Pumpkin Soup

Here are the ingredients I used:

Yellow onion, diced
a whole bunch of pumpkin (I used canned because I am lazy, but it would have been better if I made puree)
Heavy cream
brown sugar
Garam Masala (a special Indian spice blend. It's delicious)
Curry powder
two bay leaves
a cinnamon stick
allspice
Salt
White pepper
chicken broth
a splash of orange juice - this really helps bring it all together
and one finely diced Death Pepper. I'm not sure what the Death Pepper is actually called, but I gave it that name because it got into my hangnail and ruined my life for about two hours. Nikki got us a pepper plant from Trader Joe's as a housewarming gift, and I chopped one of the little fuckers up to stick in the soup.

Note that the soup filled most of my Dutch oven, and one death pepper was enough to make it pretty hot. Adjust as you like. I liked the spicy to help brighten the sweetness and heaviness of the pumpkin. I also would have used worcestershire sauce if I had it, but I didn't, so there you go.

Sautee the onions first in olive oil, then add all the spices. You'll want more of the curry and garam masala than anything else. Note that when I made it, it really sucked up salt, so I had to keep adding it. Toss in the pumpkin (I think I used a big can and a small can), a pint of cream, and enough chicken broth to thin it out to a sufficiently soupy consistency. Add in the death pepper. Let this simmer for a while (like 3-4 hours) and then fish out the cinnamon stick and bay leaves. With a hand blender, blend the soup for a nice smooth consistency. If you want to give your guests a real challenge, I suppose you could leave the cinnamon stick in there, but it's a bitch to get out of your teeth. When I made it, I only found one of my two bay leaves, and blended it anyway. No one complained about biting into it, so I assume it must have gone home with whoever took home leftovers.

My rule is, if you got the bay leaf, you make the soup next time. So far no one has admitted to getting the leaf.

The real trick is letting it cook all day long, so that the flavors have time to marry up. It was even better a few days later. I wish I had cooked this a day or two before the dinner, but alas.

For toppings, I had sour cream, bacon bits, sauteed shallots and a garam masala Parmesan chip. To make a Parmesan chip, I grated the cheese and crumbled it as fine as I could get it with my fingers. Then I added garam masala and brown sugar and combined it all thoroughly. Take a non-stick pan, and sprinkle in enough of the cheese to make a silver dollar-sized circle. Turn up the heat and let the cheese melt until it bubbles. Then turn off the heat, and CAREFULLY with a THIN spatula, pry the little bastards up and stick them CAREFULLY on some parchment paper so that you don't ruin the nice circle shape, and they can harden. Then they'll be crispy and delicious. You can also do this with just plain cheese, and it's a really nice topper for a salad.

Cappellacci di Zucca (Pumpkin Ravioli)

I have to start off by apologizing for the quality (or lack thereof) of the photos this time around.  Lighting is pretty much everything when it comes to photography, and our dinners tend to run longer than the sun is willing to stay up, so I've ended up with pictures like this which make my food look like a hot buttered mess!  (The first two words of that term are actually true for this dish.)

I stole this recipe from one of my favorite restaurants, L'Opera Ristorante in Long Beach.  I've eaten there many times, and every time I get the same thing.  I finally started trying to pick apart the flavors each time I ate the dish to decipher their delicious code.  I think I may have finally landed on it.  L'Opera's ravioli is made with butternut squash, but I switched it with pumpkin, and added a few of my own touches.

I used wonton wrappers for the little hats, partly because they're cute, but mostly because the idea of making my own pasta while moving into a new house was daunting.  My advice to anyone attempting to make this dish with wonton wrappers is DOUBLE THEM!  Most of the ravioli held up to being boiled, but there were a good number of rogue bursters that came apart during the process.  Doubling the wontons before stuffing them would've prevented this from happening.

Still, the dish came out beautifully, if I do say so myself.  My only regret is that the plate looked a little two-dimensional, and that I didn't get a decent picture.  But that's just an excuse to recreate them, right?

Ingredients:

2 cups pumpkin puree
1 cup ricotta cheese
1/4 cup brandy (to taste)
6 tablespoons ground pine nuts (I used a coffee grinder to get a good consistency)
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 package wonton wrappers
1/2 cup + 1/4 cup unsalted butter
a handful of fresh sage
1/4 cup dry white wine (I used Yellow Tail chardonnay)
3 cups plain marinara sauce (homemade or Classico - if I catch you using Prego I'll cut you)
salt, pepper, chili flakes to taste
parmesan shavings for garnish/extra deliciousness

Ravioli:

Mix together the pumpkin puree, ricotta, brandy, pine nuts and brown sugar until incorporated.  Place in a sieve over a bowl for a couple hours to let the mixture drain.  Once firm, scoop the mixture by the teaspoonful and place in the center of the wonton wrappers (or homemade pasta, if you're awesome).  Fold the wrapper in half diagonally, then fold each of the corners in, to create a little hat-like thing.  Repeat until you think you have enough ravioli to feed yourself.  Er ... I mean, your guests.  Place them on a generously-floured cookie sheet and refrigerate until serving time.

