Pan Fried Pumpkin and Sausage Ragout over Creamy Polenta

This is a modified recipe from Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything Vegetarian.

Clearly I modified it by adding tasty tasty sausage

1/4 cup neutral oil like grape seed or canola

2 pounds pumpkin, peeled, seeded and cut into large chunks

1 pound sweet sausage (hot would be fine)

salt and freshly ground pepper

1 large onion, chopped

2 tablespoons minced garlic

1 tablespoons minced fresh chile or hot red pepper flakes to taste

1/2 cup red wine, vegetable stock, or water

3 cups chopped or canned tomatoes (use homemade tomato sauce to save some time)

Grated Parmesan cheese

Freshly chopped parsley

Put a few tablespoons of oil  in a deep large pot with a tight-fitting lid over medium high heat. Add the sausage to the hot pan and cook on both sides until almost done, 8 minutes per side or so. Remove the sausage from the pan and set aside. Working in batches, add some of the pumpkin and season with salt and pepper. Brown on each side; about 10 minutes total. Transfer to plate and continue cooking the rest of pumpkin, adding more oil as necessary. 

When all pumpkin is cooked, pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the oil and add onion, garlic and chile. Cook, stirring frequently, until softened, about 3 minutes. 

Add wine and scrape any browned bits from the bottom of pan. Let liquid boil off and thicken, then stir in tomato and its juices. Bring the sauce to boil, then lower heat to a simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally until thickened, 10 minutes. 

Slice the sausage into bite size pieces and return it and the pumpkin to pot and let mixture come back to boil. Cover and turn the heat to a simmer. Cook, turning once or twice until the sauce has thickened more and pumpkin is tender, but not mushy, 10-15 minutes. Sprinkle with some  Parmesan and  parsley. 

I served this over Creamy Polenta and it was delicious. This polenta recipe has become my favorite. The cream cheese makes it so light and fluffy.

Blue Cheese Crackers

My mom told me about these and I absolutely had to make them, immediately. It just so happened that I had planned on making steak salads for dinner and thought these would be a great addition. I was right.
The original recipe came from Ina Garten, AKA The Barefoot Contessa. The original recipe is below


Ingredients
1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
8 ounces Stilton cheese, crumbled (about 12 ounces with rind), at room temperature
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 extra-large egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water for egg wash
1/2 cup roughly chopped walnuts
Directions
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and Stilton together for 1 minute, or until smooth. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour, salt and pepper and mix until it's in large crumbles, about 1 minute. Add 1 tablespoon of water and mix until combined.

Dump the dough onto a floured board, press it into a ball, and roll into a 12-inch long log. Brush the log completely with the egg wash. Spread the walnuts in a square on a cutting board and roll the log back and forth in the walnuts, pressing lightly, and distributing them evenly on the outside of the log. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or for up to 4 days.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Cut the log 3/8ths-inch thick with a small, sharp knife and place the crackers on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Bake for 22 minutes until very lightly browned. Rotate the pan once during baking. Cool and serve at room temperature

I made one change, and I am very happy with it. Kerrie is allergic to walnuts so they were never going to work, I thought about almonds and pecans as well. I ruled out pecans because all I had was a can of mixed nuts and I wasn't going to go pick them all out. Almonds sounded OK but I thought I wanted something with a stronger flavor to counteract the blue cheese. I finally settled on my favorite rye crackers. I crushed them up and rolled them just as with the recipe above. Delicious.
I served them crumbled up like a crouton on top of a sliced steak salad and some crispy parsnips. the slight soft cracker with it's blue cheese punch went great with steak and parsnips.

Bacon, Swiss Chard and Chicken Pot Pie

Wow, I'm a terrible blogger. For those of you who don't know I took a new job back in July and have been travelling like a lunatic ever since. Hopefully now that I'm settled in and fall is here I can get back into the swing of things. In the meantime I have been keeping up with my posting schedule on So Good. Check me out there. I did have occasion to make a variation on an incredible looking dish from one of my favorite blogs, Smitten Kitchen. I adore pot pies and I am guilty of now thinking out of the traditional chicken pot pie box myself.
Even though I added chicken to my variant the inspiration was her Pancetta, white bean and swiss chard pot pie.

I admit upfront I used up a piece of puff pastry as the top for this one, as much as I love making pie crust, we happened to have a piece in the fridge so I used it instead. 


