Pumpkin Cheesecake

Ohmigosh, I feel so accomplished, or something, after successfully cooking a whole Thanksgiving dinner for 6 adults and 2 kids yesterday.  I made a turkey (of course, and it was my first ever,) stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, and cranberry glop for dinner, and for dessert I served an apple pie and pumpkin cheesecake (recipe below.)  I got this recipe from a woman I worked with a few years ago, swapping my families mondel brodt recipe for it, and I’ve been making it since (though with a couple changes worked in over time.)

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Ingredients (crust):

• 4.5 dl/ 2.25 cups Nilla Wafer or Graham Cracker crumbs
• 1 dl /0.5 cup chopped pecans
• 1dl/ 0.5 cup melded butter or margerine

Cook:

1. Preheat oven to 170’C /350’F
2. Mix crumbs, pecans, and butter together and press onto the bottom and up part of the sides of a spring-release pan.  It won’t go all the way up, and it won’t be perfectly smooth- no worries.
3. Bake 10 minutes before adding filling.

Ingredients (filling):

• 3 (200g/8oz) containers of cream cheese, softened
• 2dl/1 cup white sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3 eggs
• 2 dl/1 cup canned pumpkin (I actually altered this recipe here and used a small, softened, peeled, pureed, and strained fresh butternut squash.  But not everyone wants to go through all that effort.)
• Cinnamon, nutmeg, and/or clove to taste

Cook:

1. In a large bowl, mix cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla together until smooth.
2. Beat in eggs one at a time.
3. Remove about a third of the batter to another bowl and mix in pumpkin and spices.
4. Pour batters onto the crust alternatively and run through with a knife to marble.
5. Bake for about an hour.  The center will not fully set in this time.
6. Run a knife along the edge of the pan to loosen and refrigerate for at least 4 hours prior to serving.

-Ariel

Pumpkin Black Bean Soup (recipes from my mom’s cookbook)

Guest post from my mom =]  (Thanks)

I’m going to add that this recipe is delicious and has a bit of a tex-mex taste to it.

-Ariel

Hi there!  I’m Lin and I happen to be Ariel’s mother.  Currently Ariel and I are approximately six thousand miles apart.  Thanks to the internet the distance doesn’t really exist for us.  Like Ariel I very much enjoy cooking and baking.  My cooking style is a little different.  For starters I’m a vegetarian as is my son.  My husband is a meat eater.  My cooking reflects my household.  I tend to cook veg meals that go well with a simply cooked piece of meat or with the addition of grilled chicken or seafood.  Right now I am excited because canned pumpkin is finally in the stores.  I love to cook and bake with canned pumpkin.  My plan is to stockpile cans of pumpkin so that I’ll have plenty to last through the winter months.  In celebration of canned pumpkin I am sharing a favorite recipe Pumpkin Black Bean Soup.  It’s quick, easy and delicious!  For the meat eaters in your home feel free to grill some shrimp seasoned with cumin and pepper and add to their serving.

• 2 15 ounce cans of black beans drained and rinsed
• 1 medium onion chopped
• 1 red or green pepper chopped
• A few celery stalks chopped
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon chili pepper
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 4 cups vegetable broth
• 1 15 ounce can pumpkin puree (be sure it’s pure pumpkin not pie mix!)
• 2 teaspoons minced garlic
• Salt, pepper to taste
• ¼ chopped cilantro (optional)
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice (optional)

Saute onion, pepper, and celery in olive oil until translucent.  Add garlic and seasoning and sauté for another minute.  Add broth and black beans and bring to a boil over medium high heat.  Lower heat to medium and add in pumpkin puree.  Stir until well blended and simmer a few minutes.  Stir in lime juice.

When serving sprinkle fresh cilantro on top of the bowl.

This entire recipe takes about 30 minute’s total.  10 minutes prep time and 20 minutes cook time.  Enjoy

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

I had originally intended these to be pumpkin and walnut cookies, but the kids out-voted me.  I made this recipe for our Halloween ‘Boo’s’ (an American tradition I’m trying to bring to Denmark) out of salvaged pumpkin from the jack-o-lantern we made.  Its a soft-cookie recipe, very yummy, very Autumn-y.  Oh, and just to repeat myself yet again, my metric-US system conversions are not exact and the US version will be slightly sweeter as a result.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

• 150g /a stick and a half, butter
• 2 eggs
• 100g/ half a cup, white sugar
• 100g /half a cup, brown sugar
• 1tsp vanilla extract (or 2.5 tsp vanilla sugar)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• a pinch of salt
• 2 tsp cinnamon (and/or nutmeg, and/or clove, and/or pumpkin pie spice.  Whatever you like and/or is available to you.)
• 320g/2.5 cups, flour
• 25g /probably about a cup, finely chopped fresh pumpkin (for those of you not making jack-o-lanterns or otherwise cutting up pumpkins this year, canned pumpkin should be fine, though I would use less than a cup if using canned and US measurments.)
• chocolate chips

Cook:

1. Pre-heat oven to 170’C/350’F ish
2. Mix ingredients in a large bowl roughly in the order listed
3. Drop cookies onto a parchment lined or greased pan and bake 10-12 minutes
4. Cool on a cooling rack

Yields about 30 average-sized cookies.

