Gastronomic Gifts VI: It’s the Great Pumpkin, Butter*
December 20, 2008
*Or, Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown. Now Eat Some Delicious Spread.
[There’s just nothing like a homemade gift for the holidays. This year, with the purse strings a little tighter than usual, I’m determined to make at least a few in my kitchen–and thought I’d share my ideas in case you’d like to partake, too. ]
I know that pretty much everyone in the blogosphere (well, and the rest of the galaxy, too, come to think of it) has already made this spread. But hey, I’ve always been a late bloomer. And now, I’ve finally tried it, too. And it is so *&$@!% good that I had to include it as this (penultimate) Gastronomic Gift this year. (I’ve got one more planned, as long as we can shovel ourselves out of the *&$@!% 25 cm. (just under a foot) of snow that battered the city yesterday and I can get to the store).
Pumpkin butter is the perfect means to use up cooked pumpkin (or squash, to those of us in North America). It’s a great nut butter substitute if you’re trying to reduce fat and calories. Or if, like me, you’ve once again allowed the insidious holiday-time profusion of chocolate and chocolate-coated/ chocolate studded/ chocolate-molded/ chocolate-frosted/ chocolate flavored/ chocolate filled/ chocolate-related-in-any-way desserts that seem to reproduce of their own accord on countertops and dining room tables and candy dishes and office desks and buffets and coffee tables and bar tops and glove compartments and pockets and dessert menus to override your (wobbly at the best of times) self control, and you find that you’ve now consumed more chocolate in the past two weeks than the entire GDP of a small country, more than Big Brother’s secret stash in 1984, more than the exports from Switzerland at Valentine’s Day, more than the full contents of Willie Wonka’s factory–more, really than you’d rightfully expect any normal human being to ingest under any circumstances whatsoever in a lifetime, except maybe under threat of torture.
What? You mean it’s just me?
For some strange reason, I felt the need for a break from chocolate for a while (ahem). Now that I’ve made my own pumpkin butter, I can join the chorus and say that I, too, am smitten. It’s the perfect accompaniment to pretty much any carbohydrate with a flat surface (or even a somewhat bumpy one–have you tried this on rice cakes? Divine.)
But I must admit that my favorite use for the butter isn’t on toast, or a muffin, or pancakes, or any other solid food. I think I love it most blended (using my hand blender) in a tall, cold glass of almond or soymilk. Yum-mers!
It also makes a fabulous hostess gift, of course, and a wonderful last-minute present; it’s the perfect way to use up that final can of pumpkin purée that’s been biding its time in your cupboard since Thanksgiving.
This recipe (the ubiquitous allrecipes version) makes a pretty big batch, so you can scoop some away for home use and still fill two or three pretty little gift jars with the stuff to give away. If you can bear to part with it.
Oh, and there are still four more days to bid on some amazing prizes from Menu for Hope! Hop on over to the main donation page and give it a go!
Pumpkin Butter
adapted from AllRecipes.com
Try this lovely alternative butter anywhere you’d spread jam or nut butter. It’s got no fat, with the bonus of holiday spices all year round.
3-1/2 cups (about 820 g.) cooked, puréed pumpkin
3/4 cup (180 ml.) apple juice [but personally I think OJ would be great in this]
2 tsp. (10 ml.) ground ginger
1/2 tsp. (2.5 ml.) ground cloves
2/3 cup (160 ml.) agave nectar (light or dark)
2 tsp. (10 ml.) ground cinnamon
1 tsp. (5 ml.) ground nutmeg
Combine all ingredients in a medium sized pot. Heat over medium-high heat until mixture boils; reduce heat to low and continue to simmer, stirring very frequently, until the mixture is thick and has darkened (the original recipe said 30 minutes, but mine took a bit more than an hour). This might also be a good time to pull out that old splatter screen if you have one, as the mixture tends to boil and pop a bit (my walls needed a good wipe-down after I was done).
Pour into clean glass jars and store in the refrigerator. Makes about 2 cups (500 ml.). Will keep at least 3 weeks in the refrigerator.
Other Gastronomic Gifts:
GG I: Fudge Two Ways
GG II: Brandied Apricot-Ginger Spread
GG III: Marzipan-Topped Shortbread **Note: the original recipe was somehow transcribed incorrectly–please use the current version with the correct amount of flour!!