Filling 2 tablespoons (30 ml) olive oil
4 ounces (115 grams or 3/4 to 1 cup) 1/4-inch-diced bacon
1 large or 2 small onions, finely chopped
1 large carrot, finely chopped
1 small celery root, finely chopped
Pinch of hot smoked paprika
Pinch of regular paprika
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced
Thinly sliced Swiss chard leaves from an 8- to 10-ounce (225- to 285-gram)
bundle (4 cups); if leaves are very wide, you can halve them lengthwise
1.5-2 cups choopped cooked chicken ( I used a store bought rotisserie chicken)
3 1/2 tablespoons (50 grams) butter
3 1/2 tablespoons (25 grams) all- purpose flour
3 1/2 cups (765 ml)  low- sodium chicken broth (home made if you have it)

Make filling: Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium- high heat in a large, wide saucepan, and then add the bacon. Crisp up the bacon and remove it with a slotted spoon, and drain it on paper towels before transferring to a medium bowl. Leave the heat on and the renderings in the pan. Add an additional tablespoon of olive oil if needed and heat it until it is shimmering. Add onions, carrot, celery root, paprika and a few pinches of salt, and cook over medium heat until the vegetables are softened and begin to take on color, about 7 to 8 minutes. Add the garlic, and cook for 1 minute more. Add the greens and cook until wilted, about 2 to 3 minutes. Season with the additional salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Transfer all of the cooked vegetables to the bowl with the bacon and chicken, and set aside.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Make sauce: Wipe out the large saucepan; don’t worry if any bits remain stuck to the bottom. Then melt the butter in the saucepan over medium- low heat. Add the flour, and stir with a whisk until combined. Continue cooking for 2 minutes, stirring the whole time, until it begins to take on a little color. Whisk in the broth, one ladleful at a time, mixing completely between additions. Once you've added one- third of the broth, you can begin to add the rest more quickly, two to three ladlefuls at a time; at this point you can scrape up any bits that were stuck to the bottom — they’ll add great flavor.

Once all of the broth is added, stirring the whole time, bring the mixture to a boil and reduce it to a simmer. Cook the sauce until it is thickened and gravy like, about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Stir chicken bacon and reserved vegetables into the sauce.

Assemble and cook pot pies: pour the filling into a deep pie plate . Set the plate on a baking pan. Roll out the pastry into  a round that will cover your plate with an overhang, of about 1 inch wider in diameter plate. Whisk the egg wash and brush it lightly around the top rim of your bowls (to keep the lid glued on; nobody likes losing their lid!) and drape the pastry over each, pressing gently to adhere it. Brush the lids with egg wash, then cut decorative vents  in each to help steam escape. Bake until crust is lightly bronzed and filling is bubbling, about 30 to 35 minutes.

Serve and Enjoy

Pig Fest

So, I roasted another pig. This is only my 3rd time around and I am slowly perfecting my style. This year I made my grill rather than renting one and I'm so happy I did. I need to fine-tune my build, but essentially I followed the instructions from these guys.
I had all my rebar cut up for me by a local metal shop, far cheaper than Lowe's or Home Depot. I used 4 7-foot lengths and 10 3-foot lengths. I picked up 4 23.5-lb bags of charcoal, 2 big jugs of adobo with cumin, 3 packages of banana leaves (from my favorite Asian market) and 2 bottles of sour orange juice.
When I buy a pig it comes in a bag, in a box. Save the bag, intact, you will need it. First up we had to do a bit of work to get the pig to lay flat. The neighbors were a bit disturbed by the image of me pressing down on both legs as hard as I could to crack some things open, but it was effective.Once I got it flat on the table I scored the skin all over.

Pig skin is tough, so I would recommend you use an adjustable razor knife set to about 1/4-inch depth to do the cutting. You don't want to cut too deep but you want to get all the way through the skin.

Once you have the skin prepped, mix both containers of Adobo (full disclosure this is the last time I will use the pre-made Adobo for this it, is too salty at times, try to find salt-free and season on your own or make from scratch) with 1/2-3/4 bottle of sour orange and about 1 cup of olive oil. Mix with your hands until it makes a loose paste. Add more orange or olive oil as needed.

Rub the seasoning all over both sides of the pig.