-Ariel

What to Do with a Whole Pumpkin

What to do with a whole pumpkin (or what I did with one, at least.)

First, a tip on technique: always cut away from your hand.  Obvious I’m sure, and something that theoretically we all know, but that doesn’t seem to change that I now have four small cuts on my left hand =/  Also, I definitely recommend anyone who hasn’t cut a pumpkin before to watch this video first. It’s always easier when you know what you’re doing…

Anyway, the other day my host family came home with a medium-small sized pumpkin and a MASSIVE squash (seriously, this squash was impressive.  It rivaled my small pumpkin in size.)  I’ve gotten into the habit of doing my Tuesday chores on Wednesdays, so I had plenty of time yesterday to tackle the pumpkin.

After cutting it open, I separated the seeds, removed as much of the stringy bits, then separated the flesh from the skin.  And then I got to cooking.

Seeds:

1. Pre-heat oven somewhere between 375 degrees fahrenheit and 200 degrees celsius.
2. Remove all the stringy bits, rinse, drain, and remove excess water.
3. Toss in a bowl with enough olive oil to coat, salt and pepper to taste (generally I’m a minimalist, but other seasonings can be added to taste as well, of course.)
4. Spread on a lined baking sheet and bake until golden brown (approx 7-15 minutes.)

Flesh:

At this point I cut the flesh of the pumpkin into bite-sized pieces and separated into thirds.  One third for dinner (Autumn Harvest Thia Curry,) one third for pumpkin-banana bread, and one third for the freezer.  (These thirds are approximately 300g each, though the banana bread portion was larger.)  I made the bread first, so that it would be ready when the kids came home from school.

Pumpkin-Banana Bread

Ingredients

• 350g pumpkin
• 2 large bananas
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup or 1/2dl vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup or 2/3 dl honey
• 1/2 cup or 2/3 dl sugar
• 2.5 cups or 310g flour
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 3 teaspoons of seasoning (cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg, whatever you like.)
• raisins and/or walnuts (optional)

Cook:

1. Pre-heat oven to 170 degrees celcius or 350 degrees fahrenheit and grease a loaf pan (9×5 is what I used.)
2. Soften the pumpkin on the stove, in the microwave, or in the oven.  Puree by mashing through a strainer, sticking it in a blender, whatever.  Mash the banana too.
3. In a large bowl, mix the wet ingredients, then the sugar, then the dry ingredients.
4. Pour into loaf pan and bake 45 minutes to an hour.  It is done when a knife, stuck into the middle, is removed cleanly.  (For those who like things fully cooked, keep it in the full hour.)
5. Let it cool in the pan for a bit before removing to a wire rack.

Autumn Harvest Thai Curry

(Please note that other than the sauce, I have no idea if there is anything even remotely Thai about this recipe.)

Ingredients:

• 2 heaping tablespoons of Thai red curry paste (this may be too hot for some people.  If you like things very mild, start with one heaping tablespoon and add more to taste.)
• 14oz/400g coconut milk
• 2 tablespoons Thai oyster sauce
• A pinch of sugar
• approximately 300g pumpkin (or, 1/3 of a medium-small pumpkin)
• One regular sized squash
• One large red pepper
• One medium sized onion
• Vegetable oil
• Rice

Cook:

1. Cook rice according to package directions
2. Chop all vegetables into bite-sized pieces (they’ll cook faster and you don’t need a knife to eat them!)
3. Pour enough oil to cook vegetables in into a wok/large saute pan with higher sides/large sauce pan.  On medium-high heat cook the vegetables and Thai red curry paste for about 5 minutes, to allow them to soften.
4. Pour coconut milk in and stir.  Let this cook for about 10 minutes, then stir in the fish sauce and sugar.  (If you did not use all the red curry paste, taste now to consider adding more.)  Once the sauce is hot enough and the vegetables are soft-to-your-liking, it’s done!

The rice the I use takes 35 minutes to cook.  If I start the curry then I’m always done at the same time the rice is ready.  Pour the sauce over the rice and enjoy!

I froze the extra pumpkin and squash I had so that I could make this dish again.  One of the things I love about the curry sauce is that it tastes good all year round, is super easy, and can be adjusted to any vegetables in season or meats prefered.  Fantastic.  Tonight I’m thinking about Baked Potato soup (where did all these potatoes in the house come from?  We have nearly 6 kilo!)  I’ll post how it goes once I figure out what else is in the house to put into it.  =]

-Ariel