Pumpkin Pie with Pumpkin Seed Oil and a Gingersnap Crust

I had a limited role for Thanksgiving dinner: the pumpkin pie and the cranberry sauce.  My husband was making the rest.

I wanted to slip in a few Slovenian touches.

I toyed with the idea of pumpkin strudel.  I knew it was traditional in Slovenia, and in a few other places in Eastern Europe.  But I knew that would be pushing the limit with my family.

So it would be traditional pumpkin pie—but I would sneak in a secret Slovenian ingredient: pumpkin seed oil in the filling.  And as long as I was innovating, why not try a gingersnap crust?

For the filling, I simply adapted the traditional recipe that you can find everywhere.  For the crust, I used the recipe from the box of our favorite brand of gingersnaps.

Pumpkin Pie with Pumpkin Seed Oil and a Gingersnap Crust


Gingersnap Crust:

1-1/2 cups crushed gingersnaps
6 T. melted butter
1/4 c. sugar

Crush the gingersnaps finely, using the food processor or a rolling pin.  Mix in the sugar and butter and pat the crumbs into a deep 9 inch pie pan.  Bake the crust for 8 minutes at 350 degrees.  Let cool.

Full disclosure: I had some trouble with this crust. In the oven, it turned puffy in the center and started to slip down the sides.  I had to pat it into place with a paper towel, before setting it aside to cool while I made the filling.


Filling:

12 oz. canned pumpkin
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
12 oz canned evaporated milk
2 eggs, beaten
2-3 t. cinnamon
1 t. ginger
1/2 t. grated fresh nutmeg
dash salt
1 T. rum
1 t. vanilla
1 T. pumpkin seed oil

Mix the filling ingredients together well.  (I like to leave the eggs for last, so that I can safely taste and adjust the seasonings.  Just don't forget to add them at the end!)   Pour filling into the pie crust.

I had a little filling left over.  So I oiled two custard cups, put a gingersnap in the bottom of each, and divided the filling between them.  The gingersnap immediately floated to the top.  I put the custards in a hot water bath before putting them in the oven.

Bake the pie at 350 degrees for 1 hour.  (Custards will take less time, about 30 minutes.) Serve with sweetened whipped cream.

The pumpkin pie was quite a hit.

The combination of pumpkin filling and gingersnaps really works.

Everyone loved the crust.  It was hard and almost candy-like, as though it had started to carmelize. Afterward, we noticed that the crust recipe had suggested a dip in hot water after baking for easier removal. So I suspect there may be an ingredient in this "healthy" gingersnap brand that affects the crust.  Or perhaps the answer is finer crumbs and a little less butter.

For me, the pumpkin filling was the real standout. The pumpkin seed oil had a subtle but pronounced effect. It created a smooth, unctous texture and a deep, rich flavor.  No one guessed that it was the secret ingredient.

This is one cooking experiment that I plan to repeat!

Foodbuzz Blogger Festival 2012: Weekend Highlights

In late October, I attended my first FoodBuzz Blogger Festival in San Francisco.  It was my official coming out as a food blogger.  I wasn't quite sure how a born again Slovenka with a passion for vintage cookbooks would fit in. But my husband and I had a fine time.

Here are a few highlights.

Saturday morning:  We boarded the train and headed across the Bay to downtown San Francisco.  At the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, I signed us in and donned my official DailyBuzz Food name tag.  Next stop: the Taste Pavilion, at the nearby Metreon.

The Taste Pavilion featured local and sustainable products from Northern California.  There were vendors to meet and products to sample.  These tiny cupcakes were quite a hit.

After we had sampled our way around the Taste Pavilion, we headed across town to our cool Art Deco motel in the Outer Sunset. The Ocean Park Motel, the oldest in San Francisco, was built in the 1930s.  It is right by the zoo and the beach. 

We had time to explore the neighborhood before we changed into our evening finery for the Festive Gala.  Right around the corner from the motel, we discovered San Francisco's Irish Cultural Center.  It was a good old-fashioned ethnic hall, complete with a restaurant and bar.  I was excited to learn that they served a traditional Irish Breakfast for Sunday brunch.  An ethnic dining adventure would be the perfect finale to the weekend, before we returned home tomorrow.

