Meyer Lemon Chess Pie

On finals week, my department at work has a potluck Christmas party, and I usually bring some type of dessert. This year our Meyer lemon tree was doing so well, that I thought about bringing a lemon meringue pie, but after reading about how meringue pies can be a bit tricky to make, I ended up going with a chess pie instead.

Chess pie is basically a custard pie with cornmeal in it, which gives it an interesting texture. Plain chess pie is extremely sweet, but lemon chess pie sounded good because the tartness should balance the sweetness. The problem was that when I searched for recipes, I found a lot of recipes that varied widely. Recipes varied between using only 1 Tbsp. of lemon juice all the way up to a quarter cup, a quarter cup of buttermilk to a full cup, 1 Tbsp. of cornmeal to 3 Tbsp, 4 or 5 eggs, 1 and a half cups of sugar or maybe two whole cups, half a stick of butter or maybe two sticks. I had no idea which one to choose. They even varied on how long you bake it, at what temperature, and whether you pre-bake the crust or not.

I finally printed out four different recipes and decided to combine them into my very own recipe! It was risky, but I think I've made enough other custard-type pies that I had a general idea how they work.

Turns out it worked great! It's a good thing I cut myself a sliver right away at the potluck, because when I came back later to collect my pie plate, it was CLEAN. My coworkers completely devoured it and didn't leave anything leftover for me to take home to my husband.

Glad I wrote everything down so I can make it again!

Meyer Lemon Chess Pie

Ingredients:

• Pastry for a single-crust pie
• Juice of 2 Meyer lemons (about 1/4 cup of juice)
• Zest from 2 Meyer lemons
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 Tbsp. cornmeal
• 4 eggs
• 2/3 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 stick of butter, melted
• 1/8 tsp salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Beat lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, cornmeal, eggs, buttermilk, melted butter, and salt together until smooth. Place pastry into regular pie plate (not deep dish) and trim. Pour in filling.

Lay some aluminum foil over the top and bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake for another 30 minutes.

Let cool on a wire rack, and then chill in fridge before serving.

This pie had the gooey texture of a pecan pie, and a nice sweet-tart flavor. I used homemade pie crust with butter and lard, but you can use whatever your favorite pie dough recipe is, or store-bought. Regular milk might work instead of buttermilk, but I had buttermilk in the fridge already, and I think it's more traditional for chess pie. Regular lemon juice would work if you don't have Meyer lemons, but you might want to increase the sugar to 2 cups and/or use regular milk instead of buttermilk, because Meyer lemons are not as sour as regular lemons.

Merry Christmas!

Sweet Potato Pie

I'm the pie maker for our family's Thanksgiving at my in-law's house. Each year I bring two pies. This year I made an apple pie, and a sweet potato pie from homegrown sweet potatoes.

It was a good opportunity to use up the Garnet sweet potatoes that had split (like the one in the picture) or been damaged during harvest (a few of them got broken in half or stabbed with the digging fork). The damaged sweet potatoes weren't going to last very long in storage and needed to be used up soon. I ended up having enough damaged Garnets to get the 2 cups mashed sweet potato needed for the pie. I considered using the Molokai purple sweet potatoes, but decided to save those for something else. I wasn't sure how a purple sweet potato pie would look.

One of my sweet potatoes was a bit confused about whether it was an orange or purple sweet potato, but once I had them cooked and mashed up, the purple streaks didn't show. I cooked the sweet potatoes in the microwave and then mashed them with a fork.

Sweet potato pie is similar to pumpkin pie, but not exactly. Sweet potatoes have a denser texture than pumpkin, with more starch. I used a recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens red and white checkered cookbook, so I'm not sure if it's legal for me to reprint it here.

One difference from a pumpkin pie is it used a prebaked pie crust, which I made myself. With pumpkin pies, you use a raw crust, and the crust and filling cook together. It also needed 3 eggs, while a pumpkin pie needs 4 (maybe because sweet potatoes are denser) and a cup of buttermilk. The buttermilk seemed weird, but it gave the pie a nice tangy flavor. The spices were allspice and nutmeg. No cinnamon or ginger like pumpkin pie.

The recipe also called for only half a cup of sugar. It probably depends on how sweet your sweet potatoes are to begin with, and I was afraid mine weren't sweet enough, so I increased the sugar to 3/4 a cup. I'm glad I did too, because the pie still ended up being not especially sweet and probably could have been OK with a full cup of sugar. It was fine the way it was, though, and probably healthier than a sweeter dessert. Next time I think I'll use brown sugar instead of white.

And here is the finished pie. A lot of the time my pumpkin pies end up too soft and the slices don't stay together, but we had no problem with this pie holding together because of the density of the sweet potatoes. It looked like a pumpkin pie but had a distinctly different flavor because of the different spices and buttermilk.

Oh, and of course it was served with plenty of whipped cream.

The only problem I think needs improvement is the pie filling was a little bit lumpy. Next time I'm going to try mashing the sweet potatoes in the food processor or stand mixer to get a perfectly smooth puree.

But overall both pies were a big hit, judging by how we only had one piece leftover from each for us to take home.

Homegrown Tomato Soup

It's getting close to our average last frost date of March 5, but even though Saturday was 85 degrees, on Sunday another Arctic cold front came down and plunged us back into the mid-20's last night. I'm worried about some of my plants that were starting to grow back new leaves for spring that just got frozen out there.

But now that it's cold again, it seems like a good time to let  you know what I've been doing with all those paste tomatoes I grew last summer and put into gallon-sized freezer bags in the chest freezer. I was thinking of making pasta sauce or salsa with them, but finally decided they were too good for that. I wanted to put them in something where the tomato is the star, and not something that's a condiment on something else.

