Pumpkins: stuff 'em, bake 'em, put 'em in a pie!

The first time I ever cooked a pumpkin, or made pie crust, was when I was 20 years old. My boyfriend's grandmother had died, and he and I drove, in his beat-up VW bug, to his grandparents' farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was autumn, so the always-picturesque peaks and valleys were layered in vivid orange, gold and red. And there were pumpkins.

John and his grandfather disappeared into the fields pretty much as soon as we arrived, so I was left alone in the house. Normally, I'd be happy to sit somewhere and read a book, but maybe I didn't bring one; I don't remember. What I remember is that there was a large pumpkin and I decided to be domestic.  Pumpkin pie, I thought, was just the thing to warm the house and his grandfather's heart. It was a very large pumpkin. I cut it open, and laboriously scooped out the seeds and strings until it was clean and smooth inside. Then I found the largest knife I could, to cut it into pieces. I pulled out every pot in the kitchen and filled them with water. But there were only four burners. At about midnight, all of the pumpkin was finally cooked. John and his grandfather were long since snoring in their beds. I took out his grandmother's cookbook, turned to "pumpkin pie" and began to read.

A moment of reflection is in order. As you will recall, if you read my post about the grape leaves, this is a pattern; reading the recipe through at the last minute. You'd think I would learn. Apparently I am not trainable.

The recipe called for two cups of pureed pumpkin. I was surrounded by pots and pots of cooked pumpkin. I mashed up some of it, and had two cups in minutes. Then I began looking at the recipe for crust. Again, a moment of reflection; as I've mentioned took  before, Mom always told me if you can read, you can cook. In this case - bake. So, for the first time, I took flour, salt, butter, and a little water,  and worked that alchemical magic that turns simple ingredients into one of my own favorite foods - pie crust. In fact, I made two of them. Clearly, I had enough pumpkin.

While the pies were baking, I mashed up the rest of the pumpkin, packaged it up in plastic bags, and filled the freezer.

Around 1:30 a.m. I pulled two beautiful pies out of the oven, and went to bed. The next day, as we waved goodbye, I mused over what John's grandfather would do with all that pumpkin.

I've made many pumpkin pies since then, but none about which I have felt as justifiably triumphant as those.

Today I had a pumpkin adventure of a completely different kind. And I went into it this time with my eyes wide open - and without a recipe.

The Halloween pumpkin has been haunting me. I never got around to carving it, and it has remained as healthy and sound as the day in October when I bought it.

I was decidedly NOT making a pie with it. But what? I trolled around the internet and found a variety of recipes. One of the most delicious-sounding, from Dorie Greenspan, was a pumpkin stuffed with cheese and bread. But I'm trying to bring my cholesterol down, so I'm keeping my cheese consumption to a minimum. However, she also said that it has "almost no rules" and that you can stuff a pumpkin a million different ways. So I decided to take the no-rules approach, which in general suits me just fine.

I cut the top off of the pumpkin, and scooped out the seeds and stringy bits.

Foraging through the fridge, I found a heel of challah, a couple of pieces of stale rye bread, part of a whole grain party loaf , and a nice-sized chunk of pumpkin seed bread. I cut them all up into bite-sized pieces and put them into a large bowl. Then I cored and sliced two large apples, keeping the skins on; threw in a cup of walnuts, and a cup of craisins.

I mixed together two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, four tablespoons of honey and a cup of boiling water, and poured the mixture into my bowl, stirring it all together.

I put the pumpkin into my cast-iron Dutch oven, put the top on it, and put it into a 350-degree oven. After 90 minutes, I removed the pumpkin top and let it bake for another 15 minutes so the bread would toast a little bit and the liquid would cook off.

Serve with a dash of cinnamon sugar, being sure to scoop out part of the pumpkin along with the filling. The result: delicious!

