Pumpkin Chiffon Pie with Gingersnap Crust; & Sweet Potato and Parsnip Puree

When my sister-in-law asked me to make dessert for Thanksgiving, she noted that we were going to be a small group. Eight adults.

"One dessert should be more than enough, don't you think?" she asked.

Readers, you can imagine how difficult it is to contemplate just ONE dessert for Thanksgiving. With the variety of traditional pies out there--apple, pecan, pumpkin, sweet potato--how does one choose? And what if the one dessert you make turns out to be not so popular? There are strong opinions out there about pies, in case you haven't noticed.

The Gourmet Cookbook offers a plethora of desserts that would be appropriate for the season. I narrowed it down by shutting my eyes and pointing. Pumpkin Chiffon Pie it is! And if some of our eaters didn't like pumpkin...well, c'est la turkey.

I must confess to a certain apprehension about plain old pumpkin pie. It always feels a little...slimy to me. I mean, I can polish off a piece without any problem (it would take more than a texture issue to deter me) but it's not my go-to ingredient when I'm thinking about pies.

So this recipe was a leap of faith for me but I was encouraged by the head notes, which state that the texture of THIS pie was lighter than air thanks to the chiffon-y nature of it. And if you're wondering what chiffon involves, it means getting out that Kitchen Aide mixer and using it a LOT, because you fold sweetened whipped egg whites and THEN stiff heavy cream into your pumpkin/sugar/egg/brandy/gelatin base.

It all looked pretty promising when I poured this filling on top of the gingersnap crust. I was expecting people to like it well enough.

What I wasn't expecting was that my family LOVED this dessert. I mean, the sort of love where they would just stop eating to say Oh. My. God.

I was bowled over, and very pleased.

If you make this, be sure to use the suggested garnish of chopped crystallized ginger. I think that's what put it over the top. That and the homemade whipped cream that I made everybody at the table take a turn at beating.

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My other meal assignment was "potatoes". I was going to make mashed potatoes, but then I got to thinking about color on the plate and decided orange was prettier than white.

Gourmet to the rescue again, with Sweet Potato and Parsnip Puree.

I doubled the recipe, and then decided to put all of those nice cooked veggies in my trusty Kitchen Aide since the bowl was bigger than my food processor.

Don't bother.

The Kitchen Aide will mash them, but you really want a silky texture here and you just can't get that in anything but a food processor. I transferred the vegetables in two batches and pureed the heck out of them with the butter, milk etc.

It's simple, but man is it good. The perfect complement to Thanksgiving food.

Hope your day was as yummy as ours!

Barley Risotto and Creamed Spinach--Take Two

Pre-Thanksgiving seems the perfect time to focus on potential side dishes, don't you think? Well here are two, and I'll give you a rundown on them.

I had high hopes for Barley Risotto. One of the chefs I used to work with at the Emerson loved the fall season--he would brine pork chops in cider and herbs, slow roast lamb shanks, and make a heavenly barley risotto.

This version? Not so heavenly. Don't get me wrong--it's ok, and it's a great alternative to rice. I just thought it could go further in the flavor department, and with any risotto that seems to involve using wine at some point. I served it with roasted chicken, and then I took the leftovers and made a barley soup.

On the other hand, Creamed Spinach was a revelation. It's the simplest of recipes but it's the kitchen magic that makes it fun (and useful).

Because here's the thing. Spinach has all this water, right? So you either have to squeeze the dickens out of it or just live with a puddle of green water at the bottom of your serving dish.

THIS recipe makes good use of a flour-based roux to solve that little problem. It's easy-peasy...one tablespoon of butter, one tablespoon of flour, and let that fry for a little while in your pan. Add 2/3 c. heavy cream and let that simmer up into a nice thick sauce. Add your cooked chopped spinach, and you've got creamed spinach. The water from the spinach just thins the cream sauce out a bit. No weeping! (You or the spinach.)

This is a plain Jane recipe and can be dolled up however you like with onions etc. It's the technique that's so totally useful.