So I've been making them into tomato soup, which is very simple and easy to make and wonderful comfort food on a cold day.

Like most of my "recipes" on this blog, this is not very precise. Feel free to tweak it to your own taste.

Ingredients:

• Tomatoes - if you don't have homegrown saved up in the freezer, canned will work
• Chicken broth - preferably homemade from chicken bones you've also been saving up in the freezer, or vegetable broth if you're vegetarian
• Onion and garlic
• Butter - a little bit to cook the onion and garlic in
• Herbs - optional, but good if you have some, especially basil
• Heavy cream - if you want the creamy version

Directions:

Thaw the tomatoes, drain off excess water, and then puree in the blender until as smooth as you can get them.

I've found it's easier to strain the puree if you simmer it a bit first. I think it makes the flesh of the tomato come off the skins more completely or something.

 



Strain the puree in a food mill. I went for a long time without a food mill, but since I got one for Christmas, I've used it to make tomato soup and hot sauce, and it works great. I'm sure I'll find many more uses for it in the future.

Turn the crank back and forth until you have nothing left but skins and seeds. This is also good upper-body exercise.

Next you will need to cook some onions and/or garlic in some butter until soft and caramelized. This is optional but gives the soup a nice sweetness. You can even run the cooked onions through the blender too, so your finished soup will be perfectly smooth.

Add the strained tomato puree back to the pot and simmer to thicken the soup.

While it's simmering, you add chicken broth. I'd say about an equal amount of tomato puree and chicken broth, but it's all to taste. The broth dilutes the tomato puree a bit, because otherwise it would be like trying to eat a bowl full of marinara sauce. But taste as you go and put in however much broth you want until it tastes good to you. Also add salt, pepper, and herbs to taste.

When it's as thick as you'd like it, it's time to serve. At this point you can also freeze some. This soup is easy to make, but takes some time to simmer it down, so it might be a good idea to make an extra big batch and freeze some in serving-size containers for later.

If you want your soup creamy, add some heavy cream at the last minute when you serve it. Don't add cream if you're going to freeze the soup for later, because it will curdle the cream. Also, once I tried to use half-and-half instead, and it curdled, so now I either use heavy cream, or no dairy at all. I've found that with basil and heavy cream, it comes out very similar to the tomato basil soup served at the La Madeline chain of restaurants, but better because it's with my homegrown tomatoes.

And of course you serve it with some crusty bread, or even better, a grilled cheese like in the picture! That ought to keep you warm until it's 80 degrees again in a couple of days.

Roasted Tomatillo Sauce

I ended up getting about 3 lbs. of tomatillos from my 3 surviving plants. That's actually not much. Tomatillos are supposed to be very prolific. I blame the deer and chickens for damaging the plants so they didn't yield as well.

Tomatillos keep well in their husks in the vegetable drawer in the fridge. I was able to stash them in there until I had enough saved up for a batch of roasted tomatillo sauce. I got the recipe off the internet, but soon found out this isn't really something that needs a recipe. Everything can be done to taste.

Peel the husks off like 2 or 3 lbs. of tomatillos and rinse them. Lay them out on a baking sheet with some serranos and/or jalapenos (cut the stems off) and peel whole garlic cloves. As you can see, the peppers I used had already turned red, which was not intentional, but I didn't get to them while they were still green.

Put under the broiler until the veggies are getting brown in spots and soften. The tomatillos will sort of get squishy and collapse and the juice will run out. Yum.

Let it cool, and then scrape everything in the blender, making sure to get all the juice in. Add cilantro, salt, and lime juice to taste. Blend until smooth.

I put mine in plastic containers and froze it. You can also water-bath can this, but in that case you'd need to be much more careful with the ratios and use an exact recipe. It's especially important to put enough lime juice in to make it acidic enough to be safe.

I didn't put much lime juice in so I can slather it over enchiladas, but more lime would probably be better if you wanted it as a dip. When I tasted it, it also turned out hotter than I intended. I made the mistake of not de-seeding the peppers, and peppers you grow yourself tend to get hotter when the weather is hotter and the plants are under stress. But otherwise it was really tasty.

Speaking of chickens, one day the neighbor's chickens jumped the back fence (they usually stay in the front), and dug through my herb garden. Then two of them forgot how to get back out and just kept pacing back and forth by the fence like they wanted to go home but forgot they can jump over. Stupid chickens! We had to open the gate and herd them out.

Key Lime Pie with Homegrown Limes

Key Lime Pie doesn't exactly scream Autumn to me, but since my potted key lime tree has had a bumper crop this year, when facing a decision on what pie to bring to a recent Samhain potluck, I decided it was a good opportunity to use up these limes and make something I haven't made before.

Here are the limes I picked off my tree. The limes most Americans are used to are Persian Limes, the big green ones. Key Limes are also known as Mexican Limes, and are golf-ball sized with more aromatic flavor. They also turn yellow if you let them fully ripen on the tree! I've had my tree in a pot for several years, but I'll probably plant it in the ground soon, so it can get even bigger.

I ended up getting almost enough juice for a whole pie, only needing to top it off with less than a quarter cup of store bought lime juice. Squeezing all those little limes was a bit of a pain, though.

I based my recipe off a recipe for Easy Key Lime Pie I got off Allrecipes.com, but with some tweaks suggested by the comments, using two cans of milk instead of one, four egg yolks instead of five, and a full cup of lime juice. I was pressed for time, so I didn't make my own crust and used a store-bought one.

