Pumpkin season

For pottage and puddings and custards and pies,
Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies,
We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon,
If it were not for pumpkins we should be undoon.

--Pilgrim verse, circa 1630

Please please please don't waste your pumpkin by just using it for a candle holder: it is an edible and excellent food! I weep annually in this country for the pumpkins rotting in the fields on November 1st, when, as we must still repeat and repeat, there are people starving elsewhere in the world. Instead of meditating on such bad behaviour, why not reward yourself with a good meal of pumpkins? Such cheap food at this time of year, and easy to freeze as a puree.

Make your own equivalent to canned pumpkin from scratch, by baking it (like most squash it's watery, so needs to be baked: boiling or steaming it will get you into trouble). Seed and cut the pumpkin in half or big chunks, without peeling, and bake it cut side down on a lightly oiled baking sheet at 350 F for about 30-40 minutes, until the flesh is tender when poked with a fork. Cool until just warm. Scrape the pumpkin flesh from the peel. Either mash, or puree in small batches in a blender. Freeze it in 1 cup containers if you can't cope with anything more after all that effort.

• Make Pumpkin Soup with Toasted Sweetcorn from the blessed Delia.
• Serve it with some Banana Pumpkin Muffins or Curried Pumpkin Bread.
• Then have a Pumpkin-Pork Stew or a Lamb and Pumpkin Stew (or even a Vegan Pumpkin Stew) and/or maybe a Pumpkin Gratin,
• followed by some Pumpkin-Streusel Apple Cake or a Pumpkin Cheesecake on a ginger base or the amazing sounding Pumpkin Bread Pudding Brulee.

Potluck Capital of the World

Victoria seems to me to have an above average number of dinner parties of a potluck nature. (These are not to be confused with potlatch parties which are on another plane entirely and I have yet to receive an invitation to one.) For last weekend's event - in a largely vegetarian household - I was assigned a starter or salad course, so I turned to the infallible Delia for inspiration.

In my treasured tome Delia's Vegetarian Collection I found a winner in her Red Onion Tarte Tatin: the onions turn sweet and joyful, and the crust - a butter pastry which I've never had much luck with - even worked. Here are the ingredients, translated into North American measurements. Purists with kitchen scales (and those wanting photos and the recipe's instructions!) should turn to the original recipe. (There's a quicker variation, based on a shallot tarte tatin recipe, using commercial puff pastry, at Waitrose.com).

2½ lb (1.15 kg) red onions (about 5 medium)
2 tbsp butter
1 teaspoon sugar
6 small thyme sprigs
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
salt and freshly milled black pepper
For the pastry:
3/4 c white flour
2/3 c whole wheat flour
1/4 c soft butter
1/3 c cheddar cheese, grated
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves

And here's a ditty from Jonathan Swift to mutter as you cook:

This is every cook's opinion -
No savory dish without an onion,
But lest your kissing should be spoiled
Your onions must be fully boiled.

My next task will be juicing some of this year's apple crop - nothing nicer to dig out from a winter deep freeze than home made apple juice sweetened with summer carrots - but a lot of peeling and chopping ahead of me to get those apples into the juicer. So I was pleased and inspired to find a poem called Apples in a collection I've been reading (Saltations, by Jennifer Still - poet and co-founder of JackPine Press, which produces exquisite chapbooks).

Black beans and blind men

Nigella Lawson's How to Eat is, I discovered, the subject of a blog along the lines of the Julie/Julia project. I had received the book last year and thought it was time I cracked the cover and tried something. I happened to have a bag of black beans in the cupboard so I made South Beach Black Bean Soup. It was very good, particularly after letting it sit for a day and then adding a squeeze of fresh lime, some chopped coriander (cilantro) and a dollop of sour cream. Didn't have any red onion but might try it with that later. I did find myself yearning for heat, and the tabasco helped. But it seemed… wrong somehow to make black bean soup without chiles. Anyway, it's a good one for vegetarians and coeliacs.

I spent a little time today browsing The Poem, a spare and readable site, which describes itself as "a taster of contemporary poetry in Britain and Ireland." I enjoyed Christopher Logue's "Rat O Rat" - one of the little beggars just strolled along my fence the other day and gave me a haughty look - but the one that follows it "from New Numbers" is an amazing narrative gem.

Back to poetry

I've been preoccupied with food lately so time to think a bit more about poetry. My cyber scouts have been sending me interesting things to read, so I thought I'd share.

Mary felt I needed to know about the not-quite-yet-born Quarterly Journal of Food and Car Poems, from Washington state, which is seeking form poems for its first issue, and provides a nicely photographed sonnet to a steak for inspiration, as well as a handy list of links to Wikipedia definitions of allowable forms.

