Category: Food

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Y’all knew this was coming, didn’t you?

What’s remarkable, though, is that the pumpkin I used for this pie was just over one year old. I was hoarding the last of the little pumpkins from the 2017 pumpkin crop, which was much smaller than the 2018 pumpkin crop, which is now stored under the stairs for the winter. But it wasn’t just hoarding. I also was experimenting, to find out whether the last of last year’s pumpkins was as well-preserved as it looked. It was. When I cut it in half before baking it, it looked as fresh inside as a new pumpkin. I have previously blogged about these amazing little heirloom pumpkins here.

The little pumpkin that finally met its end today in the kitchen is the little pumpkin that I used as a photo prop last winter. One of its portraits, shot in December 2017, is below.

It had a good life.

I gave its seeds to the chickens.

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Click here for high-resolution version.

Lots of things that come from the garden are magical, but First Prize for magic goes to the little pumpkins. This year’s crop is in, with a total haul of 90 pounds.

The friend who first gave me these seeds called it “the Kraken vine.” That’s because the vine is enormous and will keep growing until the first frost stops it. This year’s Kraken vine succumbed to the frost on Oct. 21. It’s best to leave all the little pumpkins on the vine until frost, then harvest them all at once. The crop started with only three hills, three seeds each. By harvest time, the vines were 35 feet long. The vines had jumped the garden fence in two places and were working their way across the yard.

Though I call them “little pumpkins,” if you buy the seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, they are called “Long Island Cheese Pumpkins.” I assume that’s because they resemble a wheel of cheese — and they’re just as heavy as a wheel of cheese. The 6.5-inch pumpkin in the photo below weighed 3.3 pounds. My pumpkins are smallish and rarely exceed 8 inches in diameter. Check out the rave reviews for these pumpkins at Baker Creek. The Baker Creek variety seems to be a slightly larger variety than my variety, which came from a friend. He acquired the seeds from a community seed bank.

Another remarkable thing about these pumpkins is that they will keep forever. I still have one left from last year’s crop! I plan to wash the new crop and store them under the stairs. They make an incredible winter food for storage.

This 6.5-inch pumpkin weighs 3.3 pounds.

The wheelbarrow was so heavy that I could hardly push it.

The Kraken vine, after it jumped the fence into the yard and headed for the house.

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Good kitchens roll with the seasons. When fall sets in, and the summer tomatoes and basil have been mourned, greens and sweet potatoes appear as compensation. Peppers will keep going until the first frost. Come winter, we’ll have nothing fresh other than what is shipped in. So sprouts are a winter thing, especially if you have a sunny kitchen window.

Sprouts are cheap, too. These days, Amazon has all the sprouting seeds and apparatus you need. Growing sprouts is no trouble. The only moderately pesky part of sprout farming is the final washing and rinsing away of the seed husks. You want not just salad sprouts, but also bean sprouts for Asian dishes.

I’m not turning into a food-only blog. It’s just that it’s also political season at the moment, and I have political duties almost every day, such as making sure that our county’s Democratic headquarters are open during the hours we’ve promised. Political responsibilities have cut into my time for doing and thinking about other things. After the election on Nov. 6, that will change.

There are other cycles in good kitchens — not just seasonal cycles. Just now I’m in a healthy-kitchen cycle. But there are times when a good kitchen turns out comfort food, calories be damned. I’ve been there, and you probably have been, too. After all, we have to look after our psyches, not just our bodies. The aftermath of the 2016 election was such a time.

Let’s hope that, the day after election day, Nov. 7, 2018, progressive people and their progressive kitchens will be celebrating, while deplorable people’s kitchens will be turning out even more deplorable things. We have just over two weeks to figure out the menus. I promise to post about whatever fare seems appropriate for Nov. 7.

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After all, it’s high season for sweet potatoes. I was trying to figure out what to do with a sweet potato for breakfast. The only thing that seemed appealing was a sweet potato cake. It’s just like the potato cakes you might make from white potatoes. There is diced onion, with an egg, some wheat germ, and some food yeast to make the cake set. I slowly fried the cake in butter, then fried the egg in the same skillet to give the egg that bacon-grease look. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any bacon.

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Click here for high-resolution version.

In Oban in the west of Scotland, I got a good look at a Scottish meat pie. Unfortunately, I neglected to get a photo of it.

But what I noticed about the meat pie was that it stands alone, that the sides are straight, and that the top crust was loosely fitted.

I’m not sure what was in my friend’s meat pie at Oban — haggis, maybe. After Googling and reading up on Scottish meat pies, it seems that lamb is preferred, that mutton is possible, and that you might even find pork. For my first homemade effort at a Scottish meat pie, I used the ground beef version of Quorn, which I previously wrote about here.

All pies with a top crust are somehow magical. I’m not sure why. Maybe because such pies were around in the Middle Ages, and somehow we respond to that ancientness. It’s what I call oldvelle cuisine.

For this pie, I seasoned the Quorn with chopped onions, olive oil, pepper, garlic salt, and a gravy made with vegetable bouillon. The crust is a hot-water crust, the first hot-water crust I’ve ever made. The hot-water crust is not very flaky, like a French crust. Rather, the hot-water crust is a touch more leathery. But it’s very good, tender, and works well with the filling.

If you Google for recipes for Scottish meat pies, you’ll find several ways for supporting the crust during baking. Some people use tin or ceramic pans. Some use parchment tied with string. I opted for 4-inch nonstick spring-form pans, which I ordered from Amazon. The little spring-form pans worked very well.

I’ll do more of these little pies this winter, including a faux chicken pot pie version using Quorn’s fake chicken. With chicken pot pies, the seasoning is all about celery and peas, with a white gravy. Quorn should work very well with that.

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Kung Pao Quorn. Click here for high-resolution version.

In Scotland, I made a very nice new food discovery: Quorn. Quorn is a meat substitute made from a fungus. It started in Europe, but Quorn is now sold in the United States. Somehow, I was never aware of Quorn, even though I discovered after returning from Scotland that Whole Foods carries Quorn, as do many local grocery stores. In the United Kingdom, Quorn seems to be easy to find, because I bought some in little Spar stores in the middle of nowhere in the Scottish islands. You’ll find it with the frozen foods (a section of the grocery store that I usually pay very little attention to).

There has been some controversy about Quorn, but I believe I won’t much get into that. Instead I’d encourage you to do your own research about Quorn, if you’re interested. You’ll want to read up on how it’s made. And you’ll want to be aware that there was a lawsuit in the United States having to do with allergies to Quorn, though I believe that only a small percentage of the population is susceptible to becoming allergic to Quorn.

Quorn is sold in several forms, including chicken substitutes in the form of nuggets and cutlets, and beef substitutes in ground-beef form. Very little is added, though, and Quorn makes no effort to trick you into thinking that it tastes like chicken, or like beef. Instead, it tastes like Quorn. The texture is dry and a bit mealy. Still, it has a pretty good bite. Like tofu, it’s all about how you sauce it or season it.

Part of the solution to making Quorn tasty — at least as a chicken substitute — is to marinate the Quorn in whatever you might use to marinate chicken. As for the beef, use it in a sauce — spaghetti sauce, for example.

Vox recently reported that up to 50 billion chickens are raised and slaughtered on factory farms each year. I don’t know about you, but I want nothing to do with that. Chickens are sweet, sociable, vulnerable, sensitive creatures. If you read up on Quorn, and if you read up on factory farms, I think you’ll at least want to give Quorn a try.