Pumpkin Pie and more

These are my confessions: I bought frozen pie crust. And it was okay. It made more sense than buying flour, shortening, a pie plate and a rolling pin. If you are buying frozen pie crust, look for one made with lard, vegetarians be damned. Tenderflake is a good brand.

Now I may have taken shortcuts on the crust, but the filling is totally from scratch, including the pumpkin purée. Canned pumpkin is pretty good and totally suitable for pie, but pumpkins are abundant and cheap right now and roasting them takes very little effort. Buy a pie pumpkin, smaller than jack-o-lantern size. Pre-heat oven to 400˚. Cut in half, remove seeds and stringy bits (save the seeds!) with an ice cream scoop/a spoon/your hands. Smear the fleshy insides with butter, brown sugar, a bit of orange juice and maple syrup. Place halves face down on a baking sheet and bake for about 40 minutes, until you can easily pierce the skin with a fork. Let cool and remove skin.

Brown Sugar Pumpkin Pie-adapted from Fine Cooking #35

• 2 - 2 1/2 lb pie pumpkin to yield 2 cups purée (prepare as described above)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 9 inch pie crust

1. Preheat oven to 375˚. Put the cooked and cooled squash in a food processor if you've got one and purée until smooth. If no food processor like me, whisk vigourously and try to remove any lumps.
2. Combine purée with brown sugar, eggs, cream, spices and salt and whisk until smooth. Pour filling into pie crust and bake until firm, about 50-60 minutes. Let cool before serving.

Notes: I easily got 4 cups of pumpkin from the pie pumpkin I bought, so doubled the recipe for 2 pies. Also, this is epic with whipped cream. Leftovers are totally acceptable breakfast food.


Now what to do with all those seeds? Wash them, remove any stray pumpkin pulp, let them dry on some paper towel and get ready.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

• However many pumpkin seeds you have
• 1 glug of oil (I used olive oil)
  
• Salt, to taste

Preheat the oven to 325˚. Add oil to your bowl of seeds and toss to coat. Spread seeds on a cookie sheet and add as much salt as you like. You could also go with a spicy coating perhaps, or garlic. Your choice! Bake approx 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes until seeds are golden.

We could not stop eating these. They are so simple to make and delicious, crunchy, salty, fatty. They are wonderful.

Orphan Thanksgiving Dinner

Okay, so I'm not really an orphan. But as the dining hall lines thin and the university quiets over Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, it starts to feel that way. It doesn't really make sense to go home on a 3-day weekend and it would be nice to see my family, but missing out on a major food holiday is what hurts more. An entire turkey would have been a bit much, but this rolled pork loin stuffed with an autumnal stuffing was a festive and showy alternative.

Pork Loin Rolled With Apricot, Prune & Walnut Stuffing (serves 4)

• Pork loin, approx 800 g (my dad's original calls for a tenderloin but I bought this instead)
• 2/3 cup dried apricots, chopped fine
• 2/3 cup prunes, chopped fine
• 1/2 cup walnut crumbs
• 4 shallots, minced
  
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tbsp oil - walnut, olive or canola
• 2 tsp honey
• 4 tbsp rum/Irish whiskey/port/sherry (I used Grand Marnier, but really, almost any booze)
• 1/2 tsp dry thyme
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 sprigs fresh rosemary
• 2 slices bacon

1. Preheat oven to 375˚. Start by butterflying the meat so it lays flat at 1/4" thickness. I had never butterflied before but it's not so hard. I recommend subscribing to the Cook's Illustrated podcast on iTunes and watching the Grilled Stuffed Pork Loin episode for instruction on butterflying. If you haven't been entirely even in your cutting, you can pound it to the desired thickness, laying the meat between to sheets of plastic wrap, or putting it in a ziploc and whacking it with a heavy skillet.


2. Cover chopped apricot and prunes with boiling water, let stand 5-10 minutes. Meanwhile, mince and gently sauté shallots and garlic in oil until they turn golden (do not brown). Combine drained fruits, walnuts, shallots & garlic, honey, liquor and dry spices in a bowl, stir and let sit a few minutes.


3. Spread stuffing evenly over the pork loin, leaving a bit of space at one end. Sprinkle on the leaves from 2 sprigs of rosemary, roll up the loin from the small end. Top with slices of bacon and remaining sprig of rosemary, and tie up with string/twine. Place on lipped baking sheet, and bake for 30 minutes.


4. To serve, remove strings, slice thinly and serve. Ideally you will not be using a paring knife, but it still turned out okay.


Glazed Carrots

• As many carrots as desired
• Generous piece of butter
• Pure maple syrup-the better the syrup the better this will be
  

1. Begin by steaming the carrots. We were short on pots and pans, so this was accomplished in the microwave (in a large microwave safe bowl, add about 1 tbsp water to cut and peeled carrots, cover with plastic wrap and microwave for approx 3 minutes).
2. In a large skillet, melt the butter and add maple syrup. Add carrots to the skillet and cook until a glaze forms, being sure to coat the carrots entirely.


Mashed potatoes

• Yukon gold potatoes (we did 5 largeish for 3 people)
• Butter
• Milk if desired

1. Peel potatoes and cut into uniformly sized sections. Boil and salt water, add potatoes and cook approx 25 minutes (use fork test to check doneness-you should get no resistance and they should almost start falling apart).
2. Drain water and turn heat to lowest setting. Using a potato masher, mash the potatoes to a uniform consistency. Add butter, a lot or a little as you are so inclined. I would recommend a lot. Taste frequently to determine if it needs more butter or possibly some milk. Serve.


Pumpkin pie post coming soon!

Can-do spirit

I had never before considered canning, but this week I signed up for a tomato canning workshop offered by the social justice committee at Hart House, here at the University of Toronto. For $10, we got three hours of instruction on preparing tomatoes for canning and 9 jars of purée to take home.

Canning is probably not something I would have taken up on my own-it's just so foreign and intimidating. My aunt makes preserves, but the whole process seemed eerily magical, almost like alchemy. It's a little late to think about getting into jams and such this year (especially without a kitchen), but putting up tomatoes was so simple, if a little time consuming.
Canning is downright trendy right now. Check out this week's The Spendid Table podcast, this great article from the Globe and Mail on canning, or Food In Jars (with links to many other canning blogs). I think it's partly the recession, partly people being more interested in what's going into their food, and the rise of foodie-ism in general.

Anyways, I will walk you through my afternoon in the Hart House kitchen.

We started off with vast quanities of Ontario Roma tomatoes, which we then halved and removed the stems and any rotten bits (slight imperfections are not to worried about-the beauty of a purée).

Next they were cooked briefly to soften them up (this afternoon only furthered my love of restaurant kitchens, everything so big and shiny). Once they are nice and soft, we ran them through a machine which removed the seeds and skins (separating the tomatoes from the excess water first). The tomato water can be strained and then sent through the same machine as well. I'm sure there's a super crafty way to do this sans-machine but if you have one at your disposal, why not.

Next we poured the purée into sterilized Mason jars with a few leaves of basil.

After securing screw-band lids, the jars are submerged in water and boiled for 25-30 minutes. Through this ~magical~ process, a seal forms (the lids should be concave) and you've just canned tomatoes. An excellent base for sauces and a reminder of summer as the cold descends.

I had a lot of fun (mostly because it was just so nice to be in a good kitchen handling food), and next summer definitely want to test out jam-making and putting up other fruits and vegetables.