Now That's Spooky

Happy Halloween! Here's a new recipe to try out sometime this week.


SPREAD CUPS

WATER
LIQUID AND PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN OIL
SALT
HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN OIL
VEGETABLE MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES
PECTIN AND SODIUM ALGINATE
POTASSIUM SORBATE (A PRESERVATIVE)
NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS
CITRIC ACID
CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA
BETA CAROTENE
VITAMIN A PALMITATE
WHEY

Combine all ingredients and whip until it looks like something that could possibly pass for butter. Place small amounts into small cups and seal with fun lids that say something like, "SPREAD CUPS." Serve with all meals to your favorite and finest guests.

Important Directions

Dear Pumpkin,

Well, friends, the joke's on me. Remember my silly comments about all the pumpkin being gone and all then everyone being out of luck because I bought all the canned pumpkin? Okay, so it took me three grocery store trips to get my hands on one single can of pumpkin just so I could make this dreamy cake. Canned pumpkin is sold out EVERYWHERE. It's a hot mess. (And, as it turns out, it's NOT just my fault! There are actually other people out there who are trying to buy pumpkin! Appalling!)

Since I discovered this cake, I've made it twice. It's a big cake, so be prepared to have a lot of cake-loving someones to share it with! I usually find myself surrounded by a zillion pumpkin recipes at this time of year, including a great many breads and muffins and pies. This year, I have found this one, and it, I think, is better than all the rest, and I can say with confidence that this will be my go-to recipe for pumpkin sweets this season.

ROCKtober Pumpkin Spice Pound Cake
thanks to Jenna for this recipe, which I sort of mauled a bit
and thanks to Jason for inventing Rocktober

for cake:
1 C chopped pecans
3 C flour
2 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 T ground cinnamon
1 t ground nutmeg
½ t powdered ginger
¼ t ground cloves
1 C butter, softened
1 C brown sugar
2/3 C white sugar
4 eggs, room temperature
1 can (approx 16 oz.) pumpkin
1 t vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste

for glaze:
¼ C butter
½ C white sugar
2 T water
2 T bourbon or rum

Make the cake!
•Grease bundt pan and sprinkle pecans over bottom.
•Combine flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves in medium bowl.
•Add eggs and beat well. Add pumpkin & vanilla and beat well.
•Add dry ingredients and mix well. Batter will be thick!
•Spoon batter into pan and drop from 6-8 inches onto a hard surface in order to get the air bubbles out.
•Bake at 325 degrees for approximately 60 minutes, or until a wooden pick comes out clean. (Watch
carefully, as this cake can dry out in the oven very quickly!)
•Allow cake to cool in pan for 10 minutes.

Make the glaze!
•Melt butter in small saucepan, Stir in ½ C sugar and 2 T water, and bring to a boil, whisking constantly. •Remove from heat and pour ½ of the glaze over cake.
•Let cake stand for 5 minutes and then invert onto serving plate.
•Make holes in top of the cake and pour on the remaining glaze.

October With A Spoon

Don't be frightened. Don't be skeptical. There is pumpkin in this chili and it's good. That, and it's easy enough to put together on a weeknight, but also such a fun project that you'll want to make it on a weekend. And did I mention how incredibly autumnal, how amazingly seasonal it is? And how it's perfect for Halloween? And how children will eat it? And how you can freeze it? And how you can serve it to your traditionalist friends who will just think it's so delicious because once they taste it, they will forget all about the presence of fruit and lamb? This chili really benefits from the creaminess of the pumpkin -- it instantly adds texture and thickness that you can typically only get from the refrigeration process, and we all know that you're going to eat this well before it goes into the fridge! 

I like to top this chili with sour cream and cilantro, and serve with either crackers, tortilla chips, or a grilled cheese -- specifically a brie and pear grilled cheese, although any kind of grilled cheese is the perfect grilled cheese. If the pumpkin pie spice in the chili makes you nervous, then don't worry! You can leave it out and just make the chili with the canned pumpkin to start with. I also love this chili with ras el hanout, which is an incredible, surprisingly versatile Moroccan spice blend. Now off you go! Make this chili, call in your bear cubs, and feed them all!

