Gourd-Tastic, Part 2: A failed pumpkin pie

Okay, I know I should pretend I am fantastic at everything and all, but I admit it–I failed at pumpkin pie. Not directly through any fault of my own, of course. Not really.

Basically I have never made a pie before and at B’s suggestion, decided to try my hand at it. Using the beginner’s bible (aka Mark Bittman’s How to Make Everything) I followed a pretty simple recipe for flaky pre baked pie crust. Problem 1: I didn’t have unsalted butter. Okay, no problem, I like salt, I omitted the salt from the recipe and used salted butter. Then I started making the filling. Problem 2: We had about half the cream we needed and none of the ginger. I was prepared to use whipped cream cheese instead, but B would have none of it. We went to the store and got more cream. We came back. I put the cream on the counter and opened the ginger. I went along my merry way, following instructions, happily baking as B carved the pumpkin. I put the pie in the oven a let out a sigh of relief. My very first pie. After about 10 of the 30 minutes it was supposed to cook, I began to clean up, and to my horror, uncovered the unopened container of cream. In our rush to find the right ingredient, I had ended up including none of it. No cream, no cream cheese.

So, alas, my first pie was a failure. It then got knocked off the cooling rack by my roommate so by the time I got a picture of it the inside had come detached from the crust anyways. It tastes alright, pretty much like a pie that doesn’t have any cream in it (Making it a good illustration of why low-fat food tastes so bad).

Gourd Tastic: Part 1–Delicata Fettucini

It’s fall here in the northwest and my favorite season to boot. The fun of fall vegetables never fails, as you can see in the previously posted pumpkin soup recipe. I also created a butternut squash ravioli that I unfortuantely didn’t manage to post about. But the fun never ends with gourds, as this weekend I ventured into new territory: Delicata squash and Pumpkin pie.

I don’t want to post the picture of the delicata fettucini I made because the picture does no justice to the tastiness of the meal itself. We came home from the pumkin patch starving and bearing a 2 large delicata squashes. The fun part of delicata is that you can eat the skin, so of course this (and the rush to eat) made me think that I could sautee it. I had never sauteed a squash before, so I tried at first to cut the pieces quite small, but after a taste fry, I realized it was going to be fairly quick to fry up, so I ended up cutting the onion and the squash as close to the width of the fettucini as possible in order to get some textural consistancy. I won’t say this is a top dish of all time, but I did think that it was great for starving squash bearing people who can’t handle waiting for the thing to roast in an oven.

Enough for two people, with leftovers:
1/4 large delicata squash
1/4 large white onion
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and Pepper
Oregano
Basil
1 package fresh fettucini (I loved how the tenderness of the fresh noodles played with the squash texture–just a touch more al dente, but you could sub out dried if neccesary)

Put the oil in the pan and sautee the squash and onion, adding the vinegar pretty early on to let it caramalize a bit in the pan. Add the herbs to taste at the end. Just as the veggies are getting ready to finish up, toss the pasta in the pot. When you pull it out, put it in to the pan with the veggies and toss them all together–this got the noodles totally coated with the vinegar and herbs, and made them taste terrific.

The whole thing took maybe 20 minutes.

A Thrown Together Feast

Some days dinner starts small and grows out of control, and monday was one of those days. Yet it wasn’t hard work, and it was a lot of fun to put together. I rarely see my roommates A and O, so when I came home from playing tennis with B and started to cook our dinner, it was nice to see them around and I invited them to join us for dinner. I had just been planning to cut up some tuna sashimi and crab leg sashimi, but this would not have been enough for all four of us, so we went to work on our dinner.

I sliced up the tuna sashimi (a find at a recent farmers market) and sliced two of the crablegs up into sashimi, but instead of serving the crab leg as sashimi, I added it to a bit of defrosted frozen seaweed salad, tossing it with soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and sesame oil. O got on the steam station and steamed up an artichoke and the other 4 crab legs. A got to work on a pile of vietnamese fresh rolls, with steamed shrimp, lettuce, thin rice noodles, and hot peppers in a rice paper roll up. Served that with a little sauce of peanut butter, hot sauce and coconut milk.

By the time this all came together, a long with a starter of the leftover pumpkin soup, we had a meal that spanned multiple continents and countries with its flavor combinations, yet all of it was delicious, and it was lovely to share a meal with the roomies.

Dim Sum at Sun Sui Wah

But first, a quick note: I have added a few pictures to the previous post. As per a request below, I am going to work on getting more pictures on the site–especially on home cooked meals–I don’t know about getting restaurant pictures yet.

And now on to my wonderful dim sum at Sun Sui Wah on Sunday. Aside from the whole catastrophe of me losing my passport on sunday morning (turns out you don’t actually need a passport or birth certificate to get in to Canada), we managed to get out of Seattle by 9:30, making it to the downtown Vancouver branch of SSW before noon. There was a bit of a wait for a table, but not bad, maybe 20 minutes, which isn’t all that much when you consider we drove over 2 hours to get there. The clatter and clank of dishes right away reminded me that we were not at a quiet, polite Seattle dim sum anymore. “It’s like a different country” Said B. Meaning China, not Canada. And it is, this was a real dim sum experience, and for me a first. I chose piece carefully, wanting to try everything–new things for the experience, things I get all the time to see how different they were here. I was careful to eat only small bites of what we got in order to conserve as much stomach space as possible.

