Pumpkin Gruyere Souffle

I have adapted this recipe from a recipe in The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook.  I bought this book about 15 years ago for side dish ideas.  This recipe is originally made by cooking Golden Nugget Squash, removing the meat and re-stuffing the squash to bake it.   It is very tasty and I will make it that way when the squash is available.  For now though, I found pie pumpkins are arriving in the produce section, so I used one.  I apologize the souffle fell before I photographed it (it rose to just above the rim of the souffle dish) but I an assure you this is a very tasty recipe.  Here is my adaptation.
Cut 1 Pie Pumpkin in half and and place it in a very large pot, fitted with a steamer basket and about 2" of water.  Cook over simmering water for about 20-25 minutes or until meat is tender.
While the pumpkin is cooking do a little prep.  Butter (all the way to the top) and sugar 8 individual souffle dishes.  Place them on a sheet pan.  Separate 3 Eggs, the whites into a bowl ready to beat and the yolks into a small dish for adding to the butter/flour mixture. Using a grater box, grate 1/2 Cup Gruyere Cheese.  Preheat oven to 415F.  To a medium bowl, scrape and mash the pumpkin, discard the skin.
Melt 4 Tbl of Butter over medium heat.  Add 3 Tbl Flour and stir for about 1 minute.  Gradually add 2/3 Cup of Milk, stirring to keep the mixture smooth.  Cook for another minute until the mixture is thick.  Remove from the heat.  Add the egg yolks 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.  Add grated gruyere and stir until it is smooth.  Add about 1/4 tsp Freshly Ground Nutmeg.  Add this to the pumpkin and stir until blended.  Using a hand mixer, beat egg whites until stiff.  Fold into the pumpkin mixture.  Add mixture to the souffle dishes and bake for 20-25 minutes or until puffed up and set.
Use a strong spatula to transfer each souffle dish to a dinner plate.  Warn your diners that the souffle and the dish are quite hot.  Delicious served with your fall favorites!

Fruit Smoothies

We make smoothies a lot, all year long.  I make them many different ways but here is the recipe for the smoothie shown.  Mango's are very inexpensive (around $1).  I love them in a smoothie.  This recipe makes two smoothies, one for me and one for my son.  To a blender, add 1 banana, 1 Mango, 5 Strawberries, 2 rings Fresh Pineapple, 1/2 Cup Milk, 1 Scoop Raspberry Sherbert, 15 Ice Cubes.  Blend until smooth and pour into glasses.

For non-dairy, use juice or a milk substitute.

Cutting a Mango

Mangos are tricky to cut.  Without this gadget, there is more waste than is necessary.  The pit is an odd shape and you have to know how it lays inside the fruit to know how to cut the fruit.  Using this handy gadget eliminates the mystery.




Set the Mango on one of the its ends.  Push down.  You will be left with 2 halves and what appears to be solid fruit but is actually the pit.  Discard the pit.




Using a sharp knife, score each half, making cuts spaced 1/2" apart, first in the lengthwise direction, then perpendicular to those cuts.  The skin has a concave shape.  Place your fingers on the outside of the skin and push upward to make a convex shape.  Run the knife along the inside of the skin releasing the cubes of fruit. Hopefully these pictures will help you.

Changed My Label System

You will notice a new look to the side bar labels.  My labels began to have too many cross references.  The labels are supposed to resemble an index in a cook book, however, there isn't a way to break down the labels to subsets.  For example, in a cook book you see 'Meat' broken down further into sub groups, for instance Chicken, Beef, Pork, Lamb, etc.  I like that system and am searching for a way to list my recipes in that fashion.  If it can't be done on this blog, I may move my blog to a location where that is an option.  Any feedback is welcomed!!  The comments section is open to all.

Bread Stuffing For Roast Cornish Game Hens

I am so ready for autumn.  Labor Day weekend marks the change from summer to autumn for most of the country... though not for SE Louisiana.  Being a New Yorker I still struggle with the extra month of summer.  Whenever we get a cloudy day during this time of year, I can't resist roasting something in the oven.   We have a tropical storm dropping rain on us so I decided to make a bread stuffing and roast Cornish Game Hens.

Here it is, Oct 2012, I noticed this post getting a considerable amount of hits in the past month or so.  I decided to re-read the recipe for exactness and found I never posted one!  I am sorry.  I know I have a few missing recipes, but I didn't know this was one of them.

As I mentioned, I am a Yankee, and if I am going to stuff a bird, these are the flavors I am craving.  Oh and we call it dressing, not stuffing.  Here in the south, you may be more apt to see a cornbread stuffing or even a rice of some sort served on the side that may have pulverized chicken and oysters or giblets.  I'll just leave it at that.  But if you come to my Thanksgiving table, you will see this.

My father is in charge of making the dressing at family gatherings.  He is an engineer and he has crafted multiples of the very old recipe (some 60+ years) to precise weighs and measurements.  I would be remiss if I didn't share that the recipe begins with the pouring of your favorite libation.  This task always begins following dinner on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Thursday.  I am a bit loser in my style except for the libations part. That is a strict ingredient. 

To some degree I tend to wing the ratios depending on what I am stuffing but in general I use the exact seasonings, just not in the exact quantities.   I save the heals of bread for either my own bread crumbs or for dressing.  Pull all of those bags out of the freezer.  Cube 12 Cups worth of Bread Cubes and place them flat on a sheet pan.  If more is needed, use fresh bread.  If this is done early in the day, they will get dry which is what you want.  Otherwise, this is done at night and allowed to dry out over night.

Clean, peel, and dice 2 Stalks of Celery.  Dice 1 Large Onion.  Melt 1 Stick of Butter over medium in a skillet.  Add vegetables and cook stirring often for about 10 minutes.  While they are cooking, measure out, 2 tsp Poultry Seasoning, 1/2 tsp Sage, 1 tsp Salt, 1/2 tsp White Pepper, 1/4 tsp Paprika, 1/4 Cup Freshly Chopped Parsley and add to the bread cubes.  In a small bowl, lightly beat 1 Egg.  Stir in 1/4 Cup Chicken Broth.  Add the cooked vegetables to the bread cubes and stir til combined.  Add the egg and broth and continue to stir.

Preheat oven to 350.  Fill the bird(s) with the dressing without packing it too tightly.  Coat the outside of the hens with 1 Tbl of Butter Each.  Salt and Pepper the outside.  As the butter melts, you will use this for basting.  If you plan to make gravy, Quarter a Small Onion and peel apart some of the layers and add to the roasting pan.  Roast for about 1 hour and 15 minutes basting every 15-20 minutes.

Let rest for 20 minutes before either carving or simply split down the middle in 2.  If there is any leftover dressing, foil line an oven safe dish and place the rest in there, then cover it by overlapping the foil.   This will bake for about 40 minutes in a 350 oven. 

So there you have it, pretty simple and a tradition that I plan to carry on.