GG IV: Jam-Filled Turnovers
GG V: Tutti Fruiti Christmas Cookies
GG VII: Chocolate Macaroons in a Flash
Last Year at this Time: Holiday Cranberry Chippers
© 2008 Diet, Dessert and Dogs
Gastronomic Gifts II: Brandied Apricot-Ginger Spread
December 9, 2008
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[There’s just nothing like a homemade gift for the holidays. This year, with the purse strings a little tighter than usual, I’m determined to make at least a few in my kitchen–and thought I’d share my ideas in case you’d like to partake, too. ]
As I’m wont to do during the drive to work, I tuned in to the CBC this morning and overheard Jian Ghomeshi (isn’t he just the dreamiest??) talk about how excited we Canadians get any time we’re mentioned on American TV. Last evening, in fact, Jon Stewart satirized our impending governmental crisis (if only that were a dream!) on The Daily Show. As a food blogger, I must admit I felt the selfsame patriotic pride last month when Susur Lee (also dreamy) was fêted by Ruth Reichl et al in New York, for the opening of his newest resto, Shang. I mean, now that we’re all firmly entrenched in the Era of the Celebrity Chef courtesy of Food TV, isn’t it just as exciting for us Canadians to hear mention of a Canadian chef in the U.S. media?
Oh, but way back before Canadian chefs were known anywhere beyond their own kitchen walls, before the days of Yum-O or Love and Best Dishes or eponymous cookware or chefs with “peasant” kitchens invading gradeschools and riding Land Rovers–before all that, there was Bonnie Stern.
Stern was one of the very first “celebrity” chefs in Canada, known across the country at a time when the only viral netorking was an actual virus that networked its way through your mucus membranes and into your sinuses. She ran a highly successful cooking school in Toronto, she owned a kitchenware store beside it, she published several best-selling cookbooks, had her recipes published in a variety of newspapers, and even tried her hand at her own cooking show for a time.
Back in the 90s, at the apex of Stern word-of-mouth buzz, I attended one of her cooking classes; the topic was “Homemade Gifts for the Holidays.” I was thrilled to have secured a coveted space in the always-sold-out classes, even at the exhorbitant fee of $95 (back then!). I was primed to observe the doyenne of cooking in her element, absorb every word she uttered, and finally become privy to the professinal tips and tricks she’d reveal as she prepared the most delectable and irresistible tidbits I’d ever tasted on a holiday table.
Well, I have to tell you straight up that I was bitterly disappointed. Sitting against the back wall of an auditorium-sized classroom (seriously, I had closer seats for forty bucks at the Bruce Springsteen concert that year), all I could see was a tiny figure in the distance that resembled the barely distinguishable collection of phosphor dot people I squinted at regularly on my (then) 12-inch television screen at home–and it wasn’t even Stern herself; it was a poor substitute, a culinary surrogate! After whipping up a series of recipes in quick succession and without much instruction, the recipe demonstrator passed around trays of thimble-sized samples for each person to nibble upon, all fairly bland and unexciting.
One recipe, however, stood apart from the rest, and it alone was (almost) worth the price of admission: Honey Liqueur Fruit Butter. It was a quick, easy spread consisting of dried apricots, candied ginger, and orange liqueur. Although I’m not, as a rule, particularly enamored of jams or jellies, I fell in love with this spread. I swooned. I drooled. I surreptitiously tasted three thimbles full.
I returned home and promptly re-created the spread, not once, but several times over the following few months. I gave away little jars as hostess gifts; I bestowed a few jars on my sisters and close friends; I spread it on bagels, pancakes, muffins and bread. And then, I tucked the recipe away in a file folder and forgot about it for over a decade.
That very folder–older, grayer, fraying at the edges–has been packed up and upacked during seven separate house-moves since that time. This year, while pondering what I might cook up as holiday gifts from my kitchen, I finally remembered it. Like the memory of a first kiss, the thought of that recipe unearthed a wave of longing and a compelling desire to once again re-create that long-ago, captivating sensation. I dug out the file folder and cooked up a batch. And (perhaps unlike that first kiss with your childhood sweetheart) this spread was just as good 15 years later.
I’ve subbed agave for the honey and brandy for the liqueur, with spectacular results. This is a smooth, glossy spread that will keep for more than a month in the refrigerator, since the alcohol acts as a preservative. I love this slathered on breakfast food, but it would be a terrific filling for a danish or rugelach as well.
This recipe is my submission to Happy Cook’s blog event, Home Made Christmas Gifts, featuring home made gifts for the holidays.
(“Mum, too bad we can’t have anything with alcohol in it. . . but we’d be happy with all those breakfast foods on their own, next time you’re slathering.”)
Brandied Apricot-Ginger Spread
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My notes from the original class tell me you could also substitute dried pears for the apricots, or a combination of prunes and dried apples, adjusting the liqueur accordingly (poire William and armagnac come to mind, but any favorite will work nicely).
TO VIEW THE COMPLETE RECIPE, PLEASE VISIT THIS PAGE ON THE NEW DIET, DESSERT AND DOGS, BY CLICKING HERE.