For the first gathering of 2016, we read "The Silkworm" by Robert Galbraith - a.k.a. J.K. Rowling. It's her second novel featuring protagonist Cormoran Strike, a tough, one-legged private investigator and former military man who served in the Special Investigation Branch. The irony of his inability to utilize the high-level physical skills with which he was trained threads throughout the novel, and is key to his character. As an added twist, he is publicity-averse, illegitimate son of a very rich and famous rock star. Rowling has created a complex and multi-layered character who grows on the reader as the story unfolds.

Here, he's investigating the disappearance of a rather detestable novelist who was last seen causing a scene in a restaurant when his agent tells him his newest novel, Bombyx Mori (the scientific name for silkworm) is unpublishable. As Strike seeks answers to an increasingly confounding mystery, he encounters an array of literary types- writers, editors, publishers - each one more despicable than the last. Rowling proves herself a versatile storyteller who has created yet another memorable character.

Meanwhile, in the way of food for this evening's gathering, I took to heart (as I have done

 all my life) my mother's assertion that if you can read and follow directions, you can cook. I had a large jar of grape leaves that was purchased mistakenly, thinking they were stuffed grape leaves. What to do? Stuff them myself, of course. How hard could it be?


Linda Stradley, on her website, "What's Cooking America" , provides a recipe of which she says "They're so easy to make, and so delicious!" Well, delicious they are. Easy - not by my standards. That is, it's not that they are so tricky  - just very time-intensive. It's a good thing I started on Friday night or we would be in the store buying some ready-made ones to take to dinner tonight. 

First, there is creating the stuffing - primarily rice, but with a mix of other ingredients I would not have suspected were at the heart of this dish. Cinnamon, dill, toasted pine nuts, onion, lemon, olive oil, sugar, salt and pepper combine to make a flavoring very different from its individual parts. These are mixed, cooked, then cooled. 

Then there are the grape leaves -- the jar was about eight inches tall, less than three inches in diameter, and into it were stuffed three rolls of leaves, so tightly wrapped that they seemed solid. To separate them without tearing, I put them into a large stew pot into which I ran warm water and then slowly teased them apart. Each one then was patted dry. Rolling the filling up in them was not hard, but 36 rolls and an hour later, I was glad to put the remaining leaves back into the jar.

I confess that I have a bad habit of skimming directions and then plunging in to whatever it is I've taken on. In this case, I ran up against the consequences as I neared the final step. I had carefully filled a large pyrex baking dish with the stuffed grape leaves, poured two cups of hot water, with olive oil and lemon mixed in over it -- and read the next direction which was to put my "pot" on the stove and bring the water to a boil. 

Fortunately, I only need to experience a disaster once to learn from it; some years ago I did just that, put a pyrex dish on a burner to cook - and it exploded all over the kitchen. So in this case I decided that my having boiled the water in advance would have to do. But then I saw that I was supposed to press another ovenproof plate in on top of my grape leaves - and then cover the whole thing. So I got a smaller pyrex baking dish and turned it upside down on the grape leaves, pressing down - and realized that I had no cover for these rectangular dishes. Aluminum foil would just have to do. 

According to the recipe, the cooking time in a 350-degree oven should have been 45 - 60 minutes. Mine took an hour and twenty minutes. I have no idea whether this was the result of my unconventional, and not very tight-fitting cover, my failure to boil, or some other reason. In any case, they are delicious and I will be proud to serve them at dinner tonight. And now I can say I've made my own Dolmades, from scratch. And happily go back to buying them from the very good deli counter at Creekside co-op.

Friends, Food, Books: Je vous souhaite tous une bonne année! A very happ...

Friends, Food, Books: Je vous souhaite tous une bonne année! A very happ...: Je vous souhaite tous une  bonne année! A very happy new year to all! Those who know me personally will remember that I was a French major...

Je vous souhaite tous une bonne année! A very happy new year to all!
Those who know me personally will remember that I was a French major in college, and studied in Paris my junior year. As a result, I spent four years immersed in the plays of Molière, Giraudoux and Sartre; wrote thousands of words comparing and contrasting French philosophies of the 17th and 20th centuries; and have, among other things in my library, a copy of the complete works of Corneille which would be quite serviceable as a doorstop. 