I’m going to describe what I got here, please, anyone who knows the real names of these things, I would love to know!

The first cart that came by I picked a steamed barbecue hum bao. The outside was a great texture, pillowesque as it enveloped pork that fell apart at the slightest prodding. The hint of sweetness that I so dearly treasure may have been a bit overpowering, but it was better than lacking it. Next up was a squid dish, it appeared just to be a few whole pieces of squid steamed in a very light sauce. Simple, yet for a squid lover like me, a great punch of flavor. The tubes held sauce so there was a little explosion of flavor when you bit into it.

We grabbed a few pork potstickers from a tray, which were good, but still just potstickers–nothing overly exciting. A sticky rice was nicely packaged into small package so there was a very high sausage to rice ratio, a nice bonus for the meat lovers among us, also allowed the rice to take on more of the meaty flavor. I always order my thick rice noodles with shrimp inside, but here they had only beef, so I took that and was surprised at the soft texture of the beef inside, matching the noodles perfectly in texture, but with a terrific bite of flavor from the inside of the plainness of the noodles.

A little treat I had never had before came by soon after, small circles of tofu (soft and custurdy on the inside, but with a solid skin, so they didn’t fall apart) with a ball of shrimp on the top–like the inside of a har gow, but with out the skin, and a small sprinkling of roe. This was a great new treat, and it was very well liked by B and I. Another new dish that we really enjoyed, I can barely even describe. The outside was like the dough part of a steamed hum bao, but it was sliced like it had been from a log, and the inside was almost all filling–only maybe a centimeter of bao around the edge. The filling looked a little like sticky rice, perhaps? With just a bit of sweetness. It was my favorite of the day, so if anyone knows what it is, please tell me!

Unfortunately I haven’t convinced B to get over his fear of chicken feet, so one of my staples was out, but my other one was definetly in–Congee. B agreed this was some of the best congee we have tried. And nothing cures a hangover like a good congee. This made us very happy, it was the only thing I had trouble enforcing my one bite rule. We finished up with a little pan fried pork dumpling, which made our potsticker taste like cardboard, it was so packed with flaver (a breadier type of dough, much better meat). Last but not least, I finally realized that I had to ask for my daikon cake to get it, which I did. Those were pretty average, despite being fried to order.

I left Sun Sui Wah with a grin on my face. I finally understood why people were so snotty about Seattle’s dim sum–this was what they were talking about. And I’m willing to bet there are people who turn their nose up at Sun Sui Wah’s dim sum, so I’ll have to keep looking for new and better places!

Pumpkin and Tomatillo Twist Soup (and Mushroom Quesadillas)

The two elements to my soup: Green tomatillo sauce, and velvety textured pumpkin soup.

I had big thoughts for my soup last night when I got home. The city was battling a windstorm and I decided that the way to combat that was to make a nice fall soup with all the great produce from sunday’s ballard market. Luckily the power stayed on at my house, unfortunately B was driving home from Kenmore, where the lights were not on, and didn’t make it in time to share this with me before I went to my soccer game.

There were a lot of elements to the meal, so I’m going to list them seperately:
Pumpkin Soup
1 Pumkin (I think mine was about 2lbs
1/2 can of chicken stock
1 tbsp olive oil
2 large cloves of garlic
1/2 a large white onion
Salt
Pepper
Smoked paprika
fresh ground nutmeg

Tomatillo Mix in
5 Tomatillos
2 small hot peppers (habanero, jalapeno, whatever heat level you choose)
1 tbsp olive oil

Wild Mushroom Quesadillas
1 oz asiago cheese
1 oz sharp cheddar cheese
8 small corn tortillas
1tbsp olive oil
1/2 large porcini mushroom
5 chantrelles

Pumpkin seeds
Seeds from pumkin used for soup
hot paprika
salt
pepper

I did this all by feel, so my amounts and spices used were what I happened to have on hand, but I like the final product and would reccommend it to all.

As I began cooking, I noticed that the top of my pumpkin, around the stem was going moldy, so I cut that off and chopped my pumkin in to quarters (removing and saving the innards for the seeds) and stuck it into the oven at 450 degrees for about 55 minutes. When I pulled it out, the skin was still pretty stuck so I put it under the broiler on high for 5 minutes to make it easier to pull off.

While the pumpkin roasted, I chopped the tomatillos and peppers, sauteed them in the oil and then stuck them in the blender. I then strained that mixture, saving the liquid for its participation in the soup, and that lumpy bit of tomatillo and pepper? It was just tangy enough that I stuck it in a tupperware and put it in the freezer for the next time I make guacamole.

Next up, I sauteed the onions with the garlic in the oil until the onions were clear. Ahh, this is how a kitchen should smell.

Strained, as best I could, the pulp away from the seeds of the pumpkin and lay them flat on a baking sheet, sprinkled with salt, pepper and hot paprika, which gave them a lovely maroon color.