PUMPKIN CHILI
1 pound ground lamb (you could also use beef or turkey!)
1 large onion, diced
1 poblano pepper, diced
1 jalapeño, minced
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes
1 (16-ounce) can kidney beans or pinto beans, drained
1 (16-ounce) can chili beans
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons pepper

• 
  

In a large dutch oven or soup pot, sauté the onions in a few tablespoons of olive oil. Cook until the onions are to your liking -- I tend to cook onions for a quite awhile because I love the caramelized onion flair in EVERYTHING. If onions stick to the pot, add water in small amounts and scrape the bottom of the pot. Add the meat and brown it, chopping it up with a metal spatula as much as you can as it cooks. Add the spices and stir until meat is coated and spices are fragrant. Add remaining ingredients and stir well to mix. Cook, simmering, until chili thickens to your liking. 

I Ate Here. Really.

Persimmon City, Indiana

Hello! Alert! Important news just in!

Persimmons. Have. A. Secret. Life.

Apparently, persimmons aren't just those apple-sized, shiny orange orbs hailing from California or Asia. They grow strangely close to me in, yes, INDIANA. It's true! Granted, they are tiny. And dangerously fragile. And full of giant seeds, which take over the entire fruit and leave only the smallest smidgen of actual pulp. But they're real! And they are available at the farmers market in the autumn in central Indiana. And I'm not kidding. My research reveals that it's called the American Persimmon and it's native to primarily the eastern U.S., although somehow they made their way over to Indiana at some point. It's traditionally eaten in a steamed pudding, although I, being decidedly more practical than that, chose to use the pulp for a cocktail. I mean, why have a pudding when you can have liquor?

Hurrah!

Eggs-cellent

All meals have just been improved. It's because the 6-minute egg has entered my life, and I'm in love! It's amazing. So keep reading, if you will, and I'll turn you into a wizard.

It's been around forever, this egg style, but I had my first one only recently. This particular 6-minute egg found its way into an incredible, rustic-yet-classy breakfast that Colleen and I had a Lula several Fridays ago. You may find yourself linking over to this restaurant's site and feeling quite seasick because of those godforsaken blinking squares, but if you can get past that, head over to the brunch specials and you'll likely see a 6-minute egg somewhere on the menu (the current one sounds pretty amazing). Ours was served with black quinoa, watercress, some other weeds-worthy green things, obscenely pungent black garlic, a sweet potato pavé, sautéed apples, and some other odds and ends. And it was incredible. The black garlic punched me in the face, but you know how fermented foods are. Is it good? Is it bad? It tastes so good! It tastes so bad! Should I actually be eating this?!

They've quite mastered this egg preparation, I think, and, well, you know me -- I can't have OTHER people mastering things while I stand idly by! So I'm learning. Rather, Andy and I are learning. He doesn't consider himself much of a cook, but he likes the magical process of this egg-cooking method because he is A Science Person. Plus, it's impossibly, beautifully simple, and that means a lot to a guy who thinks that even a frozen pizza feels like a bit too much work sometimes.

The 6-minute egg can be a good main course for breakfast, of course, but it's also the perfect touch for any kind of salad, or as the crown on nearly any type of rice dish. I could see this on greens or grains, Indian food or Thai food, or anytime that your meal needs a little flair or a little punch of protein. Think about serving the egg with a good toast, or polenta, or a nice sauce. I could also see this egg with a meat dish, like with a steak, or pork. Be sure to sprinkle your finished eggs with good salt, pepper, and a little olive oil. It's unexpected, this egg, and really sort of like a treasure.