And Nancy has been reading the well-endowed (in the most fully figured meaning of that phrase) website of the Poetry Foundation, which is an excellent site and one I hadn't visited before. She also found an online version of the article on rhyme, meter, stanza and pattern that appeared in a recent issue Poetry Magazine, by George Szirtes.

And as for me tucked up with my million books on poetry, I was reading again a few comforting passages from my heroine Maxine Kumin's delightfully readable and charming collection of Essays on a Life in Poetry, Always Beginning. In a 1996 interview included in the collection, she was asked about the process of writing a novel on a typewriter, which she began using a very literal cut and paste method, so she had the first page scrolling across the room before she inserted her second page. She was asked if she thought computers had changed the surface or shape of prose, and she replied

"Oh I know it has...It's dangerous! It corrupts you in midpage because it's so easy to insert and delete that you take a lot of wrong turns... I'm not really comfortable yet with the computer. I use it for prose, a little warily, and then I print things out and make a lot of changes by hand, and then I go back and put them in."

Just so. I like to print poems out and write on them (with dates!!) so that I don't lose those speculative changes. I rarely go back to previous versions, but it can be helpful to have them if I get myself completely messed up. I find the Version Control feature in Word cumbersome and not really workable for me, but on the other hand, just pressing the Save button pretty much obliterates your editing history. Literary researchers of the future should have an interesting time of it.

Have a look at this site if you're interested in editing history; it shows four manuscript versions of Wilfred Owen's Dulce Et Decorum Est, and I seem to recall reading we don't know which was his own finished version, so in anthologies etc. you will find one or some variation on these. To view each draft full-screen, choose right-click a manuscript "button" (A, B, C, D) and choose Open Link in New Window.

Mary wanted to see what I was having for supper last night. It was a mushroom and artichoke quiche from the Steinbeck House cookbook. The crust is supposed to be made with crushed saltines and sauteed mushrooms and butter (chilled till firm), and then you put lightly cooked green onion and chopped canned (not marinated) artichoke hearts on the base, cover with monterey jack cheese and pour on the filling, made with eggs, cream and cottage cheese, pureed with cayenne and paprika.

Yogurt of the gods

While living in England I once said, only half in jest, that I would not return to Canada until they started selling Greek yogurt. Circumstances beyond my control made me break my vow, but I still think it was a good one to aim for. There is nothing like Greek yogurt. It is smooth and luscious and may be partly cream; the ewe's milk version is far milder and creamier than anything made of goat's milk. Traditionally it was made in porous ceramic pots which allowed the whey to leak out, leaving a thick yogurt, something between other yogurt and cream cheese. Greek varieties made with ewe’s milk contain about 5% milkfat, and cow’s milk yogurts contain 9% (as opposed to whole-milk yogurts in this country which have around 3.5%). You can try to make your own with this recipe. Fage Total Greek yogurt is my gold standard.

There is a legendary restaurant in London called Moro, serving Spanish and North African cuisine, and which has produced a couple of excellent cookbooks, first Moro: The Cookbook and then Casa Moro, which is mostly Spanish food. I have the first one, and in it I found a fabulous recipe for Leek and yogurt soup with dried mint. Lacking the Greek yogurt the recipe calls for, I used Jersey Farms 5% yogurt. Whatever you do, don't use skim milk yogurt if you're making this as it won't have the right silky texture. The egg and flour mixed with the yogurt stabilise it and keep it from curdling, but it will separate if you over-heat it. The caramelised butter (a lot like the black butter in my skate recipe) is important too, as it really adds something to the flavour, which is mild and elusive. Don't use fresh mint as it would be too.. minty. Here's a slightly modified version of the Moro recipe (to serve four):

1-1/2 tbsp butter
3 tbsp olive oil
2 large or 4 medium leeks, trimmed, washed and sliced thinly
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp dried mint
1 egg
1 tsp flour
1-1/2 cups (350g) good thick full-fat yogurt
2 cups vegetable or chicken stock
caramelised butter (2 tbsp butter heated slowly just until the white bits turn golden)
Salt and pepper to taste

Over medium heat, melt butter in olive oil. Stir in the leeks and cook for 10 minutes. Add the paprika and dried mint and continue cooking gently, stirring occasionally, until the leeks are soft and sweet. Meanwhile, whisk the egg with the flour until a smooth paste is formed. Add the yogurt and thin with the water or stock. Pour over the leeks and heat gently until nearly bubbling. When hot, remove from heat and drizzle with caramelised butter.