Key lime pie is an amazingly simple recipe, using only three ingredients in the filling: lime juice, egg yolks, and sweetened condensed milk. It was invented in Florida before refrigeration was common, hence using canned milk, eggs that were presumably freshly laid by the backyard chickens, and freshly picked limes off the local trees, all things that don't need to be refrigerated! Originally it wasn't even baked. The acid from the lime juice made the eggs set up. Today it's baked, but only for a short amount of time.

Here is the finished pie. I only made one mistake, and that was to throw in the zest of my limes along with the juice. That made it have little chunks in it, and I think I would have liked it better if the filling was completely smooth. Next time I'll leave out the lime zest, but other than that it was very good. The filling set up perfectly, and it was nice and tart. It's the kind of dessert for people who like things like Sweet Tarts and Sour Patch Kids.

Key Lime Pie

• 1 deep dish graham cracker crust (either homemade or store-bought)
• 4 egg yolks
• 2 (14 ounce cans) sweetened condensed milk
• 1 cup key lime juice

Whisk the egg yolks, milk, and lime juice together until smooth. Pour into prepared crust. Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. Chill completely before serving. Garnish with whipped cream if desired. Easy as pie!

Cushaw Pumpkin Butter

Yesterday I decided to try a new thing with the frozen cushaw puree I still have in the freezer from 2010. I made a batch of pumpkin butter with some of it. I based it off of this recipe, with only a few tweaks. I added some more spices, since pumpkin pie spice usually contains ginger and allspice in addition to cinnamon and nutmeg, so I added a half teaspoon of each of those spices as well. I used a cup of brown sugar and only two tablespoons of maple syrup to sweeten it, mainly because that's the all the maple syrup I had left! Of course, I only use real maple syrup, not that artificially maple- flavored high fructose corn syrup, and using the full quarter cup the recipe called for probably would have been even more yummy. I used a pinch of kosher salt instead of sea salt, since that's my default salt. Lastly, I cooked it a lot longer than the recipe called for. The recipe said you only need to cook it for 10 minutes, which seems way too short. Maybe it depends on how high your heat is and how watery your squash started out.

The tip to keep a lid on with a wooden spoon sticking out was very helpful. Once the stuff starts cooking it bloops everywhere, and if a drop of it hits you in the arm, it hurts! I put it on the stove on low enough heat so it was gently blooping and blubbing... and then I ended up letting it do that for a full two hours. I went to work on potting up some more transplants, and came back about every ten minutes to take it off the heat and give it a good stir. The point is to get the pumpkin to a thick, spreadable consistency. I'm sure it's possible to burn this stuff, so I kept it on low heat and made sure to check on it often, and that seemed to work just fine.

After two hours this is the result. When I stirred it, it mostly kept its shape. A blob put on a plate didn't leak out any liquid around the edges. It also made my house smell wonderful!

There is some controversy over whether you can safely can pumpkin butter. The USDA says absolutely not, but I found plenty of blogs saying they can it all the time and nobody's gotten botulism yet. Well, I decided not to take my chances anyway, and ended up packaging it in Ball freezer jam jars. I ended up filling 5 jars all the way, and a 6th one about halfway full. The halfway full one went in the fridge, and the rest went in the freezer.

And here is the completely cooled butter being put to the test on some ciabatta toast. As you can see it's thick enough to be spread with a knife, so I guess that means I cooked it long enough. It was tasty too! I bet this would also be good on a hearty whole grain bread, or English muffins, or pancakes, or oatmeal, or ice cream, whatever!

So that used up two more containers of cushaw puree. I still have 11 more left in the freezer! I guess I won't have to grow any more pumpkin/winter squash in 2013 either.

Pumpkin (or winter squash) Butter

• 4 1/2 cups roasted and pureed cushaw squash (or whatever winter squash or pumpkin you have)
• 1/4 cup apple cider
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2-4 tbsp real maple syrup
• 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• pinch of salt

Mix everything together in a medium saucepan and put on low to medium-low, just so the mixture gently simmers/boils. Cover with a lid propped up with a wooden spoon to protect from splatters. Stir well every ten minutes or so to keep the bottom from burning, and cook for an hour or two, until the butter is as thick as you'd like. Keep in the refrigerator or freeze for longer term storage.

Autumn Pear and Arugula Salad

It's going to cool off some day. Autumn IS coming! How do I know? Well, for one thing, school is back in, and that means tomorrow I'm back to my job teaching biology at San Antonio College.

But the other indicator that I think is more important is that I just got to eat my favorite seasonal Autumn salad! A salad that is, well, mostly of my invention, though based off other recipes and flavor combinations that are nothing new. Then again, what recipes aren't? This salad was inspired a few years ago by some local ingredients I often got in my CSA in fall: pears and arugula. I just started getting them again recently, so that means fall MUST be coming, even if it is still 100 degrees outside!

Since this is a salad, everything is "to taste". Just throw everything together roughly in the order listed, and enjoy.

Ingredients:

• arugula - a good big bunch
• pears - one or two depending on how big they are
• walnuts
• blue cheese
• honey
• white wine vinegar

Directions:

• Put a bunch of arugula on a plate.
• Cut pear(s) into bite sized slices and lay on top of arugula.
• Sprinkle on walnuts.
• Crumble on blue cheese.
• Drizzle on some honey and vinegar.
• Crunch it up.

I've seen some other versions of this salad that got fancier by poaching the pears first or using candied walnuts, but I really don't think that's necessary. In my version you just pile everything up, which is much easier. I've seen versions that used apples instead of pears, which I guess is ok if you can't find any pears, but I much prefer pears. For one thing, they're grown locally, and apples aren't, but I also think the flavor and texture of nice ripe pears works much better in this. My position on using other nuts besides walnuts is about the same. Pecans or almonds might work ok, but I think walnuts really excel here.