At just before seven on Saturday night, we arrived at the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. As we entered, we were greeted by a phalanx of waiters offering drinks and elegant appetizers. Then we stepped into a magical undersea world of shimmering fish, bridges over waterways lit from below, coral reefs, and exotic creatures I had never seen before.

There was plenty of food and drink as we wandered among the sea life.  Open bars and strategically placed appetizer stations, with a delicious assortment of local California cheeses, nuts, and preserves.

Finally, it was time for the main event.  Back upstairs for an elegant sit down dinner. Just reading the menu was overwhelming.   My favorite dish the from the Small Plates Action Station was described like this: "Housemade Artichoke Ravioli with Arugula and Shaved Asiago, with Grissini and Carrot-Ginger Soup." The fancy cousin of Slovenian zlikrofi!

One of the best parts of the Festive Gala was getting to meet some of my fellow bloggers.  We had a delightful group of dining companions at our table: Kristianne from My San Francisco Kitchen, Sam from All You Eat is Vegetables, Danica from Danica's Daily, and Kate from Something We Dreamed. After dinner, while we were waiting outside for the taxi that never arrived, I met one more blogger: Annelies, The Food Poet.  Such lovely, intelligent women, all different, but joined by our common passion.

We slept well that night.  We didn't even hear the fellow who was banging on the door to the motel at three in the morning with a garbage can lid.

On Sunday morning, after coffee and croissants at the Java Beach Cafe, we enjoyed a bracing beach walk along the Pacific Ocean.

By the time we met my brother for brunch at the Irish Cultural Center, we had worked up an appetite again.  They had a nice, woody, old-fashioned bar. Great Guinness on tap, I hear.

Their traditional Irish breakfast was something a Slovenian would love!  Irish bacon, sausage, black and white pudding. All pork, of course. Fried eggs, grilled tomatoes, home fries, and eggs any style. With two kinds of soda bread on the side.  

When we returned home late on Sunday afternoon, it felt as though we had been away for more than a day and a half.  It was quite an adventure, with warm memories and a whole bag of foodie souvenirs. 

Big thanks to the folks at DailyBuzz Food who organized this festive event!

Potato-Spinach Dumplings: Njoki or Gnocchi, Not Just For Italians!

Gnocchi have been on my mind.

I have been reading a wonderful "food-and-roots" memoir called The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken, by food writer Laura Schenone, who sets out to find the authentic version of her Italian-American family ravioli recipe. Along the way, she provides a couple of recipes for gnocchi.

So, when it came time to plan my Week 42 Dinner, her book got me thinking.  I knew Slovenians also made gnocchi.  They call them njoki.

I found a recipe in my newest cookbook, borrowed from the library of the Slovenian Hall in San Francisco: Slovenian Cookery (1996, 2001) by a top Slovenian chef named Slavko Adamlje.  In English, the dish is called potato and spinach dumplings.

The recipe looked good, especially with that rich gouda and gorgonzola sauce. Then I remembered that our friend Marie, whose background is Portuguese and Italian, had recently sent me a recipe for  gnocchi.  When I checked, her recipe (for the dumplings, not the sauce) was very similar. And she used American measures.

In adapting the Slovenian recipe, I got a little mixed up with the metric conversions.  I should have used more spinach and less flour, I suspect.  This was my first-ever attempt at gnocchi, so it was all uncharted territory.

But it all worked out in the end.  Read on!  

Potato and Spinach Dumplings (Njoki) with Gorgonzola-Gouda Sauce

1 c. mashed potatoes (you will need 2 potatoes)
¾ lb. fresh trimmed spinach (2 small bunches), cooked and minced
1 c. white wheat flour
1/3 c. semolina flour
1 egg
dash of salt
dash of pepper
nutmeg, freshly grated
fresh basil, 2 t. minced

Sauce:

2 c. milk
2 oz. gorgonzola cheese, crumbled
2 oz. smoked gouda, cut in cubes
1 oz. parmesan, grated
salt, pepper, basil to taste
1 t. corn or potato starch


For the potatoes: I began with 2 large Idaho potatoes, cut in chunks and boiled. After cooking, peel and mash, using as little of the cooking liquid as possible. Measure out one cup, saving the leftovers if desired.

(Some recipes suggest this method, to keep the potatoes as dry as possible:  Bake or microwave the potatoes. Then mash them and  spread out on a platter to dry.)

Cook spinach and press out excess water. Chop finely.

