The Amazing and True Adventures of Squash and Pumpkin



Squash and Pumpkin do some light cleaning. Susan Loper/Thoughtful Consumption

My friend and blogging buddy Susan has a whimsical wit and a CSA subscription. Some folks open up their produce boxes and see supper on the hoof (so to speak); Susan sees comic opportunity. Last fall, she took the weekly cucurbitae and had a little fun, with a post called “More Fun with Squash and Pumpkin.”

Squash and Pumpkin plan Halloween mischief. Susan Loper/Thoughtful Consumption

Just like other vegetable tales that met with mainstream success (“Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,” “VeggieTales” and many many movies with Sylvester Stallone), Squash and Pumpkin sprouted sequels:

Even more fun with Squash and Pumpkin

Squash and Pumpkin Ride Again!

Squash and Pumpkin Keep it Real

Squash and Pumpkin bundle up for cooler weather. Susan Loper/Thoughtful Consumption

If you need a seasonal giggle, or inspiration before decorating your house for fall, visit Squash and Pumpkin over at Thoughtful Consumption. Thanks, Susan, for letting me use your pictures and tell another corner of the world about S&P!

Something from Nothing: Stuffed Pumpkin Blossoms




Tempura goat cheese and ricotta stuffed pumpkin blossoms
by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

  If you ever talk to someone who lived through the Great Depression, you may hear the phrase, spoken with respect,  "And my mama/daddy/grandma knew how to make something from nothing." The notion of creating treasure from someone else's trash can be found everywhere from art - Georgia's own folk artist Howard Finster, for instance, to restaurant and home kitchens. The something-from-nothing philosophy got my grandparents through the Depression, and it’s a principle in use today as cooks practice frugality in the kitchen. Farm to table, nose to tail, and now, blossom to fruit.

I thought about "something from nothing" a while back when my friend Jason Parrish invited me to see his pumpkin farm in south Douglas County. Up until a couple years ago, Parrish was in the financial services industry. His wife is a lawyer and they have two young sons. Like many families in these challenging economic times, Parrish is making something from next to nothing – a bag of seeds, some mulch, some water, (actually a lot of water in this very dry August), using his own labor and initiative to build a business.

Jason asked if I’d ever used pumpkin blossoms in cooking. He planted pumpkin seeds beginning in June, planning on a rolling harvest in autumn, and he had excess blossoms. I needed a botany lesson reboot:  pumpkins produce two kinds of blossoms, male and female. Only the female develops fruit, so after the male blossoms have done their duty of pollinating the females (with a little help from bees and other bugs), they aren't needed. In other words, pumpkins are like Elizabeth Taylor in her prime, taking the best of what's offered, mating-wise, and leaving the rest just hanging on the vine.




The female pumpkin blossom. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 The silver lining, or to stretch the Liz Taylor theme out, a diamond-encrusted lining, is that cooks can pick the pumpkin blossoms and stuff them with rich fillings, dip them in batter and fry them up for a crispy, creamy taste of summer.

A male pumpkin flower. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

After spending a very hot August morning in the pumpkin patch, I turned to Executive Chef Christina Curry of Epicurean Endeavors for advice on using the blossoms, based on her experience with zucchini flowers. She suggested a tempura batter and plans B and C for future blossom projects: dicing the fowers and using them in a fritter, or a quick high temp roast with olive oil, herbs, salt and pepper. "You are only limited by your imagination, so try some different combinations and decide which you like best," she wrote in her reply to my inquiring email.

On her advice, I created a lemony goat cheese filling, cutting the rich chevre with ricotta and flavoring the mixture with basil and chives from my herb garden. I created a tempura batter using rice flour, just the right light texture for the delicate blossoms.

Pumpkin blossoms by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

If you’re lucky enough to be able to purchase pumpkin or squash blossoms, plan to cook with them right away. If you’re picking the blossoms, make sure that they have not been treated with any kind of pesticide, and look for the blooms without the female bump behind the blossom. When you open up the male blooms, it’s quite clearly a male, just so you know. Keep them in a closed brown paper bag or zipper lock bag with a slightly damp paper towel. It’s best to pick pumpkin or squash blossoms early in the day, before they close up for their afternoon naps.To clean the blossoms, rinse them off very lightly with water, and check for signs of critters or mildew inside. Pinch and pull out the stamen.


