Pumpkin Puree

Spanish food is very bland. I love it, but there is little flavor variation as Spaniards pride themselves on using very few spices in their cooking. I don't mind the simplicity in the savory dishes, but I have to report that Spanish baked goods are boring. Spaniards eat cakes with less flavor than a store-bought Sara Lee pound cake and exclaim "¡Què rico!" In an effort to convert some Spaniards to the worshiping of desserts with flavor, I've been baking some old-fashioned favorites and taking them to school for my colleagues. I have kept the flavors simple so as not to shock their palates; coffee cake, homemade pound cake, and most recently pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. So far, my attempts of exposing the teachers at my school to flavorful desserts has been a success. In exchange, they’ve persuaded me to open my stomach to stingray, octopus tentacles, and even tripe!

To make the pumpkin cookies, I had to make my own pumpkin puree. America is the land of good and plenty of canned pumpkin. In Spain, you cannot simply go to the grocery store to buy canned pumpkin. Even in October and November, when American supermarkets are bursting with this and other flavorful squash varieties, both canned and fresh pumpkins are absent from Spanish grocery store shelves. If you ask for a pumpkin, you'll likely be pointed in the direction of a butternut squash. (Delicious, great for making soup, but not a pumpkin.) In late October, I finally found a small sugar pumpkin at a fruit stand and when I informed the shopkeeper I planned to bake it and make it into a pie rather than carve it into a jack-o-lantern, she gave me the "Oh, you're foreign," look I've become very accustomed to. I had some leftover puree that’s been patiently waiting in my freezer, until now.  

To make your own puree, plan on an hour inactive prep time while the pumpkin bakes and no more than 30 minutes of blending and straining the puree.Straining is a very important step, especially if using to make a pumpkin pie. Baked pumpkin has a stringy texture and straining ensures a smooth final product.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with tin foil. Cut your pumpkin in half and scrape out the pulp and the seeds. Place the two halves skin side up on the baking sheet and roast for 45 minutes to an hour until the flesh is very tender. Remove from the oven and let cool.

 

 

Scrape the cooled pumpkin flesh out of the skin. In a blender or with an immersion blender, puree the flesh until smooth. If you're not up to dirtying more kitchen equipment, mashing the pumpkin flesh with a fork will work just fine, though it will take longer. Pour the puree through a strainer to get rid of any remaining stringy pieces. 

Now it's ready to add incredible flavor to a pumpkin chorizo pizza or a batch of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies! If not using it immediately, your homemade pumpkin puree will keep for one week in the fridge or up to one year in the freezer. Freeze it in Ziploc bags for easy storage.

How To: Dice an Onion Like a Pro

Do you ever watch cooking competition shows like Top Chef, Chopped, and Iron Chef and get really jealous of their ninja-like knife skills? I DO! The chefs on these shows move their knives with such precision and speed, creating uniform cuts of various ingredients, it seems they could dice a pound of potatoes blind-folded! I feel better about my tortoise-like-by-comparison knife skills when I think of the many hours of repetitive movement, hand cramping, and boxes of band-aids the chefs had to endure before reaching the skill level we see on TV. However, I do have some insider knowledge of how cooks and chefs chop so perfectly and I'm going to share them with you!

We will start with onions. I have a love/hate relationship with onions. I love eating onions: French onion soup, pearl onions in a stew, caramelized onions on a flatbread pizza, all of it is delicious! But I hate cutting them. I dread cutting them. I've tried holding a matchstick between my teeth, wearing glasses, all of the old wives' tales that supposedly keep you from crying your eyes out. They don't work. In the end, I've found it best to fight through the tears and eagerly await the final product. It's always worth it in the end!

Now, the lesson! Remember what I said earlier, no chef began chopping onions at lightening speed. It took years of practice and undoubtedly a few cuts to their fingers along the way. Practice makes perfect, so be patient with yourself.

First, some onion anatomy. An onion has two ends; the hairy root end and the pointy grow end.

Remove the outer paper-thin layers.

Cut the onion in half through the root end. You should have some of the hairy root end on both halves of your onion. This is very important! The root will hold the onion together while you make the various cuts.

Place the onion flat-side down on your cutting board. Pressing firmly on the top of the onion with your free hand, make 3-4 horizontal cuts across, but not completely through, the onion. 

Rotate the onion one quarter turn toward you so the root end is facing away from you. Make 3-4 vertical cuts perpendicular to the cutting board all the way through the onion.

At this point, your onion should look like this with horizontal and vertical cuts. Now, prepare to feel like a Top Chef!

Rotate your onion one quarter turn away from you. Keeping your fingers out of the way, make vertical cuts through your onion. Start at the grow end and work your way toward the root end. Watch as the diced onion pieces fall uniformly onto your cutting board!

Now, sometimes you will want a large dice and other times you'll need to finely dice your onion. The more horizontal and vertical cuts you make, the smaller the pieces in the final product. This method is faster (less exposure to the onion=less crying!), creates a more uniform cut (no struggling with smaller pieces burning while larger pieces need more time to cook), and makes you feel like a professional (move over Bobby Flay!)

Knife Skills: Chopping, Fanning, & Mincing

It is said in kitchens, your #1 tool is your hands followed by your #2 tool, your chef's knife. I feel that this rating system is extremely unfair to my long-suffering Kitchen-Aid mixer, but I still believe it is important for every cook to have a basic knowledge of knife skills. This way, when you run into a recipe with an ingredient that says 2 tsp. minced, or 1/4 cup chopped, you'll know just what to do!

Chopping is a rough cut that simply means to break into smaller pieces. To chop things for baking, chocolate chips, dried fruit, candies, etc, I resort to the fanning method.

To begin, gather the item to be chopped on a cutting board. Keeping one hand on the knife handle and the other on the top of the knife point, raise up and cut down repeatedly. This is before position (A)....

and this is the after position (B). Repeat positions (A) and (B) sweeping knife in a fan shape from left to right across the chips, fruit, candies, etc.  Fanning. No problem right? Now onto mincing.


Mincing is a very small cut made by slicing the item into julienne strips then further slicing the julienne strips into small minced squares. The minced item is this demo is crystallized ginger. Here we go!

Slice the ginger into small strips keeping your fingers OUT OF THE WAY. This cut is called a julienne. It creates spears or strips out of whatever you're slicing. Gather the julienne strips together, and turn the bunch 1/4 turn clockwise. 

Using your knuckles as a guide, slice repeatedly, creating tiny squares of ginger, until you have reached the edge of the julienne strips.

Now you have a bunch of tiny squares. If you need to make something smaller yet, simply fan your knife a few times through the minced squares.

 

It's always important to remember that your julienne cuts, minced cuts, etc do not need to be perfect. You're going to be mixing these into a batter and blasting that in the oven, so if your cuts are not identical, don't worry about it. If the recipe is delicious, your eaters will forgive you.