Mix all the ingredients together.  Knead, adding more flour to make a soft dough.  (I had to add quite a bit more flour.)   Form into ball.  Let rest for a half hour.

Divide dough into 4 pieces.  Roll on floured board into ropes, about the thickness of a finger.  Cut into ¾ inch pieces.  Press each with thumb or mark with tines of a fork.  (This is to allow sauce to collect better. ) Place pieces on a pan lined with waxed paper.

Cook in boiling salted water, not too many at once,  for about 20 minutes or until the dumplings float to the top.  Drain and coat with olive oil.

For the sauce:  Heat milk.  Add cheeses and seasonings.  Stir to let melt.  Add corn or potato starch to thicken.

To serve: top with sauce and add some fresh tomato relish (my husband's adaptation) on the side.


Tomato Relish

fresh tomatoes, cut up
lemon juice
olive oil
fresh basil
pumpkin seeds
salt and pepper

The Verdict:

These gnocchi were good.  Perhaps a little more dense than they might have been.  The sauce was amazing!

It was a good and simple meal, in a labor intensive kind of way.

All in all, one of my most successful dinners!

Slovenian Dinner Week 42: Sweet Beet Soup + Potato-Spinach Dumplings (Njoki)

Menu
Sweet Beet Soup (sladka pesna juha)
Potato-Spinach Dumplings (njoki) with Gorgonzola-Gouda Sauce
Fresh Tomato Garnish
Coleslaw


I was in the mood for some healthy, not-too-meaty Slovenian food.

I had a couple of ideas, both appealing.  One was borscht, or beet soup.  The other was gnocchi, or njoki in Slovenian.   Since I couldn't choose, I decided to make them both.

It was a labor intensive dinner.  So let's consider the beet soup first.

Months earlier, I had noticed a curious recipe in the Progressive Slovene Women's cookbook.  It was called sweet beet soup, or sladka pesna juha.   Definitely the sweet-and-sour type, with plenty of sugar and lemon juice, along with tomatoes and onions. But I didn't know what to make of the eggs.  What was this, a dessert or a soup? So I dismissed it.

But I got to thinking about borscht again, when we visited our favorite Polish restaurant and ordered their version of borscht, which we had enjoyed in the past. It was a clear red broth, with slivers of beets and large flat white beans.  The last time, it had included beef, which seemed to be missing this time.  And I was reminded that this Polish take on borscht was much more savoury than the sweet-and-sour Jewish style I knew best.

Now I was really intrigued by the myriad possibilities borscht can offer. Including that peculiar-sounding Slovenian recipe with the sugar and eggs.   And when I discovered a couple of beets in the refrigerator, that clinched it.  I had to give it a try.


Sweet Beet Soup

2 beets (½ bunch)
½ c. fresh tomatoes, cut up and seeds removed
¼ lb. beef stew meat, cut into small pieces
1-2 c. water
1 T. lemon juice
dash salt
2 T. sugar
1 egg, beaten

Cook the beets, using whatever method you choose.  When they are done, peel them and cut into strips or cubes.

(I used the microwave.  I put the whole beets in a covered dish with ¼ cup water.  I cooked them on high for 12-15 minutes, stopping every 5 minutes to turn.)

Combine the cut-up beets, water, tomatoes, onion, and beef in water.  Simmer 3o minutes.  Add lemon juice, sugar and salt.  Simmer 30 minutes more.  Taste and adjust seasonings.  Beat egg in a separate dish.  Add a little hot soup gradually, stirring to prevent curdling.  Add to the pot of soup.  Do not allow to boil.

I had many misgivings, but this beet soup was a delicious surprise.

My husband loved it.  He thought it was among my best dishes so far.  “This is in the top twelve!” he said.

I was convinced it would be too sweet.  But it wasn't.  And it was just the right amount of beef.

The egg was the real puzzler. Because of my doubts,  I had cut the egg down to half of what the original recipe called for.  I wouldn't have wanted more, but in this quantity the egg worked out just fine.  The egg flavor was not overpowering, and it lightened the broth to a delicate pink.  It didn't seem too different from adding sour cream, a common way to serve Jewish-style borscht.

So why the eggs instead of sour cream?   My husband and I can think of only one reason: to avoid combining dairy and meat, in order to observe Jewish dietary laws.  But that would not be an issue in Slovenia, where the population is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.

