The Flavor Bender

November 20, 2016 2 comments

Baked Goods Breads Breakfast Farmer's Market

Pumpkin Date Bread

written by Ali

The October/November pick for the Cook the Books Club was Jessica Soffer’s Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots.

I had very mixed feelings about this book. It was well written enough for me to stay engaged and read it to the end, largely because I connected to the main character, Lorca, though throughout the book, I really, really found myself disliking her mother and her absolutely blase disregard for her daughter’s desperate need for her love. Full disclosure here – in another not too long ago life, I worked very closely with populations of both adults and young adults who were highly at-risk and often engaged in very risky behaviors, of which self-mutilation was often the least of it. I think that’s why I struggled with this book so much – I know that it takes a lot of perseverance for someone to save themselves and few get so lucky to find a Victoria, the other main character and a former restaurant owner, to help them.

Ok – now that that’s out there…the book was a feast of good food. After all, the entire focus is on how food can bring those who are desperately lonely together, and that particular theme resonates for me. I left the book with the feeling that food could transform Lorca’s life and make her into a resilient adult and that made me happy. It also made me happy to go flipping back through the book when I was done and think about what inspired me. I finally landed on a variation of date bread, because of this line of Victoria’s: “‘Date bread,’ I said. ‘From my country.’ Oldest trick in the book: bake something to make guests feel at home.” It is November, after all, and I’ve been in a baking mood. My pumpkin date bread relies on the flavors of the season with a good dose of pumpkin pie spice and pumpkin puree. The dates give it an extra punch of sweetness. It’s dense and chewy and goes really well with a cup of coffee in the afternoon.

This is also pretty easy to put together and makes a generous two loafs – perfect for having a loaf to eat now and one to freeze for later. Last, but not least, this is a low-fat pumpkin date bread, which gets much of its moist texture from unsweetened apple sauce and Greek yogurt.

Pumpkin Date Bread
Makes 2 loaves

3 1/2 cups unbleached flour
2 tablespoons pumpkin pie spice
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
1/2 cup white sugar
2 cups pumpkin puree (or 1 15 ounce can)
1 cup unsweetened apple sauce
1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 eggs
1 cup chopped dates

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Combine the dry ingredients, from the flour through the white sugar in a large bowl and mix. Combine the wet ingredients, from the pumpkin puree through the eggs in a small bowl and mix to incorporate all the ingredients. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, mixing just enough to incorporate all the dry ingredients. Add the dates.

Divide the batter between two bread pans that have either been buttered or that are lined with parchment paper.

Bake for 45 minutes or until a knife or skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Enjoy!

Many thanks to Cook the Books Club – I’ve had so much fun developing recipes based on the last two challenges. I’m looking forward to more reading and cooking in the future!

I’ve also linked up with this month’s tea time treat challenge, which is all about comfort food (and what’s more comforting that fresh bread?). Check out the wonderful hosts of Tea Time Treats: Lavender and Lovage, Travels for Taste and Jo’s Kitchen. Lavender and Lovage is hosting this month, so be sure to check out all the recipes for Tea Time Treats here.

November 7, 2016 10 comments

Farmer's Market Uncategorized

Winter Squash Guide

written by Ali

Once upon a time, there were only three kinds of winter squash in my life: pumpkin, acorn squash, and butternut squash. My family grew acorn squash, and I remember eating them roasted with salt, pepper and butter, which is probably the most perfect way to eat an acorn squash. I also have fond memories of one of our dogs when I was growing up hunting the acorn squash – she was convinced that they were a threat to our safety and would regularly bark at them. Butternut squash came a little later in my repertoire of winter squash, right around the time I started finding pumpkin pie pumpkins in the grocery store. I think it’s safe to say that these three squash were my go-to squash for a long time. I added Kabocha squash when I lived in the Marshall Islands, as these green squash were sold as local pumpkin in the market and made a great addition to curry.

Then I moved to Roseburg, Oregon and joined a CSA. Suddenly, each week in the early fall brought a new winter squash and brought me scrambling to figure out what to do with them all. One squash led to another and then I was buying many winter squash from the farmer’s market and the u-pick farm and stashing them in the coldest room in the house so I could eat them all winter long.

Now that we live in the Portland area, we set aside a Sunday morning to make a trip out to Sauvie Island, which is a popular spot in Portland to find farm stands. Bella Organic Farms on Sauvie sells a multitude of winter squash, and I had to contain myself as there’s just only so much squash I can eat in a season. So here’s a tour of the squash I bought at Bella Organic Farms and links to recipes for each. You’ll definitely be seeing some of my own recipe creations for these squash throughout the fall and winter.

Spaghetti Squash

Spaghetti squash is a great food for a low carb or carb free diet, as its stringy insides make a good substitute for pasta. You can roast spaghetti squash whole and then cut it open, de-seed and pull out the stringy insides.

