Pumpkin Stew

Digging into this stew is fun and tasty.  The cooked, sweet pumpkin flesh easily pulls away with each spoonful of goodness, and provides lots of nutrients, flavor and rich, comfort-food texture.  The crunchy, seasoned pumpkin seeds make for a wonderful contrast, but might be too much of a chew for some once they soften in the stew and thus lose their crunch. 

October--the perfect time to pick up a couple o' pie pumpkins from your local farmstand to make stew with!  To make the dish pictured, choose a couple of small-ish pie pumpkins.  Create lids, leaving stems intact.  Scoop out all the seeds and set aside in a bowl of fresh water.

Rub pumpkins with olive oil, put tops back on, taking care to line up ribs for best fit.  Set aside while making the filling.

For the filling, use whatever moves you.  I went for a gumbo-style stew without the shellfish.  I even had gumbo filé on hand, a fine powdery seasoning made from dried Sassafras tree leaves (one of my favorite trees here in the northeast!) used for thickening stew, as well as, creole seasoning from a batch of homemade spice rubs (it's easy to make your own blends of seasonings; see my recipe below).  Leftover roasted potatoes were way too tempting to leave out, so they were also added.  For this carni version, I used bone-in chicken thighs and local andouille sausage from Brookford Farm.  Great stuff, but this could e-a-s-i-l-y be made for vegans and vegetarians by simply omitting the meat and beefing up (sorry, pun intended) with all kinds of root veggies.

What makes a true gumbo authentic is the chocolate-colored roux.  The French typically use a very light roux for thickening soups and stews.  For this roux, though, the same ingredients are cooked for a much longer period of time.  One might think they were about to burn their roux!  Have no fear, it makes for a killer stew!

Butternut Risotto with Pistachio, Sage, Celery and Bacon

Jamie Oliver is a great chef.  He intuitively knows what makes a great meal great: good ingredients from trusted sources, time, passion, and loved ones around the table.  Heritage breed, pasture-raised bacon helps, too.

Heirloom tomato sauce with lemon and cinnamon basil

This was definitely one of the best tomato sauces ever tasted in this house.  Ripe, Great White heirloom fruits made for a superb, low-acid, creamy sauce. There are a number of heirloom "white" tomatoes; 'Great White' is the best according to employee-owned 'Johnny Selected Seeds' out of Winslow, ME.  The fruit is meaty with few seeds, which makes for easy saucing.  Don't be fooled by its mild flavor when eating raw; cooked, these babies turn out one heck of a sauce.

For this recipe, we used ~4 lbs of tomatoes.  'Great White' is prolific; we got lots from our two plants!

Begin with 3-5 lbs of your favorite tomato...

Food With Color

Click on any of the pictures to see them enlarged 100%.

Here we have grilled Beach Pea's rosemary batard, brushed with homemade garlic scape pesto, topped with grilled eggplant (New Roots Farm) smothered in provolone cheese,  8-ball and 1-ball zucchini (small, round, baseball-size green and yellow fruits from Stonewall Farm), grilled sweet Ailsa Craig onions (Touching Earth Farm), slices of luscious tomatoes (Barker's Farm), and, finally, mounds of arugula (Riverside Farm).  Now THAT'S a farmers' market sandwich!  Pass the chips, please!

An heirloom cuke, these White Wonders are heading for another batch of my Summer Herb and Cucumber Soup.   Their creamy white flesh is slightly sweeter than regular cukes.  P.S.  I used basil, parsley and fennel fronds in this batch of soup, and garnished bowls of it with borage and lemon gem marigold flowers.  Delish!  

Cute little flying saucers.

Can you guess what this is?

Spring Risotto, albeit with "winter" squash

On November 6th of last year, we picked up a beautiful speciman from the pumpkin family from a farmer attending the last "summer" farmers' market in Portsmouth.  Intended to be eaten at some point, it was just too beautiful to hack into with my 8" chef's knife.  Needless to say, up until 15 hours ago it had been sitting on the counter as a reminder of all things fall and winter.  And, yes, you read that right: November 6, 2010.

Fall Bounty in NH - Major Score At The Farmers' Market!

CELERY, grown by Abram Pearson from Nippo Brook Farm in Barrington, NH, was available at today's winter farmers' market in Rollinsford (be sure to look for it at the Dec. 18 market!).  It is delicious, robust, incredibly fragrant and intense on the palate...I cannot wait to brew up batches of chicken and vegetable stocks with this stuff.  Yes, we've had lovage, and maybe even smallage (all three are in the same family), but neither of those are great for eating.  I am so super-duper excited about this celery!!

Nippo Brook Farm pascal celery: these babies' petioles (stalks) are 2' long!  Each bunch weighs more than 2-1/2 lbs! (2lbs 10oz to be exact!).  Gorgeous, just gorgeous!  :~)