So if you're in charge of a green side for Thanksgiving and your family likes food on the basic side, give this one a whirl.

Barley Risotto and Creamed Spinach

Dear readers, I offer you profound apologies. It's not that I haven't been cooking, it's that I haven't been blogging about it. Oh for Teena's discipline! I'd like a large helping of that with my turkey, please.

In the weeks since I last wrote, here's a sample of what's been gracing our tables:

Chinese Beef Noodle Soup (the broth: heaven, and finally a cut of beef (short ribs) that doesn't shrink and toughen up like stew beef)

Kale and White Bean Soup (my biggest gripe with this was using dry beans, which sometimes just never fully soften up. Grrr.)

Shrimp, Crab, and Oyster Gumbo (Amazing, and expensive. Make this only if you are wealthy, or somebody wealthy is footing the bill, or you live in shrimp/crab/oyster country. Measurement note: Gourmet says 24 oysters = half a cup, but not in this part of the world. More like two cups, and have fun shucking those oysters.)

Beef and Sausage Lasagne (Meat lover's lasagne--mmmmm. My major complaint is that 13X9 baking dishes just aren't deep enough to really hold lasagne.)

Slow Roasted Salmon with Mustard and Parsley Glaze (pretty good and would have been better if I hadn't started with salmon that was still ever-so-slightly frozen in the middle)

Old-Fashioned Gingerbread (words cannot adequately describe how much I loved this cake. And please note that in spite of the instructions, I DID use blackstrap molasses, and thought it was better for it.)

Hungarian Chocolate Mousse Cake Bars (technically challenging, this recipe gave my Kitchen Aide a workout. The cake: swoony.)

Russian Tea Room Cheesecake (a cross between a lemon souffle and a cheesecake, another Kitchen Aide exerciser, and a perfect complement to the above-mentioned Hungarian Chocolate Mousse Cake Bars)

Coffee Bourbon Barbeque Sauce (the flavor is fine, but it's so thin!! Perhaps it would be better as a marinade?)

Well! Now that I've told you all about the food I was too busy to tell you about, I don't have time to write about Barley Risotto and Creamed Spinach. So until next time....

Carmelized Upside-Down Pear Tart

Every once in a while, when I get to work I'll encounter something like this:

In the cold room,



In the fridge,



What to do? Make Caramelized Upside-Down Pear Tart, that's what.

This recipe is a spin on the classic apple tart-tatin, and is pretty easy to make. But if you're the type of person who can screw up a recipe no matter what, here's a list of how you can screw up this one. I'm not saying I did these things, but I might have in the past. They say a sign of intelligence is being able to learn from your mistakes.

1. If you have a cheap pan with hot spots, you will burn the sugar in some areas before it can carmelize in others.

2. If you put the heat on too high, you will just burn all of the sugar, period.

3. If you suck at making pie crust, you're in trouble because that's a major component of this recipe.

4. I can almost guarantee you that you won't be able to get the tart out of the pan in one piece, so get used to the idea of a broken tart that isn't presentation perfect.

5. If you have an extremely heavy cast iron skillet and you're working alone and you've got a nice dessert plate, you must be very, very delicate with your flipping unless you want to shovel the whole thing in the trash. I've never done this personally but I have nightmares about it.

My issues around this tart as I made it were that I didn't make the pie crust and as you might have discerned by now, I'm sort of fussy in that area. This one that Miranda left me was OK but a little tough.

Also, there's not much to it. It's pie crust, and glazed pears. You'll definitely want ice cream or something to add a little juice. And eat it right away--it doesn't hold all that well. I wasn't nuts about it, but I'd be willing to try it again if the circumstances were right.

Parisian Passover Coconut Macaroons and a Shameless Plug for Another Cookbook

Are you even slightly compulsive? Got a sweet tooth? Like coconut?

Then whatever you do, don't make these cookies.

They are utterly irresistible. And they're simple enough--syrup-sweetened meringue folded with unsweetened coconut and baked until just firm, which yields you a cookie that is both crispy and chewy. God, are they good.