Once the pig is seasoned all around the best thing to do is slide it right back into the bag it came in. A large heavy duty lawn bag might work but the bag it comes with is best. You could do this the same day you are going to roast the pig, but I like to do it the night before. As you might imagine, I don't have a fridge big enough to store a whole pig, so I bought 10 bags of ice and laid 5 of them in the bottom of a shower stall, put the pig on the ice, stick at least one bag in the cavity of the pig (outside of the bigger bag) and try to cover as much of the pig as possible with the other bags. Then drape the whole thing in a heavy blanket or quilt. I have done this all 3 times and it works perfectly.

Now that Miss Piggy is seasoned and on ice, it's time to build the pit.

My father and I built up the first layer of cinder blocks and then filled the bottom with a couple inches of sand, conveniently available from the Sodus Bay beach. My pit was three tiers high and used 14 cinder blocks per tier. I draped the bottom two tiers with heavy duty foil before placing the 3rd one on top.

I need to pick up another 4 pieces of rebar for the next one. I offset the 2 halves so that the pig was sandwiched nicely between them but when I flipped it, the back portion of the pig was hanging off so I had to unwire the rig and move it so it didn't fall into the fire. Not ideal but we got it done. Two more pieces of rebar on each half of the frame would be perfect.

For my 96 pound pig I wanted to get it on the grill by 9 AM at the latest to eat about 5. I served at 5:30 so I wasn't too far off. I started the coals at 8-ish so they were perfect to start cooking.

When it was time to cook I divided the coals into 4 piles, roughly in the positions of the 2 hams and the 2 shoulders. I placed a layer of banana leaves on the bottom of the rebar grate (again more bars would have helped) laid the pig, skin-side-up on the leaves, then another layer of banana leaves, then the top grate. I wired it all together with more of the same wire ties I used to assemble the grate itself.

Once it was all wired up I covered the whole thing in foil and began pre-burning my next batch of coals. I used an outdoor firepit as my coal burning preparation area. Basically your task for the rest of the day is to keep the heat right. I shoot for about 220 degrees all day, measured with an oven thermometer hung on the rebar. With the grate set up the way it is, you only need to flip the whole rig one time at about the 1/2 way point of your day. We flipped about 2:30.

After you flip cover in foil again and let it go. Use an instant read thermometer to check your temp, I shoot for 180-190. If you want pork that will shred like pulled pork, aim for the higher end; I tend to go towards the lower end as I like to be able to slice some of the meat. When it was done I picked up the whole rig and brought it to the 6-foot table I'd already covered in foil, for serving.

Once I started carving I stopped taking pictures since my hands were covered in pork. But I find it best to work in sections: pick a shoulder, start breaking it down and put it in a foil serving pan. Once that one is full, move on to your next chunk. Try not to destroy the pieces that people are looking for: ribs, loin, cheek (omg cheek), belly etc. In the end it's a great way to spend a day with friends, food, and beer. And perhaps a pig predator pose.

Sauerkraut

Wheeeeee Sauerkraut. We have had an abundance of cabbage from our CSA in the past few weeks and since I am the only person in the house who really eats it I had to come up with a solution. I love Sauerkraut but I rarely get it outside of Oktoberfest and as post St. Patrick's Day Reuben.

I followed this recipe (mine is a double batch) and hopefully the results will be good in a few weeks. I will keep you posted

Ingredients:

• 8-10 cups shredded cabbage, loosely packed (about 2 lbs), about 1 cabbage

• 10 juniper berries

• 1 tsp. caraway seeds

• 1 tsp. yellow mustard seeds

• 1-2 tsp. un-iodized or pickling salt

• 1 c. filtered water mixed with 1 tsp. salt

Preparation:

In a clean, non-metallic bowl, mix cabbage, juniper berries, caraway, mustard seeds, and salt. Stir cabbage to release juices. Let rest 10 minutes then mix again. You may let this rest longer (1-2 hours) if needed.

Sterilize jar and lid by boiling for several minutes in water and draining on a clean dishcloth.

Pack into a sterilized quart-sized, wide-mouthed jar, pushing down with a wooden mallet. Add filtered, or non-chlorinated, salty (1 teaspoon salt per cup of water) water to rim of jar and cap loosely with a sterilized canning lid. Place jar on a tray to catch overflowing juices. Keep jar between 65°F and 72°F for 2-3 weeks.

After bubbling stops, check container and top off with salty (1 teaspoon salt per cup of water, warm slightly to dissolve completely) water if level falls below rim. Skim any (harmless) white spots or film from the top, close jar tightly, wipe off outside of jar and store in the refrigerator until you use it up.