Pumpkin blossoms by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books


To fill the blossoms, I like to use a baby feeding spoon – another reason never to clean out the silverware drawer – those little guys are so handy. Scoop the filling into the flowers. When all the blossoms are stuffed, heat the oil in a pan, and have a paper towel-lined plate handy. Have the mayo ready and your diners on call. Mix the batter, dip the blossoms and fry. Drain on paper towels and serve.

Pumpkin blossoms waiting to be washed. By Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Tempura Battered, Goat Cheese -Stuffed Pumpkin Blossoms

Filling:
 ½ cup ricotta (lowfat is fine)

½ cup goat cheese

1 teaspoon lemon zest (about a ½ lemon’s worth)

Pinch salt

A couple turns of freshly cracked black pepper

¼ cup loosely packed basil leaves, thinly sliced (chiffonade)
½ teaspoon chopped chives


Tempura Battered Pumpkin Blossoms

1/3 cup rice flour (look in the Latin foods section of the market)

1/3 cup all purpose flour

Pinch of salt

1 egg yolk

1 cup seltzer

One dozen fresh, organic pumpkin blossoms

Vegetable or canola oil for frying


Lemony mayo

½ cup mayonnaise mixed with juice of ½ lemon


1. Make the mayo first. Either Homemade, or jazz up good-quality storebought with a squeeze of lemon juice. Keep in refrigerator while cooking the pumpkin flowers.

2. Mix up the filling: In a medium bowl, combine ricotta, goat cheese, lemon zest, basil and chives. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

3. Using a baby feeding spoon and a fair amount of patience, place about a tablespoon of filling in each blossom. If the bloom is tightened, use a paring knife to cut a slit along the side. Fold the petals over the filling.

4. Set up a frying station. Fill a Dutch oven with 2 inches of canola oil and set over medium-high heat. In a medium bowl, stir together rice flour, all-purpose flour, salt and egg yolk. Whisk in seltzer. Adjust the batter consistency to your liking by adding either a bit more flour or a bit more seltzer – I like the batter on the thin side.

5. Oil is ready when a test dribble of batter bubbles to the surface. Using the stem as a hand-hold, dip each stuffed blossom in the batter then place gently into the bubbling oil. These cook very quickly – about 3 minutes per side. Drain on paper towels and serve with lemony mayo on the side.




Fried, stuffed pumpkin blossoms. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 Text and images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.

Many thanks to Jason for sharing the pumpkin flowers and the Atlanta Botanical Gardens and Christina Curry for culinary guidance.

Summer Squash Soup

Summer Squash Soup with Thyme by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

They're here! I waited patiently through January's snowstorms and April's terrifying thunderstorms and now the lazy, hazy days of summer are finally here. Well, with two active kids, we're not really lazy, but we're certainly more relaxed. No setting of alarms to get us out of bed before the sun rises, no afternoon carpool lines at the school. It's time to enjoy the summer and all the good stuff that comes with June: flip-flops, Mary Kay Andrews' beach books, and farmers' market tables full of produce. At my local farmers' market, I pick up a big ol' bag of yellow crookneck squash and make this only-in-summer soup. Some folks may think soup is just for wintertime, but I eat it all year long. This pureed soup reminds me of squash casserole, but without the cream-of-whatever soup and stale cornbread dressing crumbs. It's summer in a bowl.

Summer Squash Soup

 1 1/2 pounds summer squash

1 medium yellow onion, preferably Vidalia, peeled and roughly chopped

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

4 sprigs fresh thyme or lemon thyme

4 to 6 cups water

1/2 cube vegetable bouillon, such as Knorr, see note below

1 cup cream or half-n-half


1. Wash and peel summer squash, roughly chop and set aside.

2. In a soup pot, melt butter. When foaming, add onion and cook until melted and soft, but not brown. Add squash and continue cooking until soft.

3. Add enough water to cover vegetables. Season with vegetable boullion, two thyme sprigs, salt and pepper, going easy on the salt. I like a lot of pepper in this soup.

