Pumpkin Lasagna

Yes, more pumpkin! I had this little guy sitting on my front porch

and he looked too yummy to let him be decoration any longer! I roasted the whole thing, chopped up half of it into cubes for the lasagna and stuck the other half in the fridge.

Ingredients:
*1/2 small pumpkin, cubed
*nine strips of lasagna noodles (I cheated and used "oven ready" noodles from HEB, and they turned out well)
*crushed tomatoes (about 1/2 of a 28oz can)
*tomato sauce (about 1.5 cups)
*1 small onion, diced
*2 Italian "sausages" (I like lightlife), cut in half and sliced
*1 8oz package of button mushrooms (I chose them for their "meaty" quality), sliced
*Mozzarella (about 1.5 cups), grated
*Parmesan (about .5 cups), grated and mixed with mozzarella
*Salt & Pepper to taste


Roast pumpkin at 425 for about 30 minutes or until you can easily stick a fork in the side.

While the pumpkin is roasting, dice the onion and cook over medium heat in a large skillet (everything except the noodles, crushed tomatoes, and cheese will end up in here). When onions start to look translucent, add mushrooms, salt, pepper, and cook until mushrooms are almost done. Last, add the Italian "sausage," pumpkin, and tomato sauce.

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. In a large casserole dish, start layering the lasagna in this order: a thin layer of crushed tomatoes, noodles, vegetable filling, cheese, noodles, crushed tomato, filling, cheese, noodles, crushed tomatoes, and cheese. Be sure to cover each noodle layer with crushed tomatoes, since the liquid helps the noodles cook.

Cover dish with a aluminum foil tent and place in oven for 20 minutes. Remove aluminum foil and cook for 10 more minutes, or until you can stick a fork through the noodles.

No pictures of the food this time. It was so delicious it got eaten up quickly!

Pumpkin Latkes

Shalom and Happy Hanukka! This is a super quick recipe, most of which I stole from the Food Network. Instead of five potatoes, I used four and swapped in about one potato's worth of grated, roasted pumpkin. Use only partially cooked pumpkin (which I happened to have since last time I roasted one, I pulled it out too early). I also used flour instead of matzo meal, since it isn't Passover (and also since I'm a Gentile. According to my mother-in-law, matzo meal is the preferred ingredient). The pumpkin wasn't too strong, but it made the pancakes a little less starchy and gave them a greater range of nutrients. L'chaim!

Pumpkin and Apple Mac 'n' Cheese

Mmm, pumpkin and apple, classic fall foods, classic combination. And cheese just makes everything better! As always, the amounts below are estimates, since I don't measure while I cook. I just add it until it's the way I want it.

Blue Pumpkin, yum!

 

Ingredients
1 1/2 cup macaroni
1 medium onion, diced
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
2 honeycrisp apples (or another sweet apple), cored and diced
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cloves
1 tbs cinnamon
3 cups roasted pumpkin, mashed (I used the leftover half of the Blue Pumpkin)
1 cup Jarlsburg cheese (or any swiss), grated
1/3 cup bread crumbs
a dash of heavy whipping cream (or yogurt)
oil for the pan
salt & pepper to taste

Set water with a pinch of salt to boil for the macaroni. Meanwhile, heat oil in a saucepan over medium heat. When hot, throw in the onions for about 7 minutes, or until translucent. Add garlic and cook one minute more. Then add apples and 1/2 the spices. Cook about 3 minutes, then add pumpkin, with more salt and pepper and remaining spices. Stir to combine. Then add cooked macaroni, cheese, bread crumbs, and heavy whipping cream. Reserve some cheese and bread crumbs for topping.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Scoop into a greased pan and sprinkle with remaining cheese and bread crumbs. Cook about 12 minutes or until cheese on top is melted and the edges are browned. And your done!

Pumpkin Apple Mac 'n' Cheese: Done!

 

 

It turned out a little more like a casserole than like mac 'n' cheese, but you could always use less pumpkin and more macaroni, if that's how you like it. Enjoy!

Grilled Pumpkin

OK, so I lied. I know I said I would be writing about Pumpkin Mac 'n' Cheese, and I will, but my husband really wanted to grill, so I thought we could experiment with a new method of cooking and a new variety of pumpkin...