Brown butter sage sauce:

In a small saucepan, melt the 1/2 cup of butter on a medium-low heat.  Midway through the melting, throw in the handful of sage - I'd estimate about 20 leaves.  Stir occasionally until the butter reaches a golden brown color.  Remove from heat.  Pour 1/4 cup white wine into the butter for bite.

Spicy marinara:

Easy as pie.  Warm the marinara with the reserved 1/4 cup of butter.  Add about 2 teaspoons of chili flakes, salt and pepper to taste.  Let simmer.

Create a bed of spicy marinara sauce in the center of a plate.  Boil your ravioli, place in a circle around the sauce, then pour a healthy serving of the brown butter sage sauce on top.  Finish with a piece of crispy sage and a parmesan cheese shaving atop each pillow, and serve.

Mabon

This year, the Fall Equinox landed on September 23rd. With the days becoming shorter, we celebrated the coming of harvest season and celebrated the Witch's Thanksgiving known as Mabon on Saturday. It is a time of balance and a time for giving thanks, appreciating the gifts tilled from the soil before it goes dormant until Spring. In light of this, we honor the old tradition of hospitality and count the blessings we have with the company of our kin, give thanks, and reflect on the balance within our individual lives.

Time is fleeting. Despite our best efforts to meet "every month," Five Course Foodies' schedules got crazy. Alas! Beautiful Bonnie suggested an impromptu dinner to celebrate Mabon while incorporating Jocelyn's suggested fall theme, Pumpkin. And, oh boy, did we enjoy tons of pumpkin!

Bonni, Chelsea, and Chris just moved from their apartments into a beautiful early-twentieth century craftsmen home. It is a wonderful place, welcoming and warming to the heart, soul, and mind, with books everywhere, an Italian-inspired kitchen. It's also a cheerful yellow! Added to this, they now have a backyard with a great deck! Now that it's finally cool outside, a picnic at sunset seemed fitting. In this spirit, we dined outside.

I, Nikki, prepared our first course. Honestly, I have never cooked with anything pumpkin. I have a can of Libby's Pumpkin whatever-it-is, but decided since I could find pie pumpkins at the market, why the heck not make my own pumpkin puree? So, I roasted two 3lb suckers and experimented with their bright yellow-orange guts. After a few failed experiments, I opted to make Pumpkin Butter along with Pumpkin Ale Bread. Suffice it to say, the buttery crust and moist interior of the bread - made with Dogfish Head Pumpkin Ale - beautifully complimented the creamy deliciousness lathed onto it. Yes, pumpkin butter. How pumpkin pie should taste (and I totally winged it!). Jocelyn aptly paired it with Newcastle's Werewolf Blood Red Ale. It suited everything we ate rather well. 

I dreamt about Chelsea's Curry Pumpkin Soup for several nights consecutively. This we enjoyed as our second course. By Jove... It was magnificent. Although wonderful on its own, she garnished the luscious pumpkin-curry goodness with a dollop of sour cream, sauteed onions, crispy bacon, and, to top it off, a Parmesan crisp. Seriously scrumptious. Chelsea concocted this from a melody of spices and pumpkin puree in her newest toy, a dutch oven. I took a tub of it home. And it was glorious. There's a reason why Chelsea won "Best Themed Dish" (well, I tied with her, but since I dreamt about her soup instead of my pumpkin butter, she surely deserves the title). Around this time, Jocelyn presented the best mulled wine I have ever tasted, fittingly served in a stoneware cup with a slice of orange. If only there was more... It was my favorite drink of the whole night, because really, what's better than a cup of warm, spicy alcoholic yumminess on a cool fall evening outside on the deck with great friends? Nothing. Except a nekid Viggo Mortensen wearing the silver winged crown of Gondor and his victory beard...

For our third course, Bonni spoiled us all with Cappallacci di Zucca - Pumpkin Raviolis - on a bed of spicy marinara sauce with a drizzle of crispy sage-butter, topped with Parmesan shavings. You would not believe the delightful texture of these! And, who would have thought about using wonton wrappers for the pasta? well, maybe Martha Stewart. It's a good thing. The combination of the creamy pumpkin and ricotta with the crispy sage made my head want to explode. Oh, and not to mention the brilliant red and perfectly seasoned marinara sauce. Pumpkin and tomato? My life is forever changed. These good things were my favorite of the night, clearly, given my many superlatives. But I was not alone in my enthusiasm for Bonni's creative culinary skillz and evocation of our pumpkin theme: she won "Best Overall Dish"! 