Favorite recipes
Broccoli and Cheese Stuffed Spaghetti Squash

Garlic Spaghetti Squash with Herbs

Skinny Spaghetti Squash Alfredo

Spaghetti Squash with Kale and Chickpeas

Kuri Squash

Kuri squash is a lovely orange squash with an intensely orange interior. It’s great as a pumpkin substitute for pies, as well as blends smoothly as a base for soups.

Favorite Recipes

Roasted Red Kuri Coconut Curry Soup

Roasted Kuri Squash Soup with Smokey Harissa and Chickpeas

Red Kuri Pumpkin Pie with Chocolate

Black Futsu Squash

Black futsu squash is one I haven’t cooked with before. I saw it at Bella Organic Farm and thought it looked interesting. So here are two recipes to check out if you find one of these beauties:

Black Futsu Squash in Sweet Coconut Cream

Roasted Black Futsu Squash with Hazelnut Sage Pesto

Galeux d’Eysines Squash

The Galeux d’Eysines squash is another squash that I haven’t cooked before. I also couldn’t find many recipes that feature this winter squash, so I’m sure I’ll be posting a recipe or two of my own before too long. In the meantime, here’s a soup recipe that uses this unusual squash.

French Pumpkin Soup

Buttercup Squash

The Buttercup squash is another pretty squash that has a unique appearance. It’s also very versatile for cooking.

Favorite Recipes

Simple Roasted Buttercup Squash

Buttercup Sage Mac and Cheese with Bourbon

Black Bean and Butternut Squash Wraps with Chimichurri Sauce

Honey Nut Squash

These adorable squash are a smaller, sweeter variation on a butternut squash. I actually found these at Trader Joe’s and thought they were just so cute! You can use these in any recipe that calls for butternut squash. Here are a few ideas:

Roast Honey Nut Squash with Rosemary and Gruyere

Twice Baked Honey Nut Squash

Butternut Squash Pancakes

Delicata Squash

I saved the best for last. Delicata squash have a super nutty flavor and they roast like a dream. Even better yet, you can eat the entire squash – skin and all. I love eating thinly sliced and roasted delicata squash rings on a salad, especially with a few toasted hazelnuts and some pomegranate seeds.

Favorite Recipes

Midwinter Delicata Squash and Greens Salad

Smoky Delicata Squash and Black Beans Baked Quesadilla

Delicata Frittata

This first photo is all the squash together…and a dog’s nose. Daisy is keeping up the fine tradition of dogs in my family who are suspicious of winter squash. The second photo is a trio of squash – possibly my three favorite:(from left top clockwise) kuri, buttercup and galeux d’eysines.

These last two are just some pretty pictures of pumpkins in the pumpkin patch at Bella Organic Farms.

I hope you enjoy the bounty of winter squash that are available this time of year. I’d love to hear about your favorite recipes for winter squash and your experiences cooking with different types of winter squash, so please comment below!

October 12, 2016 0 comment

Baked Goods Breakfast Farmer's Market Holiday Recipes

Pumpkin Pie Spice Biscotti

written by Ali

I’m so delighted that fall is here! I couldn’t resist baking a batch of pumpkin pie spice biscotti this weekend, just to celebrate the start of October. These cookies make the entire house smell like the holidays – the pumpkin pie spice is so fragrant. I’m pretty generous with ginger in my spice blend and it comes through in a nice subtle way in these cookies.

I’ve been thinking some about the pumpkin pie spice craze – I’ll admit that as soon as it started raining, I was in line at Starbucks for my first Pumpkin Pie Spice Latte for the year, which really, honestly, tastes nothing like pumpkin or spice. I’ve since been sampling similar lattes at other coffee shops and have found a few favorites to get me through the season. I’ve also thought a lot about pumpkin pie spice – I don’t know when it became de rigueur to DIY pumpkin pie spice. I remember buying the premixed spice and having it around as a staple in the spice pantry. It’s so simple to mix up the spices yourself though, so I’m happy about this particular cooking trend.

And since this post is all about starting fall off with pumpkin, I recently read an interesting article that most canned pumpkin isn’t actually pumpkin at all, but is generally a blend of other winter squashes, like butternut squash because other winter squashes are less stringy than pumpkin and make a smoother puree. This was a bit of a revelation for me: I’ve been making my own pumpkin puree for years now and every time I open up a roasted pie pumpkin, I’ve thought – this thing looks more like an orange spaghetti squash than pumpkin puree, so what am I doing wrong? Then I put the thought aside, mash it up some, and throw it in the freezer to be used in things like these pumpkin pie spice biscotti or pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. The stringiness isn’t noticeable when it’s cooked into a baked good or even when it’s blended into a smoothie, so I’ll keep on making my pumpkin puree with pumpkin.

