Pumpkin!

Is that my costume? NO! Pumpkin is the seasonal squash of choice at the moment. It is a very versatile squash, you can make both sweet and savory dishes with it, and if you use a real pumpkin you can roast the seeds for an extra treat! Although, I have to admit that I used canned pumpkin, as the recipe I was following called for it.
My first pumpkin dish I whipped up one night for Scott and some of his friends. Iced pumpkin cookies are a delicious cake-like pumpkin pie-esque treat, drizzled with my very favorite type of frosting: cream cheese. They were a hit with all the tasters, I will definitely keep his recipe and make it next year!

Iced Pumpkin Cookies Recipe
(courtesy of Gimme Some Oven, Allrecipes, and Saveur...yes, this recipe has made the rounds on the web!)

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves (**feel free to substitute 3 tsp. pumpkin pie spice instead of the cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves**)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 1/4 cup canned pumpkin puree
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 oz. cream cheese (I used 1/3 less fat)
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, and salt; set aside.

In a medium bowl, cream together the 1/2 cup of butter and sugars. Add pumpkin, egg, and vanilla to butter mixture, and beat until creamy. Mix in dry ingredients. Drop on cookie sheet by heaping tablespoonfuls; flatten slightly.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven. Cool cookies, then frost or drizzle with cream cheese frosting.

To Make Frosting: With an electric mixer, combine confectioners’ sugar, and cream cheese until smooth and creamy. Feel free to add in an extra teaspoon of cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice for flavor! Then you can either frost cookies with a knife, or drizzle with the help of a pastry bag and tip. (Or if you do not have a pastry bag, just fill a Ziplock bag with the frosting, squeeze out the extra air, seal, and then use scissors to snip a tiny hole in one corner, and squeeze carefully onto cookies.)

So now that you made these cookies, you have leftover pumpkin puree from the can. What to do? I got inspiration from my mom's facebook post about making a pumpkin sage soup, and decided to try that too (that and my sage plant outside was screaming: "It's fall, eat me!!"

Once again, I got my inspiration from Saveur.com. For those not familiar with Saveur, it is 1 of the 3 cooking magazines I subscribe to, thanks to my yearly xmas gift from my little brother. Saveur is not your average cooking magazine, it is full of food essays, visits to lesser known culinary hotspots (like a feature on food in Iraq), and of course, recipes. They also have a spectacular website. For those of you curious, the other food magazines I receive are Food & Wine (courtesy of my mother in law), and Food Arts (a professional industry publication, courtesy of Pam). So back to pumpkin soup, adapted from Saveur.com. This is a rich and robust soup, perfect for a fall dinner:

Pumpkin Soup with Sage
SERVES 6

For soup, almost any variety of pumpkin will do just fine—except for the common field pumpkin, or jack-o-lantern. The best ones, however, are small, sweet pumpkins like the green-and-white delicata. Butternut squash may be used as a substitute.

1 small (about 5 lbs.) pie pumpkin (or leftover pumpkin puree from cookie recipe)
4 tbsp. olive oil
6 tbsp. unsalted butter
2 medium onions, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
4–6 cups Chicken Stock
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
9 shallots, peeled and halved lengthwise
18 fresh sage leaves
2 cups vegetable oil

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Quarter and seed pumpkin. Rub flesh with olive oil and sprinkle with a few sage leaves, and bake on a baking sheet for 30 minutes. Set aside to cool. Or if using puree, put in casserole dish with a few sage leaves and roast for 30 minutes.

2. Melt 4 tbsp. of the butter in a heavy stockpot over medium heat. Cook onions and garlic in butter until translucent about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, scrape flesh from pumpkin and add to onions. Cook for about 5 minutes.

3. Add 4 cups chicken stock to pot and simmer for 30 minutes. Purée soup in a food processor until smooth, then return to pot.

4. Melt remaining 2 tbsp. butter in a small pan over medium heat, and cook shallots until golden and tender, about 15 minutes.

5. Fry sage leaves in vegetable oil until crisp. Drain on paper towels, then garnish each serving with 3 shallot halves and 3 sage leaves.

* I did not cook the shallots in all the butter, you only need a sliver if you want to make it healthier. I also did not fry the sage leaves, simply add them to the pan with the shallots at the last minute.

This article was first published in Saveur in Issue #3

******COSTUME HINT******

I'll be spicy this Halloween!