Have you ever seen a de-boned chicken? With every single bone removed??? It's unfortunate that we didn't take the time to capture the stunning image of such a magnificent beauty. Perhaps we were too busy nomming! But, really, can you blame us? For our fourth course, Chris inspired awe in all of us with his whole, de-boned chicken, packed with beer bread stuffing (Beer bread? great minds think alike!), cranberries, and jalepeños. He brined it, marinated it, de-boned it, stuffed it, seasoned it, and roasted it. Chris loves us. Or is it his competitive spirit that motivated this dish? Maybe both. But mostly love. Why, do you ask? Because Chris is a vegetarian. He didn't even taste this delicious poultry carcass. Fine. More for me. 

Jocelyn delighted us with many liquid victuals, including a beer that tasted a lot like scotch (will edit later with exact details...), as well as a marvelous dessert martini mixed with milk and a Puerto Rican liqueur. She fittingly served this surprisingly refreshing concoction with cookies that Nicole made: Pumpkin chocolate chip! Somewhat ginger-like and with just the right amount of chocolate chips (which, in my book, means lots! as it should be), as our final fifth course, Nicole's cookies finished the night on a properly sweet pumpkin note. 

Fall doesn't normally feel like itself until Halloween for me, and then especially with Thanksgiving. It's a shame that in Southern California we don't have the pleasure of visually watching the seasons morph, with leaves changing colors and falling. That doesn't happen until it's officially winter. Celebrating Mabon / Autumnal Equinox rung in fall as it should always be - commemorating the customs of old, relishing moments with friends, and feasting on food made with love. Every meal should be like this. -Nikki

Lamb, Effing Lamb...

Lamb, I discovered, doesn't act like pork. I saw the bone and the fat cap and thought, "Oh, I know what to do with this!" I can make a mean pork shoulder, loaded with melty garlic cloves, a crusty salty outside and delicious falling-apart pork on the inside.

Lamb isn't pork, and it was on the dry side. Don't do what I did. I stuck it in the oven at 230 degrees for a long time. Use a slow cooker.

Here's the spice rub I used:

Thyme - dried
Smoked sea salt
Cumin - I ground it myself from whole cumin seeds
Vietnamese Cinnamon - from Penzy's
Black Pepper
Coriander - Which I also ground myself

Now, cumin will tend to take over a blend like this if you're not careful. So it'll be like equal parts cumin, thyme and coriander, a little less black pepper, a little less salt, and REALLY easy on the cinnamon (the Vietnamese type is super bright and spicy). You don't want it to taste like Christmas.

If I could do it over again, I'll stick that beautiful lamb leg in a slow cooker for like ten hours with all those spices, a splash of water, a quartered onion and a bunch of garlic cloves.

Leg of lamb will yield a lot of fat, so you'll need to skim the muck and stuff out.

For the couscous, I used Israeli couscous with saffron, cayenne and all the garlic cloves that got all soft in the lamb fat.

Olive Oil Ouch Cream!

Ooohweee, ouchy, brain freeze!

Olive Oil Ice Cream? It sounds strange to you? Understandable. Though, you won't be disappointed if you try it. Follow this recipe and you'll be sure to win many foodies' hearts with its deliciously creamy goodness. I certainly did! See below for Pistachio Ice Cream. - xoxox Nikki

INGREDIENTS:
3 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
6 large egg yolks
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup cold-pressed fruttato olive oil*

*I used all organic ingredients except the olive oil. Make an omelet with unused egg whites!

GETTIN' DIRTY!:
1. Add milk and heavy cream into a medium saucepan and set over medium flame. Bring it just to a simmer, stirring occasionally, and remove from heat.

2. While heating milk and cream, whisk egg yolks in a large mixing bowl until they lighten in color. Gradually add the sugar and whisk to combine. Add the oil and whisk thoroughly. Temper the cream mixture into the egg mixture by whisking in small amounts, approximately 1 tablespoon at a time, until about a 1/2 of the cream mixture has been added. Pour in the remainder of the cream and stir to combine. Return the mixture to the saucepan and place over medium-low heat. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the mixture thickens slightly and reaches 170 to 175 degrees F with a candy/fry thermometer, approximately 5 minutes. (If you don't have a thermometer, note that it's about done when the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon.) Strain the mixture through a sieve into a container and place in the refrigerator uncovered. Allow to sit uncovered until it is cool enough not to form condensation on the lid (at least one hour). Cover and store up to overnight.