Grilling and pumpkins don't often go together, since the former is associated with warm weather and the latter with cold. However, here in San Antonio, it is not uncommon to have pleasant weather in November.

Ingredients
Blue Pumpkin (or any kind really)
Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper
Butter

Prep was easy, I just cut a blue pumpkin in half and sliced it into about 3/4 inch slices. I love the bright orange of the flesh and how it contrasts so beautifully with the blue skin!

Anyways, then I just sprinkled them with salt, pepper, and olive oil and set the directly on the grill grate. Cook for about 10 minutes on each side with the cover on. Serve with butter and salt. And your done! Super easy!

The blue pumpkin tastes very much like an acorn squash but a little heartier, if that's possible. It yields quite a lot of flesh. We only needed one half the pumpkin to feed us, and even then there were leftovers (it's quite filling). This variety also has a ton of tightly packed seeds, which I will experiment with at a later date.

Next up: the thing I actually promised in my last post, pumpkin mac 'n' cheese.

Pumpkinfest Begins

Ah, the signs of fall: moderate winds, rain, crsip & cool air, dropping temperatures...well at least the last couple days anyways! Hurricane Sandy seems to have sent a low pressure zone our way, and I sure am glad. I love fall! But I really missed it last year, my first fall in San Antonio. This year, fall is really starting to feel like fall. And what comes with fall? Great fall foods: sweet potatoes, white potatoes, a new variety of squashes, carrots, beets, apples, and pumpkin. And also different spices: goodbye basil and hello curry, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. And my favorite of all these new flavors is pumpkin. Yes, pumpkin. And not just pumpkin pie, which is a holiday fave of mine, but also soups and casseroles and stir-frys and italian food and tex-mex.

Fairytale & Cinderella Pumpkins

I fell in love with fresh pumpkin in Fall of 2008. I remember it as if it were yesterday: my husband (then still my boyfriend) and I ventured into central Virginia in search of a fall festival experience. We visited Belvedere Plantation, aa farm that seemed to exist solely for the purpose of the fall festival. There cute farm animals, pig races, pies for sale, hay rides, pumpkin chunkin', the pumpkin patch, and a varied pumpkin marketplace. We chose our jack-o-lanterns from the patch (an experience I miss here in San Antonio) and headed into the marketplace. There were crazy pumpkin varieties I had never seen before, such as Red Warty Things and Cinderella pumpkins. Under each variety was a tag describeing what the pumpkins can be used for. Under both the aforementioned pumpkins, the signs said, "great for cooking." "Cook a pumpkin?" I thought. I couldn't believe that anyone did such a thing. But I was curious and picked up a red warty thing and a cinderella pumpkin. That Thanksgiving, I cooked my first pumpkin pie from scratch, and it was the best I'd ever had. From then on, I've been hooked, cooking fresh pumpkin dishes throughout the fall, starting just before Halloween until I run out. This season, I'll be sharing my pumpkin adventures.

Since this weekend has really made me feel the fall spirit, I decided to cut open my first pumpkin. The HEB at Lincoln Heights and the commissary at Ft. Sam have a good variety of pumpkins, including the varieties mentioned above, so there are plenty of kinds of pumpkins to experiment with. I'll be sharing my experiments and recipes from now until the pumpkin is all used up. First of all, let's talk about how to prepare it.

When I first made fresh pumpkin, I steamed it. It worked just fine for cooking the pumpkin, but it also made it a little watery. I much prefer to roast it.

ROASTED PUMPKIN

One Pumpkin (here I used a Cinderella), cut in half
Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper to taste

Freshly cut!

Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees. Drizzle pumpkin halves with olive oil, about 1 tbs each. Dash with salt & pepper. Cook for 40 minutes or until the flesh begins to separate from the skin and you can easily stick a fork all the way in.

That's it! You're done!

SPICY PUMPKIN SOUP
Inspired by a recipe for vegetable jambalaya in Vegetarian Times, I decided to give a typical pumpkin soup a little heat.

Olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 1/2 garlic cloves, minced
1 medium parsnip (or more if you really like the flavor), diced
2 medium celery stalks, sliced
About 3 cups of pumpkin flesh
Cayenne Pepper
Chili Powder
Cinnamon
2 cups vegetable broth (or as much as you need to get the consistency you like)
Salt & Pepper to taste
Heavy whipping cream

Heat 1 tbs olive oil in a large sauce pot on medium heat. Cook onions (seasoned with salt & pepper) about 8 minutes or until almost cooked. Add garlic. Cook 1 minute. Add parsnip and celery. Season with salt, pepper, a dash of cayenne, and a dash of chili powder. Cook until soft. Add pumpkin (I mentioned 3 cups above, but I don't really measure when I cook. Just make sure that there is much more pumpkin than the other vegetables. I may have put in four cups or so.). Season with a large dash of cinnamon, salt, pepper, a dash of cayenne, and a dash of chili powder. The pumpkin is already cooked, so just cook long enough to heat through. Remove from heat. Use an immersion blender to roughly blend the vegetables. Add broth and blend until smooth. Put back on heat to heat through. Serve with a dash of heavy whipping cream.

Make sure you go easy on the cayenne. I accidently made this soup burn-my face-off-hot. Of course, my husband thought it only had a hint of heat. So I just added a little more cream to take the edge off.

Next up: Pumpkin Mac 'n' Cheese (or pumpkin & apple cookies, depending on how I feel)

Max's Wine Dive

The first time I went to Max's Wine Dive, I had high expectations. Good reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations. However, I was underwhelmed. It was winter (January if I remember correctly), so I ordered off the seasonal menu: sweet potato gnocchi with spinach and winter vegetables (parsnips maybe? It's been a while). It sounded great, and I couldn't wait to eat it, but the dish was heavily sauced and the gnocchi was mushy and runny, even. Based on this experience, I completely wrote it off. But my husband on the other hand thought his dinner was fantastic, so he sneakily bought 3 groupons for Max's, obligating me to return.

His tactic worked, and we went back a few months later. This time, I ordered the veggie burger from the summer menu (the only vegetarian entree listed). When the burger came out, I was expecting the worst, but it was fantastic! It had great texture and was filling, spicy, and a little sweet. The burger is also incredibly large, and I surprised myself by eating the whole thing! It was just that good. In fact, I returned again just to eat the veggie burger (and use up another groupon).

On our fourth visit, I decided to try something else and ordered the snapper (from the summer menu again). Everything from the green beans to the potatoes to the slaw went well together. The beans and the slaw kept everything light and crisp. Yum! We also had the best service on this trip. Previously, the service was a little awkward (from green servers maybe?). This time around our server was knowledgeable about the wine and helped us make a dessert wine selection, which is not something we typically do, so the assistance was much needed, and the late-harvest malbec she suggested went wonderfully with the brownie. The brownie itself, however, was a let down. It wasn't bad, just boring.

Speaking of wine (this is a wine bar after all), the selection of bottles is comprehensive, but I prefer to order by the glass, since more often than not, everyone at the table is looking for something different. The by-the-glass list hits all the highlights, but isn't terribly varied. Fortunately though, they do have an enomatic with additional selections that are less static than the wines on the menu.

Overall, the place is hit or miss, even though most of my dining experiences have been positive, because I've been ordering off the seasonal menus. The "Classics" menu doesn't have anything for vegetarians (except tomato soup and grilled cheese and a few appetizers), so don't fall for their dressed-up comfort food gimick; the hits tend to be on the seasonal menu.

Fill 'Er Up!

Station Cafe (formerly the Filling Station)

I just ate the most delicious vegan patty for lunch! Definitely NOT a boring sprouts stuck between two pieces of bread because I can't fathom what vegetarians really eat type sandwich. And it was so refreshing to find a casual cafe for lunch that offers creative vegetarian options. Notice that "s"? Yes, there were several options from which I could choose!

The patty was made with brown rice, lentils, and beets, with a few capers for added salt. It came out hot and fresh and was hardy and flavorful. It had a spicy aroma (sage or thyme maybe?). The bun was fresh and light, allowing the flavors of the burger to stand out. They dress the burger with lettuce, tomato, mayo (vegan), and mustard. Next time, I would skip the tomato (didn't mix well with the beet) and ask them to go light on the mustard.

The cafe is downtown in the King William district on S St. Mary's, and it is convenient to many downtown attractions, so I'll definitely head back next time I'm being a tourist.

Noms!