So the recipe remains a puzzle.  But there is no doubt: This sweet beet soup was a winner!

For that matter, so was the rest of the dinner.  To see the the recipe for those delcicious njoki, go here.

Lost Kosovo Kugel and the Politics of Food

Slovenian American cooks were practical.  They didn't waste food.

In that spirit, I decided to put together a dessert for my Week 41 Dinner, using leftovers.

The leftover in question:  An opened box of chocolate-covered matzo. Languishing in my pantry since Passover.  Six months old.  Begging to be used.

Granted, the key element in this dessert did not exactly qualify as Slovenian.

Chocolate-covered matzo is a Passover novelty, probably designed with Jewish children in mind. It is an amusing way of circumventing the austerity of unleavened bread, without violating the dietary laws.

For six months, a box of the stuff had been sitting in our pantry. It had quite a pedigree.

According to the package, the matzo itself had been baked in Israel.  The dark chocolate mint coating was added in New Jersey.  I purchased it in California, just before Passover. I planned to send it to our journalist son in Kosovo, along with some homemade mandelbrot.

But the package never arrived in Kosovo.

Eventually, the lost package re-appeared on our doorstep, looking much the worse for wear.

Inside, my homemade Passover mandelbrot had survived intact. But when when I opened up the commercially made box of chocolate matzo, it was a sorry sight.

Unfortunately, I had failed to address the package properly.  I should have sent it “via Albania” or with the address written like this: Pristina (Kosovo), Serbia.

Kosovo as an independent country still has a murky status, at least in some quarters.  So the package was intercepted in Serbia, where the post office folks sent it back to California, with a stamp that referred to "an unexpected situation.”

It gives “the politics of food” a whole new meaning.

Meanwhile, I had a box of matzo crumbs and minty dark chocolate flakes. But I hated to throw it away.  So there it sat, growing stale in a drawer.

On Week 41, I was seized by a peculiar inspiration.  I would turn that aging chocolate matzo into an impromptu dessert.  I had in mind a sweet kugel, a traditional Jewish pudding that is made with noodles or, at Passover, with crumbled matzo.  You can crush the matzo yourself or purchase the prepared variety, called matzo farfel.

A sweet kugel is something like a dense bread pudding.  So I figured it would be easy to inprovise a recipe. How could I go wrong?


Lost Kosovo Kugel

1-¾ c. crumbled chocolate covered matzo
2 c. lowfat milk
½ c. sugar
3 eggs, beaten
pinch of salt
butter for dish

Soak the crumbled matzo in milk for 10 minutes to soften.  Stir in the sugar,  a pinch of salt,  and the beaten eggs.  Bake in a buttered 6x9 ceramic dish at 350 for 40 minutes. Serve warm or cold.

I don't know what went wrong with this.

My husband was blunt.  He did not like it.  “It takes so eggy.”

So?  It was supposed to be a sort of eggy custard.  Nothing wrong with that.

But he was right.  Something was amiss.  The kugel was watery.  The egg seemed to have coagulated in a strange way.  Maybe it was the mint flavoring.

But we dutifully ate it in small portions, over the next week.  On that final night, I agreed: it had developed a strange eggy taste.

This is one Slovenian-Jewish fusion dish that won't be repeated.

Slovenian Dinner Week 41, a Healthy Makeover: Stuffed Peppers with Turkey-Kasha Filling

Menu
Stuffed Peppers with Turkey-Kasha Filling
Fresh Cranberry Beans
Green Salad
Lost Kosovo Kugel


After my recent excursion to the FoodBuzz Blogger Festival, it was a relief to get back to the simpler, down-to-earth cooking traditions of my Slovenian American forbears.

But that foodie festival did strengthen my resolve to continue working on healthier versions of the traditional recipes I had been making.

Stuffed peppers, one of my early dishes, was a prime candidate for an overhaul. Although it was a successful Week 7 entree, those peppers had been a little too firm. I had already resolved to parboil them, and probably to leave them whole, the next time around.

Now, with an eye to a healthy makeover, I made a few more changes.  For starters, I would make an all-turkey filling, instead of the beef-pork-turkey mixture I had used before. That meant increasing the spices, as I had done in my recent attempt at healthy turkey cevapcici.  And why not substitute high-protein, flavorful kasha for the white rice?  It might not be traditional, but it would be in the Slovenian spirit.