3. Pour into an ice cream maker and process for 35 minutes. Freeze for 3 to 4 hours to allow ice cream to harden before serving.

4. Garnish with a few drops of olive oil, sprinkle of sea salt (trust me, do it), a few toasted pine nuts, and a sprig of rosemary.


PISTACHIO ICE CREAM:
Follow recipe above with these adaptations for a superior ice cream:
1. Replace olive oil with cold-pressed pistachio oil, e.g. La Tourangelle Gourmand Pistachio Oil (I found it at Wholefoods).

2. Mix in a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract (Thank you, Bonni, for her homemade extract!)

3. Add chopped pistachios during last 5 minutes of processing in ice cream maker. (I measured approximately 1 cup of whole pistachios before chopping, which I also shelled and washed first to relieve some of the extra saltiness.)

4. Garnish with a few chopped pistachios for prettiness.

Bon apetito!

Welcome

Hi!  Welcome to our group-of-friends-who-love-cooking-food-almost-as-much-as-we-love-eating-it-and-have-yet-to-decide-on-a-name blog!  As our temporary name might suggest, we're a group of friends who love cooking, drinking and hanging out with each other so much that we thought we'd make it into a project.  We get together monthly to host dinners that showcase our love for food and for fresh, seasonal ingredients, and we reward the cook with the best course with a nice pot of thank-you-cash.  (I'm hoping one of my fellow foodies comes and gives this a proper introduction, because I'm terrible at them.)

Our first dinner was this Sunday, and it far exceeded any expectations I thought I might have had.

The first course on Sunday was prepared by Chris, who unfortunately caught the plague and couldn't join in on the rest of the festivities. But we're eternally grateful for him stopping by to drop this dish off, because it was the perfect start to this perfect meal.  Chris made green and white asparagus fries, seasoned with paprika, cayenne and maybe a little parmesan cheese(?), and accompanied them with a smoked paprika aioli.  Excellent use of both the Spring and the Mediterranean theme.

I (Bonni) paired this dish with a bright and fruity Pinot Grigio.  Gnarly Head (not shown) is a fantastically smooth white wine, and its finish delivered all of the refreshment we came to expect from the very first sips.

Second course was provided by Nicole, whose Spring citrus salad was so good I almost forgot to take a picture of it.  This salad was cool but spicy, rich yet refreshing.  Loaded with artichoke hearts, onions, lemon zest, feta cheese and tomatoes, marinated in a spicy vinaigrette.

I paired this salad with a crisp and citrusy Sauvignon Blanc.  Rodney Strong delivers lime, passionfruit, and subtle pear and apple notes.

Jocelyn prepared our third course, a hearty, creamy Greek pastitso with ground turkey, cinnamon, cloves, and a thin béchamel.  Her Spring contribution was the use of chives.  We all agreed that the layered lasagna-type approach made this dish easier to eat than a traditional pastitso, which can be heavy and overwhelming.  This course was the perfect primo piatto, but was just as light as a Spring dinner should be.

I paired this with a smooth but saucy Beaujolais, at Nikki's suggestion.  Louis Jadot is a calm but very aromatic red, close to a Pinot Noir.  It was the perfect backdrop to the dish.

Chelsea created my personal vote for best presentation: a Moroccan-style slow-roasted lamb with spicy mushrooms and fresh cucumber on a bed of saffron couscous.  It was every bit as delicious as it looks and sounds.  Spices used were cumin, coriander, paprika and tons of garlic.  The smattering of pickled olives lent an extra layer of flavor to this already complex and comforting dish.

I paired this with Sangre de Toro, a Spanish red much like a Cabernet Sauvignon, with an equal amount of tang, but less spice.

Finally, our fifth and last course of the night was prepared by Nikki, who took sweet Sicilian olive oil and nutty Italian pistachios and turned them into ice cream.  The inclusion of the rosemary sprig and the olive oil drizzle made this dish 100% Mediterranean, and the combination of the green ingredients with their cool, refreshing appeal gave us a quintessential Spring experience.

I paired the dessert with a very subtle and fruity Moscato d'Asti.  Luisi Moscato couldn't have been more suited to an ice cream dessert, with its delicate fizz and fresh, floral flavors.

The night ended on a very sweet note.  Of course, with all the wine imbibed, it also ended on a late note.  But look at this table.  Just look at it.  I want every Sunday evening in our home to look something like this from here on out.

Congratulations to Nikki, who won Best Course, and who really stunned us all with her innovation and talent.  Congratulations are in order as well to Nicole, who got almost as many votes for her Spring flavor explosion.  We can't wait to do it again, so please stay tuned as we continue to cook, laugh and drink wine together ... recipes, stories and tidbits will be shared here often.

Bon appetit!