I've also seen some other versions that use milder greens either mixed with or instead of the arugula, such as spinach and lettuce, and milder cheeses instead of the blue cheese, which I guess might be ok if you're a wuss. I've mixed milder greens in when I didn't have enough arugula, but I love the nutty, peppery bite of arugula straight no chaser. And I wouldn't do without creamy, salty, savory blue cheese on this. I think one of the neat things about this salad is that most of the flavor comes from the main ingredients and not the dressing, which is the opposite of the iceburg lettuce salads I grew up with that were defined by the dressing. This salad is moistened with just a bit of honey to add a little more sweetness, and some vinegar to add a bit of of bright tang. I think apple cider vinegar would be fine on this if you can't find white wine vinegar, but I haven't tried it.

This is a hearty enough salad, with protein from the nuts and cheese, to work on it's own as a light lunch, or even a light dinner while the temperature is still in the 90's and you've been out in the heat all day and really don't feel like fixing yourself a hot meal. I invented this salad when I was in grad school and had to teach a late lab on Friday nights after the buses had quit running, and had to walk a couple of miles home since I didn't have a parking pass. It was nice and refreshing after getting all sweaty and tired doing that.

Eating Seasonally versus Growing Your Own Food

You would think that growing your own food would force you to eat seasonally. Of course, it's a great idea to eat seasonally even if you don't grow your own food. Eating strawberries and asparagus in spring, peaches in summer, and winter squash and apples in fall makes sense because if you eat things out of season, where is that food coming from? If you buy strawberries in winter, that probably means they've been shipped from a long way away where the temperatures are warm enough to grow strawberries at that time, maybe even all the way from the southern hemisphere, where the seasons are opposite ours. That long distance shipping results in higher prices, higher amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, and less freshness since it's been sitting in a truck, boat, or train for a longer time.

Since it used to be that you didn't even have the option of getting food out of season, a lot of our food traditions evolved around this reality. After all, you eat pumpkin pie and sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving, and strawberry shortcake around Easter, not the other way around, right?

Right?

Well, not if your winter squash and sweet potatoes are still hanging around come Easter!

These are the sweet potatoes I have left in the garage. To the left are some Nancy Halls, in the middle are some Vardamans, and to the right are White Yams. The first two varieties are starting to sprout. I think that was triggered by some warm temperatures we've had. I have more potatoes that I've been keeping in the house to sprout on purpose, so I might not need more. I wonder if I can still eat these sprouted ones.

By the way, I intended to do some sort of review of the flavors of the different sweet potato varieties I grew once they cured, but never got around to it. I'll just tell you what I've been able to figure out so far. The first thing I cooked them in was a dish of Bourbon Sweet Potatoes for Christmas dinner. Oh man, they were yummy! My family was a little confused because I mixed the different colors together, so at first they thought I had mixed sweet potatoes and regular potatoes together. They didn't know that white sweet potatoes existed, and it became a "teaching moment". Even though all my varieties were mixed together, I did notice some flavor and texture differences between them. The one that standed out the most was White Yam. It cooked up much firmer and drier than the other sweet potatoes. I made a big dish of these, and ended up with leftovers, which I froze for later use. We'll get to those later.

With the knowledge that White Yam was unusually dry for a sweet potato, and being bright white in color, I used some more of them to make sweet potato fries (to go with some delicious grass fed beef burgers). Sweet potato fries seem to be a popular food trend, and I've eaten them in restaurants and made them myself with store bought sweet potatoes. However, I have had trouble with homemade sweet potato fries being too soft and mushy compared to regular potato fries. Still tasty, but it's hard to get them to crisp up at home where I don't have the luxury of a commercial deep fryer and am doing them in a cast iron skillet.

White Yam makes excellent fries! Just as I thought, the dry texture held up much better and resulted in crispy, golden fries that looked just like fries made from a Russet. They still tasted a bit sweet, though. I'd like to find some more dry, white sweet potato cultivars that are less sweet and do even better as a Russet substitute. Not that there's anything wrong with Russets, but sweet potatoes grow much better in my climate.

Now, back to my frozen Bourbon Sweet Potatoes from Christmas. This is the cake that I made for the Spring Equinox. I got the idea that I could make a sweet potato cake using a recipe for carrot cake but with sweet potatoes instead of carrots. I thawed and then mashed up the Christmas sweet potatoes and used those. Yes, sweet potatoes for spring!

I would say the sweet potato cake needs some tweaking, though. I subsituted 2 cups of mashed sweet potatoes for 2 cups of shredded carrots in the recipe, baked it the same, but also tried to make a layer cake rather than baking it in a 9 x 13 pan. Even after passing the toothpick test, when we cut the cake it had a very dense, almost pudding-like texture (like an English baked pudding, not a Jell-O pudding), and it was VERY heavy carrying it in and out of the fridge. My fiance, Daniel, loved it, and would scarf down huge slices and make himself sick on it. I thought it was tasty too, but I think I would like a lighter texture. Carrot cake is supposed to be dense anyway, more like a muffin than a cake, but this was a little too far. I think it might be because 2 cups of mashed sweet potatoes does NOT equal 2 cups of shredded carrots in texture or density. Maybe next time cut it down to only 1 or 1 1/2 cups?

I think I did do well to reduce the amount of sugar in the original recipe by half a cup to make up for the leftover sweet potatoes already having sugar in them. Plus, even before when I made this recipe with carrots, it was still a bit too sweet for my tastes.