By this time, the pumkin was ready to come out of the oven and I set that aside to cool, lowered the oven to 400 degrees and put in the seeds.

Peeling the skin off of the pumkin, I threw it in the blender with the onions and garlic, adding the chicken stock slowly to smoth it out. Blend for a while, until it was completely smooth, then threw it on the stove with a fair amount of salt, pepper and smoked paprika (taste testing as I went to find the right amount)

At this point I was still intending to add the mushrooms to the soup, since I don’t like soups with out tasty chunks in them so much. But the texture of the pumpkin mix looked so pretty and velevety smooth, I decided instead to make a go along of wild mushroom quesadilla. I chopped the mushrooms and threw them in a pan with the olive oil. While the soup heated up and the the mushrooms fried, I crumbled the two cheeses (asigao for the saltiness, cheddar for the bite) and pulled some (hanging my head in shame) pre-made tortillas from the fridge. Pulling the mushrooms of the heat, I put them in a bowl and lay one tortilla down on the pan (over low heat). Piled a few mushrooms, then the cheese, then topped it with another tortilla. When the tortilla began to brown I flipped it, browning the other side. Cut this into quarters, and placed them around the bowl on a plate. I spooned the pumpkin mixture in the bowl, then added a dollop of the tomatillo mixture on top and a sprinkling of the pumkin seeds.

The green of the tomatillos contrasted beautifully with the orange soup, and the red of the pumpkin seeds stuck out, adding a crunch to the soup. It was a lot of work (took me about an hour and a half of constantly working) but the end product was beautiful and delicious, so it was certainly worth it.

La Consupo: Barbacoa y Mas

The lack of “good” Mexican food in Seattle has long been lamented, but today I present to you evidence slightly in the contrary. My most vivid memory of food from my stay in Mexico was not the homemage guacamole by the Senora of the house (though that was mouth wateringly smooth and delicious), nor was it sneaking pieces of the freshly made cheese or perfectly spiced ‘al pastor’ meat in to my mouth while working the line at Abuelita’s Pizzeria. No, it is of a Sunday morning, when we all piled in to the car and took a drive in to the mountains for a brunch of barbacoa.

La Consupo, on Greenwood, just north of 85th, doesn’t have any grannies out front hand pressing tortillas on a giant griddle while grinning at you with no teeth, instead it has a store, filled with typical Mexican goodies. In the back, though, it is like entering the world I remember. Seated at our table we were clearly the only non-Mexicans in the place, and my poor blue eyed blonde haired boyfriend the only one who did not speak fluent Spanish. A waiter came and took our order: one pound of barbacoa, please. It’s alot of meat, but I had other plans for that later. We also ordered a consume each. The consume is huge. A meal in itself, if you so chose. It was somewhat greasier than I would have preffered, made with the non-edible pieces of the lamb used as the meat for the barbacoa. Digging deep, I came up with tasty grease cutting pieces of hominy, soaking in the flavors of the fiery red soup. If ever a hangover cure existed, this is it, grease and all.

B at this point got up and served himself a Mexican Coke from the fridge nearby which held a variety of Mexican refrescos, or soft drinks. If you have never had Mexican Coke, and which to try it, I encourage you to do so, so long as you don’t have diabetes. The sugar flavor is far more overwhelming than American Coke, yet in that strange way that sour candy is good, the extra sugar kind of makes you smile.

Soon our barbacoa landed, just as I remembered it, a pile of meat chopped up and served on a piece of paper. Also came a dish with a few limes, a bit of chopped white onion, some cilantro and hot tortillas. Ripping of a piece of tortilla, I used it to grab the meat, tearing it from the pile, sprinkling condiments and shoveling it whole into my mouth. Yes, this is the flavor I remember. Transported to the crowded dining room north of Queretaro, I smiled. The meat is tender, it pulls away easily with your tortilla, as it should, and provides all the flavor needed, with some extra crunch from the onions.

Packing up our extra meat, I immediatley began planning future meals with it: On monday, I added it to wild mushroom filling for my tamales and on tuesday I sauteed the meat and added a few tortellini at the end for a new texture, similar to Mark Bittman’s recent NY Times article on adding pasta as the lesser player in a vegetable dish.

Barbacoa was truly the meal that kept getting better and better. But one note, like in Mexico, I believe they only serve this one on sunday mornings–and after church treat.

Did ya miss me?

Okay, so it’s been a little while. I’m sorry. I have committed a bloggerific sin. Terrible, I abandoned my blog to go to work for a group blog, at seattle.metblogs.com. I apologize. But now, I have decided to try my hand at balancing both activities. In the time since I last updated this, I have become far more invested in cooking than in eating out, so this new incarnation of the blog will be more of a combination of meal experiences than the previous one was. Also, I will try to keep as up to date as I can with Seattle restaurant gossip, as well as answer any questions written in about food, Seattle, and what ever else people would like me to talk about.

My favorite piece of Seattle restaurant gossip at the moment? I have just heard that Mee Sum is open on the Ave now. I will have to check it out, they were a favorite of mine growing up–some kids save their money for a rainy day, I saved mine for humbao!