OK, this is not the perfect recipe. The seriously un-perfect part of it is the silly direction to shape the meringues into pyramids with wet fingertips. A waste of time, and for the perfectionists in the crowd (that would be me) trying to create a pyramid out of something that refuses straight lines or angles is a maddening venture best abandoned. I settled for pulling the tops up into kind of a twisted pointy top. A far easier solution would be to put the stuff in a pastry bag--quicker too.



You might also be thrown off by the direction to dust the baking pans with matzo cake meal. I just sprayed my sheets with Baking Pam (I have a growing affection for that stuff) but you could also use sil-pat liners or parchment paper if you'd like to dispense with fat/flour altogether.

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Shameless Plug for Another Cookbook:

I've been hearing about this book for years and finally bought it.



If you're a baker and you're trying to get whole grains into the picture, run don't walk to the nearest bookstore and get this book.

OK, I've only made three cookie recipes so far, but fans on the Gourmet staff of Katherine Hepburn's Brownies, I'm sorry, the Double Fudge Brownies made with 100% whole wheat has you beaten hands down.

Seriously, they are the best brownies I've ever made or eaten, and that's saying something.

Now, please note that I'm not suggesting that this book could ever replace my one and only true love, The Gourmet Cookbook. I am suggesting cookbook polyamory. And if I had no day job, family or life I would start a second cook-through blog with this book as my subject.

One of the things I am most gratified about is that baking with whole grains has been mysterious territory for me. Baked goods made with whole wheat flour have been, in my experience, dense, sort of metallic tasting, and kind of grainy. (please don't get me started on whole wheat pasta, either)

Here are some of the things I've learned in three recipes:

1. Letting cookie dough made with WW flour rest overnight in the fridge makes that metallic taste disappear somehow.

2. Letting brownies made with WW flour rest overnight before cutting allows the bran? germ? whatever that gritty stuff is absorb moisture, which makes for a smoooooooth texture.

3. You can grind oats in a food processor for 30 seconds to make oat flour for cookies.

4. New experience!!! I sprinkled oat-cashew cookies with SALT before baking. Mmmmm.

This is not whole-grain baking from the 70's, folks. Grab it and bake along with me.

Chocolate Orange Dobostorte

There are cake recipes, and then there are cake recipes. Chocolate Orange Dobostorte is a project for a serious baker (or somebody in a serious baking mood) and for somebody branching out with their baking skills it requires faith and boldness.

Gosh, Melissa--you sound so serious! I hear you say.

Well, it's true. It also requires a serious chunk of your time, because this cake took me 4+ active hours to make.

This is why it requires fortitude:

1. cake is baked in thin layers on the bottom sides of pans. Not your usual MO in cake-baking land.

2. buttercream, although worth every second of effort you put into it, is time-consuming and has a few scary moments for the easily intimidated.

3. ditto for caramel.

If you don't have a standing mixer, this would be a good time to invest in one! For the buttercream alone it was on for about 20 minutes.

OK, but let me begin at the beginning, with the cake layers. Dobostorte is composed of (in this recipe) 9 crepe-thin layers of cake. The batter is like sponge cake batter--a yolk/sugar/orange zest base with stiff egg whites folded in. Then you flip 8 inch cake pans over, and put the batter on the bottoms, spread to the edge, and bake for 6 or 7 minutes.

Part of the fun of this procedure is figuring out how much the batter will spread. I overshot my first few...



Luckily, this batter produces a tender yet flexible cake layer that was easy to trim with scissors. Here's the stack:



So now what?

Now you make the buttercream. I've actually made buttercream frosting three times in the past couple of weeks and by now it feels familiar. If you've never made meringue-based buttercream (and please don't be fooled by "buttercream" recipes that call for things like cream cheese or crisco. It ain't the same.) this is how it works. First of all you have to have absolutely room-temp butter. MY butter happened to be frozen (zoinks!) so I put it into a very low oven for a while. It did melt a tiny little bit but the whole of it got heated enough so that by the time I was ready for it the texture was just right.