Also, for purely aesthetic reasons, this cake would have done better in a 9 x 13 inch pan. The cream cheese frosting from the original recipe was not enough to cover a layer cake, and would have to have been doubled. It probably would have been enough to just cover the top of a rectangular cake left in the pan. Also, wrangling such a dense, moist cake was difficult, another reason to just leave it in the pan. I tore it up a bit trying to unmold it and stack it. I did put some Easter-themed sprinkles on top to try to make it at least a little pretty!

Overall, a worthy baking experiment, but not a total success. The flavor was good, but the texture needs work.

I've also still got a LOT of cushaw squash left! I almost made yet another pumpkin pie for Ostara instead of the sweet potato cake, but I make three or four pumpkin pies last fall and winter and am still kind of sick of them. Here you see two of the squashes I still have, plus a couple of jars of seeds I've also been collecting. Each squash has 1-2 cups of seeds in it. I've set a few aside for replanting (a few each from the nicest squashes), but that still leaves an amount of seeds that I could never replant again in my lifetime!

So I'm going to eat them! Most people know about roasting the seeds out of your Jack-o-Lantern pumpkins, which I have done, but I think I want to further explore the culinary possibilities of pumpkin/squash seeds. They're popular in Mexican cuisine, even more popular than the flesh of the squash itself. They have some squash varieties (also in the cushaw species) that are grown just for the seeds alone, which are called "pepitas" in Spanish. Pepitas are ground up to make a delicious green sauce called pipian. It's not that well known north of the border, but I've had it before in some nicer Mexican restaurants and would love to try making my own. It goes well with chicken.

You can also use pumpkins seeds as a substitute for nuts or sunflower seeds in many recipes. Alton Brown's pumpkin bread recipe uses pumpkins seeds instead of the walnuts found in many other recipes, and I seem to remember him mentioning on one of his shows that you can make pumpkin seed brittle instead of peanut brittle, which sounds great.

The main obstacle I can see here is that the pumpkin seeds are supposed to be shelled. You can snack on pumpkin seeds with the shells on and either bite them off one by one, or eat them shell and all, but I don't think that would work with making pipian or any sweet confections. The shells are very fiborous. I've heard that they used to be used as a cure for intestinal parasites! All that fiber scrapes your insides clean!

After much Googling, the only method I can find is to put the seeds in a bag and pound them with a rolling pin. This is supposed to crack the shells. Then you put them in a bowl of water, and the shells are supposed to float while the kernels sink. Except all the references I've found for this method seem to be from people who just heard that somewhere and haven't tried it themselves. I hope it really does work. I'm afraid the shells might not seprate as easily as they're supposed to, and that the kernels inside might be pulverized to bits. I guess I'll find out, but I'm not shelling my seeds until right before I want to cook with them. The shells keep them fresh longer. I'll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, I've still got 12 squashes left in the garage. They still seem perfectly fine, and I wonder how long they will last until they finally rot. They will rot eventually, right? The garage is still cool now, but by summer it gets very hot in there, into the high 90's. It may work as a vegetable storage area for now but not forever, so I've been working on roasting, pureeing, and freezing the rest of my squashes. I can only fit two in the oven at a time, so that's why I'm getting started now. I guess I could keep one around and see how long it takes to rot, but I'm probably too chicken to. The thought of one of these large squashes going rotten in the garage does not seem pleasent.

Here's the squash puree I've already done. I've been putting it in these reusable plastic containers that some brands of lunchmeat come in. I like being able to buy that brand and then reusing the packaging. They work great for freezing things in. I get around three of these containers per squash. That is a LOT of squash puree. I am never growing nine cushaw vines in one year ever again!

Actually, it may be a while before I grow cushaw squash at all again, with how much squash I'm going to have in the freezer. This year I plan on only growing summer squash and maybe butternuts. Summer squash is a completely different food, and butternuts are more useful in different recipes than cushaws. Cushaws are very sweet but very stringy, so they're good for things that need pureed squash, like pies and muffins. Butternuts are not very sweet, but have a nice smooth texture, so they're better in savory dishes where the squash is left in chunks.

Yeah, I think I'm good on squash puree for another year, if not for a few more years!

Sourdough Bread

My mother got me a pizza peel and baking stone for Christmas, and I just used it for the first time, to make a loaf of plain sourdough bread. I made my sourdough starter last summer, and have been getting better and better at making bread with it. I guess this is more of my do-it-yourself type of attitude; now I'm growing my own bread yeast!

I keep it in a Mason jar in the fridge with a plastic lid on top (sourdough supposedly doesn't like metal). Here it is when it's been recently fed and is all happy and bubbly. I used this recipe for starter. I like it because it didn't use commercial yeast, which is kind of cheating, in my opinion. I mean, if I want to use yeast from a jar, I'll just make bread the way I was doing before (and still do sometimes now, which I'll get to later). This starter is all wild yeast, that was either floating in the air, or was already on the flour. I heard somewhere that wild yeast is more adapted to live in a sourdough-type environment than commercial yeast, which makes sense.

One thing I'd like to note about that recipe, though. I had some mold issues with getting it started before I figured out you should stir it a lot, like twice a day. Otherwise I would always get mold on about the third day. I don't know why it helped, but stirring it either helped the yeast grow faster, or mixed the mold spores down into the starter where they couldn't grow as well, or both. Anyway, the trick to getting your starter started is that you want your favorable microbes (that is, yeast and lactic acid bacteria) to out-grow unfavorable ones (like mold). As time goes on they need less help from you, but the microbe balance is kind of delicate in the beginning.