So, let's talk consistency. The texture of the egg is going to blow your mind. The white is similar to that of a poached egg, so it holds together, but isn't rubbery, and the yolk stays together, but is also quite soft at the same time. The process of spilling your yolk in any type of soft-yolk egg preparation is so satisfying, but often a little too wet for me, so I love this 6-minute method because your yolks will not be completely liquid-like, nor will they be cooked. It's the perfect in-between yolk state, and I do believe you'll love it quite a lot.

6-Minute Eggs

Short version:
Boil water.
Cook eggs for 6 minutes.
Move to ice bath.
Remove and peel.

More-words version:
Start with room temperature eggs. (Hate to break it to you, but this part is really important! If the egg is too cold, it'll crack as soon as it hits the boiling water. But sometimes I cheat by microwaving the eggs for about 15-20 seconds in order to mock room temperature.)

Bring a pan of water to a boil. There should be enough water in the pan to cover the eggs completely. When the water is at a rolling boil, carefully and gently lower your eggs into the water with a slotted spoon. Set the timer for 6 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare a bowl of ice water, using about two-thirds ice to one-third water. Keep the water boiling the whole time. At the end of the 6 minutes, remove the pan from the heat and quickly remove the eggs from the pan with the slotted spoon. As you remove them from the boiling water, carefully and gently lower them into the ice bath.

Leave in the ice bath for 20-30 seconds, or up to a few minutes. This part of the process will cause the egg white to separate from the shell and make the egg easier to peel. If you keep it in the ice water for a short amount of time, the egg itself will stay warm, and that's what you want (and by that I mean "that's what I want" -- so it's up to you!). Crack the eggs on a hard surface very gently on all sides, and peel off the shells, being careful to not damage the egg at all. Clean off the membrane and any shell bits and serve immediately.

Pumpkin Emergency

If the canned pumpkin stores and factories all run out of canned pumpkin this month, it will definitely be my fault.

The thing is, once October strikes, I just really want to consume pumpkin every single day. September? Nope, too early. November? Totally sick of it by then. So it will make sense to you that I have found a way to consume pumpkin five times within the past five days. Ah, pumpkin! Dog-safe, child-friendly, and ridiculously useful. What could be finer?

I wish I was the kind of person who could say she makes and cans her own pumpkin puree, but that will just never be me. While I tend to go above and beyond the call of duty perhaps a bit too frequently, pumpkin is not one of the areas in which I overachieve. I made my own pumpkin puree just once, and I swore I would never do it again. I mean, come on! Buy pumpkin, carry heavy pumpkin home, clean pumpkin, cut pumpkin, remove innards from pumpkin, bake pumpkin, cool pumpkin, scoop out pumpkin, puree pumpkin. Damn! And all of this for a mere two cups of pumpkin, maybe three if I'm very lucky, which will inevitably become moldy in the refrigerator before I can use it all. So. I make time for lots of absurd and seemingly unnecessary activities, but not for this one.

So this brings us to the pumpkin activity of the day. When I came home yesterday, while (naturally) wearing the pumpkin sticker I applied to myself at school, I made pumpkin smoothies, which is basically a liquified pumpkin pie without the obscene amounts of sugar (necessitated by the fact that I made a pumpkin pie the day before, and we were rendered quite sugared).

It's a darling little recipe, and when I made it, I was reminded how pumpkin is so odd because, by itself, it really doesn't taste like much of anything at all. It's that addition of spices and sugar that makes us think that pumpkin tastes a certain way. Sneaky pumpkins, indeed! So, if I don't manage to use up the world's pumpkin supply after all, and you find yourself with a can of pumpkin, I would recommend poking your spoon in and conducting this blandness experiment. Then, round up your spices and turn that convenient, glorious mush into something amazing!

Pumpkin Smoothies
serves 2

1/2 C pumpkin puree
4 ice cubes
3/4 C vanilla yogurt
1/4 C milk
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
2 T maple syrup

Process in blender, adding extra milk if it gets too thick or refuses to blend. Also, toy around with the amounts of everything so that the taste is to your liking, and make sure you don't overdo it with the spices or it'll taste bitter! Top with whipped cream, of course.