You whip egg whites (in this case two, which worried me because I didn't think the KitchenAid beaters were low enough to really get them)...



and at the same time you make a simple syrup (remote thermometer, I love you). When it hits the right temp, you pour it slowly into the bowl while the beaters run, and then let it go until it cools down. This batch took about 10 minutes (this is not a recipe to make while you're listening to a book on tape) but I've made batches that took 20.

Once it's cool, you chuck in the butter, tablespoon by tablespoon. This is where it gets dicey for the faint of heart, because at one point it looks seriously ruined in a yucky curdled way. But it all comes together in the end, at which point you pour in melted chocolate (which you have already melted and cooled).

There's your buttercream. But you ALSO need a boozy syrupy glaze for the cake layers. Enter orange marmalade, a little water, and Grand Marnier, which you combine and push through a fine mesh sieve.

Are you still with me?

OK, here comes the layering part! You get a cake stand, put a little dab of buttercream down to anchor your first layer, and off you go. Like this:

cake layer
brush with syrup
put in the fridge for 3 minutes

take it out
spread 2 heaping tablespoons choco buttercream frosting
put a layer on top
brush with syrup
put in the fridge for 3 minutes

etc
etc







And now? Now you frost it and it's done?

Not so fast, Sparky.

Now comes the top layer, which is coated with the caramel you're about to make.

Faithful readers and other Gourmet bloggers know that caramel is a big theme in this book. Well, not so much a theme as a favorite flavor. I would guess that in the past few years of cooking with and blogging about this book I've made caramel about...15 times. Easily.

So here's some more caramel, which you pour over one of your cake layers (which is on a baking rack over tin foil). Here I had some trouble--the caramel at first poured too quickly so it ran off the sides and onto the foil (and not evenly over the cake). So I got it off the foil and remelted it in the pan, and tried again, but this time it was a little too viscous and wouldn't spread out the way I wanted.

Oh, and also you're supposed to score the top lightly with a buttered knife to make cutting easier, because basically this is now a caramel flavored candy disc with a little cake underneath it. Which will be the top of your cake.

And now...we're really in the home stretch. The caramel layer goes on top. Your 1/3 cup reserved chocolate buttercream frosting goes around the sides. And your toasted hazelnuts (forgot to mention those, but by this time you've toasted, cooled and chopped them) get pressed around the sides into the chocolate buttercream.



Alas, dear readers, I can't tell you how this cake tasted (though I tried all the components) or even if it was easy or hard to cut, because I made it to be served at a luncheon on my day off. My counterpart Miranda will report in and I will tell ALL.

UPDATE: Miranda reports...

"Your cake was great!! It was not only easy to cut through but looked beautiful when sliced. The layers were perfectly spaced with the right amount of frosting or was it ganache? The orange flavor was strong and the overall cake was very moist. It was worth the time for sure."

Quince, Apple and Almond Jalousie

First pomegranates and now quinces--I know, I'm the queen of seasonal cooking this week. The difference is that I got the pomegranates at the supermarket but these quinces were foraged from the yard at work.

Say what?

Well, if you're anything like me first of all you have never used a quince in cooking, or perhaps you don't even know what the heck they are. They certainly aren't clogging up the produce aisle.

But quinces have a long and venerable history, according to my research. This from Wikipedia:

Cultivation of quince may have preceded apple culture, and many references translated to "apple", such as the fruit in Song of Solomon, may have been to a quince. Among the ancient Greeks, the quince was a ritual offering at weddings, for it had come from the Levant with Aphrodite and remained sacred to her. Plutarch reports that a Greek bride would nibble a quince to perfume her kiss before entering the bridal chamber, "in order that the first greeting may not be disagreeable nor unpleasant" (Roman Questions 3.65). It was a quince that Paris awarded Aphrodite. It was for a golden quince that Atalanta paused in her race. The Romans also used quinces; the Roman cookbook of Apicius gives recipes for stewing quince with honey, and even combining them, unexpectedly, with leeks. Pliny the Elder mentioned the one variety, Mulvian quince, that could be eaten raw. Columella mentioned three, one of which, the "golden apple" that may have been the paradisal fruit in the Garden of the Hesperides, has donated its name in Italian to the tomato, pomodoro.