The sourdough bread recipe I've had the most luck with so far is this one. I tried another recipe that didn't have milk in it and had more salt and less sugar, and it didn't work out. I think the milk and sugar help the yeast grow, while too much salt retards yeast growth. I always knead my bread in my KitchenAid stand mixer. The directions tell you to knead bread on speed 2 for 2-3 minutes. I've found it works better to do it on speed 1 for at least 10 minutes. Maybe even longer since I think I still have a problem with adequate gluten development.

I had been making this recipe in a loaf pan, which helps if your dough is underdeveloped. The sides of the pan help hold the rising dough up, while on a flat surface an underdeveloped dough just oozes out flat. Well, this time I decided to go ahead and give a round loaf a try.

Another thing I've figured out is that how you form your loaf is really important. It's hard to explain without showing you, but you need to work your ball of dough into shape properly for it to rise properly. Most instructions on how to make bread will explain how to do this. My point is that you can't skip this step! You kind of fold/roll it around to make a "skin" on the dough that holds in the bubbles of gas as it rises.

Then you have to let it rise until it's risen "enough". Again it's hard to explain. It looks and feels right when it's enough. If you poke the dough, the dimple pops back out. Under-risen dough still feels too dense, and over-risen dough kind of collapses into a pile of goo (not a pretty sight).

One of the downsides of using natural wild yeast is that the rise takes a lot longer. You usually only let it rise once, instead of with regular bread where you let it rise, punch it down and form the loaf, then let it rise again, but that one rise takes all day. It depends on temperature, but it takes something like 6-8 hours instead of two. If I didn't start my dough first thing in the morning (which also means I must have fed my starter last night right before bed) and want fresh bread by dinner, I turn to my jar of commercial yeast instead of my sourdough starter.

Another mistake I used to make is I slashed my loaves before they rose instead of after. No, it does make a difference. Slash your loves right before they go into the oven. The slashes are to let the bread poof up in the oven, not while it rises.

I needed more cornmeal on my pizza peel because it was a little hard to slide it into the oven, onto the waiting hot baking stone, but it finally went! Got a little jostled around, but not too badly.

Would have been prettier if I had bothered with an egg wash, but it still turned out well. I was sure to keep an eye on the loaf while it was baking since my oven has proven itself to be untrustworthy. I don't want more incidents like the burned fruitcake.

It's still flatter than I would have preferred, but it's not too bad. I'm certainly getting better at this bread baking thing. The texture of the finished product is getting lighter and chewier, which is what I want.

Bread made with wild sourdough starter is still different than bread made with bottled yeast, so I'm not sure if I can go quite as far as to "never use commercial yeast again!" like some sourdough aficionados say. I still manage to get lighter-textured bread with commercial yeast, though that could be due to inexperience more than being just the starter's fault. However, in addition to that, you can't use as much salt with sourdough, which I find noticable. It has a sour taste with very little salty taste. I have a nice recipe for a crusty Italian-type bread that uses nothing but flour, salt, water, olive oil, and yeast, and I just don't think a sourdough version of that would be the same. (Like I said, I tried a sourdough recipe that didn't have milk in it and had less sugar, and it didn't work out. Wouldn't rise.) I've also heard that sourdough doesn't get along with garlic or cinnamon. I would guess it's because of the antimicrobial properties of those ingredients. So better keep the jar of commercial yeast if I want to make cinnamon buns.

On the other hand, I finally found some rye flour, and am really looking forward to trying to make some sourdough rye. I think the sour taste would go really well with the rye taste, and I have centuries of European tradition to back me up.

Anyway, now that I know my baking stone works, the next bread recipe I'm going to try is this Harvest Squash Bread, which I found while looking for a squash bread that wasn't a sweet quickbread to use up some of my squash. I'm going to use some of my sourdough starter instead of the sponge they use in the recipe, and of course some of my pureed cushaw squash instead of the roasted acorn squash they use.

Free Range Fruitcake

I am a big fan of Alton Brown, who hosts the show Good Eats on the Food Network. He's like if Bill Nye the Science Guy had a cooking show. A few years ago I saw the episode It's a Wonderful Cake and decided I had to try his fruitcake recipe, even though I had never had fruitcake before, and of course had heard all the jokes about how disgusting and inedible fruitcake is.

Fruitcake is an ancient confection, originally a way to preserve fruit and nuts over the winter. It's supposed to symbolize wealth and luck and abundance with all those rich ingredients. I wondered how anyone could not like something that's basically dried fruit and nuts glued together in a matrix of sugar, spices, and alcohol, so I went ahead and gave it a try, and it was delicious! I've made it every year since. Yule is just not the same without it.

This year my boyfriend (now fiancee) got me Alton's baking cookbook, I'm Just Here for More Food, and in it I found what he claimed to be an improved recipe for the fruitcake from the show. It has a few minor changes, like using some whole wheat flour, hard apple cider instead of apple juice, no currants, and some black pepper in the spice mixture. I decided this year I'd base my fruitcake off the book recipe instead of the show's (which you can find on the Food Network site).

However, I don't always follow the recipe exactly anyway. It's actually a very forgiving recipe, and I vary which fruits, nuts, and booze I use depending on what I have around and what I can find at the store. I just keep the same total amounts and it turns out fine.

One important thing is this cake takes a couple of days to make and is best when cured for about a month, two weeks at the very least, so you have to plan ahead. After it's baked, you let it sit in a closed container and room temperature and baste it with more booze every few days. This greatly improves its flavor, texture, and potency!

I usually make mine some time in November, but this year I was a little late and made it the first week of December. That should still give it enough time.