Better than a sandwich

Stuffed peppers are usually cooked, but a long time ago I had a relative of this excellent raw lunch/snack and here is my version, which will stuff two small/medium bell peppers. I recommend red or orange as I prefer the sweetness. Gets a bit gooey if it has to travel, but will survive reasonably well till lunchtime if you refrigerate it. Or you can pack the stuffing separately from the pepper and stuff it when you are ready to eat. It makes a good sandwich filling or spread for toasted English muffins too.

1 medium carrot (about 3/4 cup) grated
3-4 oz cheddar cheese (about 1 cup) grated
1 small green onion, minced (optional)
1/2 rib of celery (about 1/3 cup) diced
1/3 cup mayonnaise, or to taste: just enough to glue everything together
Salt and pepper to taste

An interesting side note about peppers. Bell peppers contain a recessive gene which eliminates capsaisin, the compound responsible for the ‘hotness’ found in other peppers. Capsaisin is the active ingredient in some topical analgesics used for arthritis treatment, such as Capzasin-P.

Caryl Churchill's play, A Number, is playing at the Belfry in Victoria at the moment. Her most famous play, Top Girls, is being broadcast on Saturday as the BBC Saturday Play. Worth a listen, and available for a week after broadcast.

Shriiink-wrapping culture & all about oats

So, the latest word is that the Cultural Section at Canada House is being 'restructured'; our previous five representatives in performing arts and music, film and television, the visual arts and literature, have all been made redundant. Two new appointments will be made in Public Affairs, with responsibility for the entire cultural program.

On the one hand it's a relief to know the program is not gone, but on the other hand, five experienced, well-connected and knowledgeable people have been jettisoned in favour of two new generalists. These are not interchangeable bolts that can be plugged in and out of a program, but dedicated employees taking their years of collective experience out the door with them. What a shocking waste.

Taking comfort in food and poetry then.

Madeleine sent me a stunning wee poem by Alden Nowlan, after we talked about the difficulties of making meaningful lives for our aged relatives. It's called Aunt Jane, and it begins…

Aunt Jane of whom I dreamed the nights it thundered,
was dead at ninety, buried at a hundred.
We kept her corpse a decade, hid upstairs,
where it ate porridge, slept and said its prayers.

Speaking of porridge, I was interested to learn when I lived in Britain that there the word is used to mean any hot cereal, almost always oatmeal. But here in Canada, or at least as I understand it, porridge means hot cereal made of rolled oats. Our understanding of oatmeal is different too: what Brits call oatmeal we might mistake for oat bran, as it's more finely ground than ours. And our distinction over use of the word porridge itself may be because we have so many commercially available hot cereals to choose from: Cream of Wheat, Sunny Boy, and my personal favourite Red River Cereal. Not to mention variations made with cornmeal, semolina and any combination of dried grains.

Continuing in this starchy vein, here's an easy and simple sauce for pasta or better yet gnocchi, my current favourite comfort food. In a roasting pan, drizzle 3 garlic cloves (not peeled) and 2 large shallots, peeled and halved or quartered, with a tbsp of olive oil and salt and pepper and then roast for 20-25 minutes at 400, turning often, till golden brown. While you're waiting, pan fry half a diced zucchini in olive oil till golden and set aside. Squeeze out the garlic and pop it with the shallots into a blender or food processor; whizz together with 1 large tin tomatoes with juices, 6 chopped basil leaves or 1/2 tsp dried basil, and 1 tsp balsamic vinegar. Sieve it so it's smooth, and heat gently in a saucepan for about 10 minutes, until slightly thickened. Add the zucchini; heat through, season to taste, add 1 tbsp olive oil and serve over hot cooked gnocchi or pasta.

Cauliflower and cumin

Two of my favourite things. Is cauliflower brain food because it looks like brains? And can one have too much cumin in one's life? So I was delighted to come across a quick and easy recipe for Cauliflower Soup with Toasted Cumin and Lime. With fresh lime juice, it puts, in fact, three ingredients I like all in one place. A wonderful smooth soup, very pretty and zippy. And it's vegetarian (if you substitute vegetable for chicken stock) and wheat free. I personally would be reluctant to lose the cream but you could omit it from a veggie portion and make it dairy free as well.

If you want to feel even better about eating it, try buying locally grown cauliflower if you can. Here's a clever site where you can log your Food Miles. Not only do you support local farmers, you cut pollution and transport prices, and get fresher food to boot.

Back on Epicurious there was also an intriguing little snippet about cooking an egg in a glass of vodka (who thinks these things up??)