Feel smarter? I know I do.

So the other day when I was out cutting flowers at work, I walked by a big old bush and noticed that it was heavy with this lumpy looking yellow fruit.

Hmmm.

We only pay attention to that big old bush in the spring, when it's full of pretty pink flowers, and we note that it's a Japanese Flowering Quince.

Now, I had to pick a few of those lumpy yellow fruits, smell them, let them hang out in the kitchen, think some more, wonder if I was going to poison anybody, pick a few more, think some more, etc. before I fully committed to using these to make the Quince, Apple and Almond Jalousie.

This was my first surprise. There's a lot of hollow space in the middle of these things.



But I sliced them and got them into a pan with some water and sugar for their 2 hour cookdown.

Here was my second surprise:



They turn red!! How cool is that?

Even just stopping right there would have made my day, because that was like a magic trick right there at the stove.

The rest of the filling was pretty straightforward--adding apples and sliced, toasted almonds.

The crust recipe had a new technique--amazing after all the ways I've produced pie crusts that there could be a technique I haven't come across. This technique calls for coarsely grating frozen butter into the flour, and people I am here to tell you that this is an unpleasant way to make pie crust because you are gripping frozen butter with one hand which is COLD!!!

But after the rest of the standard pie crust-making hooha, this is what I had:



and



Oh, by the way, see those slits? That's the image for which this tart is named--the French word for "Venetian blind" is "jalousie". I guess it would sound a little odd to call it a Quince, Apple and Almond Venetian Blind, although I suppose that's the way it translates in French.

Here it is, baked:



Now, I have two things to say about this tart.

1. The pie crust was heavy, and considering the awkward and unpleasant technique used to make it, I am jettisoning that idea forever more and would urge you to do likewise. If you ever make this tart, use your favorite crust-making technique, not this one.

2. Quinces are sour. Even with sugar. And it's a kind of sour that hits you at the back of the throat, which may or may not have unpleasant connotations for you. I did for me, but it didn't seem to bother anybody else who tried it, or maybe they were being polite.

A sub-note to #2 is that the quinces I used were not the quinces that are sold in stores (whatever mysterious stores sell them). According to my research, the fruit of the Japanese Flowering Quince is a cousin--still edible but only when cooked and used primarily to make liquors, marmalades and preserves, which I think tart filling pretty much counts as. So it's possible that the other quinces might have had a slightly different flavor profile. I might try it again someday if I see them around, on a tree or otherwise!

Persian-Style Chicken with Walnut, Onion and Pomegranate Sauce

Readers, a few posts ago (could have been the b'stilla post) I said that I was close to the end of the Poultry chapter. Ha ha. What I meant was I was close to the end of the chicken recipes. There are scads more that involve ducks, turkeys, game hens, pheasants and (?) rabbits. I don't know why rabbit is in the poultry chapter, but there it is.

Anyway, Persian-Style Chicken with Walnut, Onion and Pomegranate Sauce is one of those recipes that involves a seasonal ingredient, so I had to bide my time. Pomegranates are in the markets now, we had family visiting at work, so voila!! Perfect alignment for the recipe.

Cooks who are comfortable making a pan sauce for roasted or pan-fried chicken will find this to be just one or two steps beyond that in the addition of ground toasted walnuts, pomegranate juice, and pomegranate seeds. Using nuts as a thickener (especially toasted nuts) is a luscious way to bulk up a sauce, and I loved the taste and texture of the walnuts.

Working with the pomegranate was the most cumbersome aspect of this recipe, and I imagine it will be for you too. After years of fiddling around with these things I've found the best way to get the seeds out is to do it underwater in a bowl--the membrane floats to the top and the seeds fall to the bottom. Easy to separate after that!



The next conundrum was how to get 2/3 of a cup of pomegranate juice. I could use a fine mesh sieve, but had the brainstorm of using a ricer instead.