The first step is to soak your dried fruit, citrus zest, and candied ginger in a cup of rum overnight. Here's mine after they have soaked and are very plumped up and happy. This year I used dried cranberries, cherries, blueberries, figs, peaches, and cantaloupe. I hope that's not too weird a combination. The figs were left over from another recipe that I wanted to use up. The peaches and cantaloupe were dried from this year's harvest. I was a little worried about using cantaloupe since it has such a distinctive flavor, but I have all this dried cantaloupe that I have no idea what to do with, so I went ahead and used half a cup of it. With so many other flavors going on, I doubt anyone will be able to tell there's cantaloupe in this. Then I added the cranberries, cherries, and blueberries to make the total amount of fruit the three and a half cups called for in the original recipe.

It also calls for the zest of one orange and one lemon, but instead I used the zest from the three Meyer lemons I harvested from my potted tree this winter. I don't get a lot of lemons from my little potted tree, but the ones I do get sure are good. Meyer lemons are a hybrid of a lemon and orange, so I figured they'd work as a substitute for orange and lemon zest.

Then you cook the fruit with the sugar, butter, and apple cider to make sort of a compote, and then this has to cool to room temperature. At this point you can even stash it in the fridge overnight.

The cooled cooked fruit mixture is then blended with the eggs, dry ingredients and nuts (I've used pecans and walnuts in this recipe before and either one's good), and mixed up like any other muffin or quick bread.

I have found this to be a very sticky recipe where you really need to grease and flour that pan well and probably add a bit of parchment or wax paper too, so you won't end up having to cut the cake out of the pan with a knife (as I admit I've done before). I've always made this in a loaf pan, but Alton said on the show you can use a round cake pan. I keep meaning to try that and then keep forgetting.

Of course since I was planning on blogging this, I had to mess up somehow. This time I set the oven too high and burnt it a little, or at least the outside got a lot darker than it should.

I panicked a little but then tore off a corner to inspect it, and it didn't seem too bad. Besides the over-brown outside, the inside seemed a bit dry, but that's nothing a few weeks soaking in brandy won't fix!

This cake is actually pretty forgiving. I've had other "disasters" in the past, including baking it at too low a temperature (due to a faulty oven), so I had to put it back in the oven and cook it longer (after de-panning it, then noticing the bottom was still gooey, then re-panning it!), and then once I put it in my smaller loaf pan and it overflowed, but I kept the part that stayed in the pan. Each time I still ended up with a decent fruitcake after the cure, so I've concluded that it's really hard to actually ruin this recipe.

Once the cake is cooled, I usually poke holes through it with a wooden skewer to help the booze soak in better, and then baste it with either rum or brandy. Alton uses a spray bottle to spritz it on, which sounds to me like it would better than basting, if I had a spray bottle I felt was clean enough for culinary use. I keep my cake in a plastic cake holder with an airtight snapping lid and check it every three days or so to see if it can handle some more booze.

I'm really not sure why people hate fruitcake so much. Granted, this is the only fruitcake I've ever eaten, but it's become a Yule tradition for me. Maybe it's because other fruitcakes use these gross, candied fruits instead of dried fruits. Or maybe Daniel is right, and people aren't expecting the dense, heavy texture when they want "cake". You may have noticed that this cake is a lot more like a banana bread or other quickbread than the light, fluffy cake most Americans think of when they think of cake. With all the fruit and nuts, you can even tell yourself it's healthy! I've been known to eat some for breakfast during Yuletide.

How to Make Gumbo

One of the best ways to use up the TONS of okra anyone who grows the stuff ends up getting is to make a big pot of gumbo! I think I heard somewhere that the word "gumbo" actually comes from the native word for okra, so there you go. True, you can make gumbo without okra, but I always use okra because I always have so much. That, and I like okra. It gives a wonderful flavor and texture to the dish.

Gumbo is also one of those dishes, like chili, that I don't really use a recipe for. There are a few things I think are required to make good gumbo, and then the rest is all flexible.

Here are the basic steps:
1. Make a roux.
2. Add the Holy Trinity, okra, and meats to the roux and fry them in it a bit.
3. Add broth and Cajun spices.
4. Simmer until done.

OK, let's make this a little less vague.

Probably the most important step is making the roux. The flavor of gumbo relies on making a DARK roux. The roux does thicken the gumbo a bit, but in my opinion, it's even more important for flavor. The roux gives the dish a deep, nutty flavor that makes it taste like gumbo rather than any old soup.

Roux is made by mixing a paste of roughly equal parts of flour and fat (I usually prefer putting a little more flour than fat in mine to make a thicker paste) and cooking it over low heat until it is rich brown. Lighter rouxs are used in a variety of sauces to thicken them, but when you cook roux until it almost burns but not quite, it toasts the flour creating a delicious nutty flavor. To make dark roux, you have to stand over the pot and stir and stir over low heat until it gets the right color and aroma (you will notice when it starts smelling delicious). Stir constantly so the flour on the bottom doesn't burn. I actually rush my roux a little bit at the beginning and have the heat up on medium, but as soon as the flour starts to brown, you really have to do it over low heat so you don't cross the line from toasty brown to black. If you start getting black flakes in it, you've burned it and will have to start over.

I have heard that it's possible to make roux in the oven, though I haven't tried it yet. Maybe next time.

It's really not that hard. It just takes patience. It's probably the most tedious part of gumbo making. For a big pot of gumbo, I use about a quarter cup each of fat and flour. For a smaller pot, two tablespoons of each should work. The fat can be butter, olive oil, bacon grease, chicken fat or some combination of those. Pick something you think would go well with the rest of your ingredients.

Once the roux is done, everything else is just thrown in and mixed together.

The Holy Trinity is a bell pepper, an onion, and some celery (approximately, depending on how big they are). I add this to the roux and sort of fry it a bit just like if the roux was plain oil until the vegetables start to sweat. This is also the point where I add okra and some meats.