The bottom line here is that pumpkin and spice is a winning combination. Enjoy these pumpkin pie spice biscotti with a cup of coffee (or a pumpkin spice latte) or a cup of tea and sit back and watch the leaves fall.

Pumpkin Pie Spice Biscotti
Makes 2 dozen

½ cup pumpkin puree (recipe for DIY pumpkin puree here)
1 egg
4 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons pumpkin pie spice (see below to make your own)
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
To dip or drizzle:
1/3 cup white chocolate chips
1/3 cup dark chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cream the butter and sugar in a medium sized bowl. Add the pumpkin puree and egg and mix. In a smaller bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and pumpkin pie spice. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and combine until all the dry ingredients are mixed in.

Turn the dough out onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Divide it into two sections and form each into a loaf. Flatten each loaf out a bit on top.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

Remove the biscotti loafs from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes. Use a serrated edged knife to slice the loafs into ½ slices – you’ll be able to get about 12 cookies from each loaf. Place the biscotti back on the baking sheet in a single layer. As they will not rise anymore at this point, they don’t need space between them, so you can fit all the biscotti on one baking sheet.

Bake the sliced biscotti at 325 for 25 minutes or until they are brown and crispy looking. I usually flip them over about half way through to ensure even baking on both sides.

When the biscotti are baked, open the oven door and let the cookies cool in the oven for 15 minutes for a very crisp biscotti. Pull them out of the oven and finish cooling on a cooling rack.

When the biscotti are cooled, melt the chocolate chips (in two separate saucepans) and use them to drizzle to decorate. You can also dip the cookies in chocolate and nuts or just in chocolate. Let the cookies air dry and then store in an airtight container. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Pie Spice
3 tablespoons cinnamon
2 ½ teaspoons ground ginger
2 ½ teaspoons ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons allspice
1 ½ teaspoons ground cloves

Mix all the spices together in an airtight container.

October 4, 2016 0 comment

Farmer's Market Quick and Easy

DIY Pumpkin Puree the Easy Way

written by Ali

My first experience with DIY pumpkin puree was probably inspired by Martha Stewart. As a teenager, I used to watch Martha Stewart’s TV show with my mom when I was on summer break and then again during the winter holiday. I think this may have been when I started getting interested in where my food actually came from. The thought of using pumpkin for something other than carving it into a Jack-O-Lantern was really appealing, but I didn’t have a clue where to find a pie pumpkin. The only pumpkins in the grocery store were the carving kind.

Fast forward to my early twenties: I was still intrigued by all things food related. I had decided to be a vegetarian and wanted to find farm fresh vegetables. I started going to the Cherry Creek Farmer’s Market on a semi-regular basis, where I first found edamame (they come in pods on a stick – this was absolutely marvelous and exotic to me), various varieties of kale and chard, freshly made pasta, and, once fall rolled around, pie pumpkins. I dutifully dusted off my Martha Stewart Cookbook, wrestled the pumpkin open, pulled out the seeds, and roasted it. Note that this was the mid-nineties and my access to cooking related resources was actual cookbooks (I had a huge collection, including one book that had all sorts of pumpkin recipes in it – it was something of a revelation that pumpkin had uses other than Thanksgiving pie).

I kept on roasting pie pumpkins and other winter squash, like butternut squash, by dutifully cutting them open, pulling out the seeds and roasting. I had other encounters with winter squash, including discovering the ubiquitous local pumpkin when I lived in the Marshall Islands. Local pumpkin was really Kabocha squash, which I didn’t realize until I’d moved back to the US and joined a CSA. Local pumpkin, or Kabocha squash makes the most heavenly curry, but I digress.

All of this is to say that one day, in the not too distant past, after I had wrestled a pie pumpkin open to roast, I was browsing Pinterest and came across a recipe that has, frankly, changed my life. Ok – not changed my life so much, but definitely made an emergency room visit from trying to cut a very tough winter squash in half much less likely. Here’s the secret – when you need to roast a pumpkin or another winter squash to make a puree, just bake it like you would a baked potato.

That’s it – just put the squash in whole. I’ve done this for years without incident, but if you are worried about the risk of pumpkin explosion in the oven, you can make a few stabs at the squash like you would a potato. Bake it at 350 degrees until it’s easy to pierce with a knife. Let it cool (it’s steamy and hot, so risky to open it too soon and not get a steam burn). Cut it open, scoop out the seeds, scoop out the flesh and either puree it in a blender or mash it up with your hands or a potato masher.

I usually roast two pie pumpkins a season. I freeze it in quart freezer bags in 1 cup serving sizes. I can generally get around 6 cups of pumpkin from two small pie pumpkins.

If you are looking for a way to use up your pumpkin puree, check back in tomorrow when I will post a Pumpkin Pie Spice Biscotti that will rock your fall. Enjoy!

October 4, 2016 0 comment