This was a brilliant idea, until I realized that only half of the little seeds were getting juiced--then they got pushed down into the unjuiced seeds to form an unjuicable mass in the ricer. So I spent the next ten minutes or so mooshing the intact seeds with my fingers until all the juice was out, which amazingly gave me exactly 2/3 of a cup of pomegranate juice. This juice, along with 1/3 cup of intact seeds, goes into the sauce along with the ground walnuts, onions, cinnamon, tomato sauce, chicken stock, lemon juice, and molasses.

I know, it sounds like a toddler got loose in the pantry, but really all together it's good in a pleasingly exotic way.

The one thing I wasn't totally crazy about was the seeds in the sauce. That little kernel in the middle made chewing interesting--you just kind of have to go with it, like when you're eating grapes with seeds and decide to swallow them instead of spitting them out.

Here's a photo I lifted from Kevin's site (thanks, Kevin!!):



My plate did not look anywhere near this pretty (though it wasn't bad) and I didn't think to save some seeds for garnish. My diners enjoyed this dish enough to ask for it the following night as leftovers, and I liked it too. If you don't mind fooling around with exotic ingredients and flavors and are looking for something unusual to do with chicken, I'd say give this one a try.

Baked Polenta with Parmesan

Another adventure in the Grains and Beans chapter!

Baked Polenta with Parmesan allowed me to address one of the difficulties I had when I made Creamy Polenta Parmesan, which is that I couldn't get the polenta to move in a "thin stream" into the water. After giving it a lot of thought, I decided to put the polenta into a funnel and stream it in that way. Perfecto!!

But before I could use this brilliant idea of mine, I was confronted with this fact--that I didn't have the correct corn ingredient.

This is what the recipe says: I cup polenta (not quick-cooking) or yellow cornmeal (not stone-ground).

Folks, this is what I had in the pantry:



I don't know if you can read the fine print, but it says, "stone-ground"

Now. Am I going to make a special trip to the store to buy some not-stone-ground yellow cornmeal? Heck no. I am going to throw caution to the winds and find out what happens when you make polenta with stone-ground cornmeal.

So after using my brilliant funnel-streaming idea, the polenta cooked for 15 minutes (without clumping-ha!) Stone-ground cornmeal retains the germ of the corn kernel--it's a rougher texture than the more finely-milled stuff. But it still cooked up just fine--I poured it into an 8X8 baking pan and baked it for 25 minutes, then sprinkled it with parm and broiled it for another 3.

How did it taste? Corn + butter and parmesan = yummy in any combination, but I'll come down on the side of using not-stone-ground for the polenta dishes. It's not that it was bad, it was simply a texture issue, and I like the finer texture better.

It got eaten up though, trust me.

Bulgur Pilaf with Pine Nuts, Raisins, and Orange Zest

I am in a grainy mood.

Usually my association with whole grains is limited to my morning intake of bran cereal and the occasional slice of whole wheat bread. And in the winter, oatmeal. I can take or leave rice (especially brown rice, thank you), I don't like the taste of kasha, and there's something that's just too dry about grain-based salads or sides.

But the Creamy Parmesan Polenta that I made a few weeks ago rocked my world, and I looked upon the Grains and Beans chapter with a much more optimistic attitude after that.

So it was that I made Baked Polenta with Parmesan and Bulgur Pilaf with Pine Nuts, Raisins, and Orange Zest last week. More on the Baked Polenta soon, but for now let me tell you that the Bulgur Pilaf (recipe not online) was superb.

The more I cook, the more I worship citrus. I will guarantee you right now--lay down money--that anything that you aspire to make--anything-- will be enhanced by including either the juice or the zest of lemon, lime, orange, or grapefruit.

OK, to be truthful I've never used grapefruit zest in anything but candied grapefruit peel...wait, that's not true. I made some amazing pot de cremes once using the combined peels of grapefruit, orange and lemon. Boy, were those good.

Yay, citrus!



This pilaf is delicious, and it's a nice change of pace from the usual bulgur manifestation, tabouli. It's also seasonal, with the nuts and dried fruit so roast a chicken and serve this on the side. You'll thank me later.