The meat you use in gumbo is the most flexible part. Sausage is good. I always put sausage in my gumbo along with whatever other meat I have chosen because it gives that great smoky flavor. I let it brown a bit in the roux with the vegetables. If you can find andouille sausage, that would be the most authentic, but I often have to settle for regular smoked summer sausage (if you can find a spicy kind, that's even better). I've heard of ham being used also, but haven't tried it myself.

Chicken is also good and a very common ingredient. I usually use chicken that's already been cooked, like leftovers from a roasted chicken (hmm, I wonder if leftover Thanksgiving turkey would work as well). You can use chunks of raw chicken, like cubed chicken breast or thighs. Raw chicken should be added with the raw vegetables so it can cook in the roux a bit, but it's a good idea to wait to add cooked chicken until after you add the broth, since you're just reheating it and don't want to overcook it.

And of course there's seafood. Shrimp is always a favorite, and I've also used catfish nuggets. Crab, scallops, oysters, and crawfish can also be put in, though I've never tried it before. Since seafood cooks so quickly, it should be added towards the end, at the same time you add cooked chicken, so it can cook only briefly.

Once the vegetables are starting to get tender, any raw chicken you added is mostly cooked, and ham or sausage has browned a bit, you add stock or broth. I usually use chicken stock, but ham or shrimp stock would also be good. Pick one that would go with your other ingredients. Then you add any seafood or cooked chicken that needs to only simmer briefly, and the spices.

I use a pre-made Cajun seasoning mix, but you can also make your own. Cajun seasoning usually has salt, black pepper, Cayenne pepper, garlic, thyme, and maybe some other things. They vary in how hot and how salty they are, and people vary in how hot or salty they like their food, so I'm going to have to tell you to just season to taste here. Fortunately, once any raw meats you added are cooked, you can taste your gumbo and add more seasoning if you think it needs it (but remember you can add but you can't take out). I usually make my gumbo a little milder than I prefer, and then pass some Louisiana hot sauce around at the table for people who like it hotter to add to their portions.

Simmer the gumbo until everything is cooked and the roux and spices are incorporated into the broth, but don't let the vegetables get too mushy. Oh, and you were cooking a pot of rice to go with it, weren't you?

Serve over rice (white or brown are both good), with some crusty French bread on the side, and a sweet white wine. Cajun food is influenced by French food, which is why I accompany it with French bread and a sweet wine that would go with spicy food. Maybe it's because I grew up watching Justin Wilson on PBS, and he always drank wine. But beer is good too, and I know some people who eat cornbread with gumbo (but I prefer beer and cornbread with chili).

Now that is some serious comfort food for when it's starting to get a little cold outside, but you still have lots of okra and bell peppers from the garden to use up.

Cushaw Pie

After a very long growing season and threats from Squash Vine Borers that decimated all their fellow squash, the cushaw squash harvest is underway. I made a cushaw pie from the first squash I harvested for a Samhain gathering and it turned out great.

I was a little nervous cutting into the squash, afraid I would find an under ripe interior, but to my relief it was nice and yellow-orange inside with fat seeds.

I then proceeded to give myself a real workout hacking it to pieces and scraping out the seeds. The pieces were arranged in my big roasting pan with the rack removed.

Here is the squash after it was roasted at 350 degrees for an hour and a half. By this time it was nice and tender and easy to scrape from the rind. I much prefer roasting my pumpkin (or squash) to boiling it to make puree, because it lets some water evaporate and concentrates the flavor. I also mix any caramelized bits into the puree, which seems to give it more color.

Two cups of the finished puree went into the pie. The other EIGHT cups went in the freezer in 2 cup portions.

I made the pie using a combination of recipes I found online for pumpkin pie, taking the elements I liked best from each. Turned out great. I guess since I modified other's recipes to make my pie, I can give you the recipe without breaching copyright.

Cushaw Pie

1 recipe pie dough for a single crust 9 inch pie (it's really not that hard to make yourself)
2 eggs
2 cups cushaw squash puree (or any winter squash or pumpkin)
1/4 cup half and half cream
3/4 cups brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

1. Make your pie crust, roll out, and line a 9 inch pie plate with it. Trim and crimp edges.

2. Dock your crust well and pre-bake it at 425 degrees for 10 minutes. Let it cool.

3. While your crust is cooling, beat eggs with a whisk. Then whisk in squash puree and half and half.

4. Whisk in sugar, flour, vanilla, and spices.

5. At this point you can leave your filling and pie crust overnight in the fridge like I did or bake it right away. I heard somewhere that custards (which pumpkin pie is) do better when left to sit overnight before cooking. It was convenient for me to do so this time, but I'm sure it would be fine without this rest period. I let my crust and filling come to room temperature before proceeding.

6. When you are ready to bake, pour the filling into your pie crust and smooth top with a spatula. Arrange pretty pie crust scrap decorations on top as desired.

7. Put pie on a cookie sheet for easier handling, and bake at 350 degrees for 40-50 minutes. Mine actually could have been pulled out at more like 35 minutes, but that's probably because I let the filling get to room temperature before baking (rapid temperature changes are not good for custards). Take your pie out of the oven before it looks done! This is very important, because it will continue to cook as it sits on the counter cooling. If it looks done in the oven, it will be overcooked once it is cool. This is the cause of cracked, rubbery, yucky pumpkin pies. Bake your pie gently and take it out before it looks done, and you will have a smooth, creamy, yummy pie.

8. Let your pie cool to room temperature on the counter, then stash in the fridge until chilled. Serve with a nice big blob of whipped cream.