During that junior year abroad, once we had passed the exam to obtain our Certificat pratique de langue française, we had the opportunity to enroll in classes at the Sorbonne or the Université de Paris. But most of our classes, our (extremely vital) mail delivery and all-around gathering spot was at l'Institut d’études européennes, located on an upper floor of a modernized building on the Boulevard de Sébastopol. At lunchtime, we would clatter down the back stairs and out the door that opened onto a street barely the width of a Citroën. Directly across the street was a tiny café the width of a double door and one wide, square window, in which stood, every day, a very large woman of indeterminate age. Wrapped in a voluminous white apron tied in front and wielding a huge knife, she chopped mountains of onions daily for the most delectable onion soup I have ever tasted. Bubbling browned cheese on top that spread into strings impossible to eat politely, and bread soaked with butter and dredging up spoonfuls of onion. Heaven.


She came to mind recently when I was looking for a winter vegetable dish to feature in the monthly feature, "In Season," in Milestones Newspaper, which I edit. I surfed around and somehow fell upon a YouTube video of the inimitable Julia Child making French Onion soup. I was captivated all over again. She spent the first ten minutes of a 30-minute show talking about knives. A sharp knife, she said, is the key to not crying when slicing the 1-1/2 pounds of onions called for in her Soupe à l'Oignon. "AAAL-ways hold the blunt side of the knife against your hand," she said, in that unmistakably up-and-down Julia Child intonation, warning matter-of-factly that otherwise it could "SLICE your hand right in half" as she rapid-chopped an onion into perfect thin slices.


I bought my mother a copy of Child's first cookbook, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," in 1968, just a year after it was first published. My mother read cookbooks the way some people read mystery novels. She would sit up in bed, completely absorbed, tasting every recipe in her mind as she read. And then she would make us one marvelous dish after another, increasing my incentive to find yet another cookbook for her to devour. As a result, I now have a cabinet full of inherited cookbooks and a lifetime of culinary memories. 

I pulled out Child's cookbook and, out of curiosity,  my own copy of "The International Wine and Food Society's Guide to Soups by Robin Howe, also published in 1967. It was an illuminating experience. The latter is a glossy publication with beautiful full-color photographs, and over the years it has been my guide in making potato, lentil, cucumber and minestrone soup. But there's no comparison between the slapdash onion soup featured here and Child's. 

As Child explains, both in the video and in her book, "The onions for an onion soup need a long, slow cooking in butter and oil, then a long, slow simmering in stock for them to develop the deep, rich flavor which characterizes a perfect brew.  You should therefore count on 2-1/2 hours at least from start to finish." 

And that extra effort is more than worth it. As Julia would say, "Bon appetit!


 Soupe à l'Oignon
adapted from Mastering the Art of French Cooking 
by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck

1 1/2 lbs or about 5 cups thinly sliced yellow onions
3 TBSP butter
1 TBSP oil 
Cook the onions slowly with the butter and oil in a heavy-bottomed, 4-quqrt saucepan for 15 minutes

Uncover and stir in 1 tsp salt  and 1/4 tsp sugar - raise heat to moderate, cook 30 - 40 minutes, stirring frequently until the onions hav turned an even, deep, golden brown.

Sprinkle in 3 TBSP flour and stir for 3 minutes.

1 quart boiling water and 1 quart of stock or bouillon 
1/2 cup dry white wine 
Blend in the boiling liquid; add wine and season with salt and pepper  to taste. Simmer partially covered for 30 to 40 minutes.

French bread, cut 1/2-inch thick Bake i preheated 325-degree oven 15 mintes; drizzle with olive oil; bake 15 minutes more.

1-1/2 cups grated Swiss or Gruyere cheese

Preheat oven to 325 degrees; pour soup into oven-proof tureen; float toast on top; sprinkle cheese over it; bake 15 minutes and serve immediately.