4. Let cook for about 20 minutes until vegetables are very tender and broth is flavorful. Using a slotted spoon, remove the thyme sprigs and discard. Scoop up vegetables and puree them in a food processor or blender. Stir puree back into the seasoned broth in the pot and heat over a gentle flame. Thin soup with cream or half n half. Season to taste and serve with a thyme garnish.

Note: I keep vegetable bouillon cubes on hand to add depth of flavor to soups and sauces. You could substitute chicken or vegetable broth for the water and bouillon, or simply use water. As the kids say, it's all good.

Summer Squash Soup with Thyme by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Text and images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.

Summer's Best Stew: Ratatouille



Ratatouille and creamy grits by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books



I've returned to the kitchen, my source for solace in the late summer. The light through the window is changing, it's amber coming through at a different angle, backlighting the spider web on the porch.

Spider web by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

My soul seeks comfort food, but my warm house isn't quite ready for day-long braises and Dutch ovens bubbling over with stewed chicken and bready dumplings. Ratatouille, thick with chunks of eggplant swimming in fresh tomato, I've found, speaks to my soul and lets me walk away from the table without needing a starch-induced nap.




Eggplants by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books


There are at least two approaches to preparing ratatouille: the one-pot method, where each item is chopped and added to the pan gradually. This yields a tasty, but homogeneous stew. My preferred method requires roasting some of the vegetables, namely the eggplant, to give some textural variety to the final product. My recipe is evolving, first with the boilerplate recipe in the "Gourmet Cookbook," now tweaked by Francis Lam’s primer on Salon.com (previously published at Gourmet.com.) It is, to use Lam’s phrase, so good you’ll want to punch a hole in the wall (but please, don’t, somebody‘s mother will have to fix that.)

Redneck Ratatouille

I tend use whatever quantities of these vegetables I have on hand, given the general guidelines in the recipe. I’ve used roasted Poblano peppers and assorted banana and chili peppers instead of or in addition to the bell peppers. Just be mindful of the heat factor when cooking with the spicy peppers.

2 medium eggplant, peeled and diced into 1-inch pieces

Salt

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

4 large garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

3 large onions, peeled, halved, each half cut into 4 wedges

2 medium zucchini, peeled and diced into 1-inch pieces

2 medium yellow crookneck squash, peeled and diced into 1-inch pieces

4 large tomatoes, cored and chopped

2 tablespoons tomato paste (optional)

2 bell peppers, cored, seeded and cut into 1-inch pieces

A handful of fresh basil

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

1. Eggplant prep: follow this step only if you have the large globe eggplants which tend to be bitter. If cooking with the smaller Asian eggplants, proceed to the next step. Set up a colander over a larger bowl and place eggplant in colander. Pour out about a tablespoon of salt onto the eggplant and toss. Let eggplant drain for about 30 minutes.

2. In a large oven-proof pot, preferably one with a lid, pour in all but about 3 tablespoons of oil and turn heat to medium. Add garlic and onion and bring to a bubbling boil. Let cook for about 30 minutes while you prep the remaining ingredients. Don‘t walk away, because, you know, it‘s a pot of boiling oil.

3. Heat oven to 450 and get out a half-sheet pan or a large cast-iron skillet. Pour eggplant and squash and zucchini out onto the pan (you may need to do this in batches), pour remaining three tablespoons oil and some salt and pepper on the vegetables and set in oven to roast for about 30 minutes. You’re looking for a touch of caramelly brown on the edges of the veg, not blackened.

4. Ok, now we have a pot of boiling oil and alliums on the stove and a pan of roasting squash and aubergine in the oven. It’s time to turn your attention to the tomatoes. In a food processor, puree the tomatoes and peppers. Add to the onion and garlic oil and continue to cook for another 30 minutes. Optional: if using tomato paste, you can add it to the pot with the tomatoes and peppers.

5. When tomato/onion/garlic/oil mixture is a rich red color, add in roasted squash/zuke/eggplant. Taste mixture for seasoning, then add salt, pepper and basil.

6. Turn oven to 300 and set Dutch oven with stew inside. Let ratatouille cook for at least one hour, and several more if you can. Remove pot from oven and let cool.

I serve ratatouille at room temperature over a bowl of creamy grits. Other choices are pasta such as rigatoni, or couscous, or polenta.

Text and images copyright 2010, Lucy Mercer.