Otherwise, I followed my original recipe, although I did add a little wine to the tomato sauce.

When I went to the market in the morning, I found a surprise: fresh cranberry beans, otherwise known as Roman or borlotti beans.  By now, the dried version had become a staple in my Slovenian kitchen.  I couldn't resist buying these tasty beans fresh, although I wasn't quite sure how to prepare them.

And for dessert, I invented something new: Lost Kosovo Kugel.  But that's a story in itself.

Stuffed Peppers with Turkey-Kasha Filling

About 8 fresh peppers, assorted colors (I used half green and half red)

1.5 lb. ground turkey
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 t. smoked paprika
1 c. cooked kasha (buckwheat groats)
¼ c. fresh parsley, minced
1 t. salt
1 t. pepper
1 egg, beaten

For the sauce:

14 oz. can organic Italian peeled tomatoes
14 oz. can organic diced fire-roasted tomatoes
7 oz. strained Italian tomatoes
¼ c. reserved browned onion-garlic mixture
2 oz. red wine
1 t. paprika
2 t. brown sugar
1 t. salt

To prepare the peppers: Remove stem ends carefully and set aside to use as lids.  Clean out the inside of each pepper.  Parboil for 10 minutes in boiling salted water.  Drain and cool.

To cook kasha: Bring 2 cups salted water to boil.  Add 1 cup uncooked kasha.  Let simmer 10 minutes, covered.  Measure out 1 cup and save the rest.  Let cool.

To make filling: Brown onion and garlic well in olive oil.   Set ¼ cup aside to use in sauce. Mix the remaining onion-garlic mixture with the rest of filling ingredients.

To make sauce: Mix all ingredients together and simmer for about fifteen minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings.

To assemble: Put a little tomato sauce in the bottom of a Dutch oven or other large casserole dish.  Arrange peppers inside.  Divide filling among them. (You may have some filling left over.) If you like, add the previously removed  “lid” on top of each pepper. Add more sauce, almost to cover.  Bake at 350 degrees, for 1 hour or more.  Add more sauce if needed.

stuffed peppers, before adding sauce

stuffed peppers, after baking

Fresh Cranberry Beans

Shell the beans.  Rinse and drain in a colander.  Admire the pretty pink mottling, because it will disappear once the beans are cooked!   Simmer in a pot of boiling salted water for 10-20 minutes, until tender.  Drain.  Toss with a dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, parsley, garlic, salt and pepper.

The verdict?  The stuffed peppers were delicious!  The peppers themselves benefited from parboiling and then a longer time in the oven.  We didn't miss the beef and pork in the filling at all.  The addition of kasha worked well.  It created the same dense texture as the traditional rice-meat mix, but with an intriguing hearty, smoked buckwheat flavor.

The beans were a nice, mild complement.  The flavor was even better the next day, after they had marinated in the dressing.

As for that  Kosovo Kugel, I think perhaps it should remain lost.  To learn the full story, read on!

Back Home after the FoodBuzz Blogger Festival

I guess I have arrived.

The weekend before last, I attended my first FoodBuzz Blogger Festival in San Francisco.

In the photo above you can see some of the spoils, after my husband and I spent an afternoon grazing our way around the Taste Pavilion.  Fresh endive, salted caramels, healthy fruit-and-nut mixes, wines, and many other goodies to sample.  Wholesome and indulgent all jumbled together, with the focus on local products from Northern California.

We live in nearby Berkeley, so most of this was familiar to us.  But to have it all gathered together in one place was quite something.   Trick or treat for the adult foodie.  Much better than Halloween.

Later, we savored an elegant cocktail hour and then dinner, in the beautiful coral reef exhibit at the San Francisco Academy of Sciences, with a few hundred other attendees.

It was an exotic outing.  A treat for the senses.  Food as an art form.  And everyone snapping photos. Constantly.  Including me.  (The cameras drove my husband a little crazy!)

But did I really belong there, among the foodies?    It seemed far removed from my passion for resurrecting the cooking of an Eastern European immigrant community from the last century.

In some ways, I did feel like the proverbial fish out of water. But I'm glad I went.

To read more about the Festival, you can take a look at my blog on Red Room, here.  More thoughts and reactions will follow!

Update:  I have posted more thoughts and photos on my December 5 blog entry, here.