EDF Cooking Contest--Pumpkin Challenge

[pokah5]

the parfait looks delicious... i want one.

[Aloysius]

Iron Chefs - just wanted to chime in and say you guys are all killing it! Especially El Sapo and SamIAm.

[ QUOTE ]
Also, milliondollaz: you drink way slower than I. Maybe I have a problem...

[/ QUOTE ]

Haha, that video is great - also good to know I am not the only one who drinks while he cooks... (this is basically unavoidable though if what I cook involves wine or beer).

-Al

[SamIAm]

Candy: <font color="orange">Pecan Pumpkin Fudge</font>



2 C Sugar
1 C Half&Half
3 T Corn Syrup
1/4 t Salt
1/2 C Pumpkin
3 T Butter
1.5 t Vanilla
1/2 C Pecans

Boil sugar, half&half, syrup, salt, & pumpkin. Clamp the lid for a couple minutes to let steam run down the sides, catching any crystals that are stuck. Put in your thermometer and heat on medium till 232. At that point remove from heat and add butter and vanilla.

When cooled all the way to 120, toast and add the pecans. Stir like crazy, till mixture changes from shiny to sorta matte. Pour from pot into a prepped pan and let cool for another hour. When solid, remove the mass and cut with a pizza cutter.

Note that if you and your spouse have a standing rule about how you cook and they clean, this rule no longer applies. That pot is stuck.

I followed MillionDollaz's lead and videotaped the bubbling goodness. It's not stop-action, but I cut it down to 50 seconds. See below. (Mod powers FTW.)

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/JKBWI3qtbdc"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JKBWI3qtbdc" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

[pokah5]

lol i like the alton brown salt container!

[Mermade]

anisotropy--Excuses, excuses. Braised short ribs and pumpkin polenta sounds delicious! Please post about your meal crappy pics or no. We get lots of blurry photos and there are people here that can give comments just from the recipe.

[Mermade]

Sam--Could you taste the pumpkin in the fudge?

[SamIAm]

[ QUOTE ]
Sam--Could you taste the pumpkin in the fudge?

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, definitely. I think the pumpkin might have been the cause of my first two failures. (And believe me, they WERE failures. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] )



The first one burnt to a crisp. Maybe it was the pumpkin, or maybe that the heat was too intense, so it got too hot too quickly. The second batch I tried only using medium heat, but it started charring too, so I stopped it early. Instead of the gritty charcoal above, I got this sorta roasted jelly. Like black pumpkin snot! Yum!

Then I figured maybe the thermometer wasn't reading right. There's a little gap below the glass, so maybe with a big pot, the fudge didn't go high enough on the thermometer to register? Could the nastiness above be caused by way too high heat? Anyway, when I got a THIRD pot, this one much smaller, the liquid came up higher, and everything worked. There was still a bunch burnt to the bottom of the pan, but at least I got some actual fudge.

Anybody have experience with making fudge? Or candy in general? Is the last step always scrubbing the pan for hours?

[Mermade]

<font color="orange"> "Spaghetti" with Pumpkinball </font>

I intended this dish to be a play on spaghetti and meatballs, with none of the traditional spaghetti flavors, no spaghetti, and no meat. I only wanted to use pumpkin and squash.

I cut and cleaned one small pumpkin and one spaghetti squash.



I put a little water in a pan and cooked them in the oven at 375 until tender.

I loosened the spaghetti-like fibers of the squash with a fork.



I made a sauce of pureed pumpkin and hot red curry paste. Initially, I thought this would give the sauce a red color, but I quickly realized that the amount of paste necessary to color the sauce would make it inedible so I was sparing. The resulting color made the dish a bit monochromatic, which wasn't my original intention. I wanted then to add coconut milk to make the sauce smooth, rich, and slightly sweet, but I found I didn't have any in the cupboard. I made do with a bit of cream and some evaporated milk leftover from making the pumpkin pie. I topped it with one small ball of roasted pumpkin.



It was nice to use only one type of ingredient (squash) and play on the textures. There was the "al dente" spaghetti squash, the smooth pumpkin curry sauce, and the soft roasted pumpkinball. This was a fun experiment.

[Mermade]

<font color="orange"> Spicy Pumpkin and Beef Empanaditas </font>

I made some teeny tiny empanadas. I suppose you could call this an amuse. They were bite-sized. Of course, I made a whole plate of them and my son and I ate them all, so that wasn't in the spirit of an amuse. I guess it was more like a party appetizer since we wolfed them down like that. Anyway, I made a dough of butter, flour, salt, and milk. I combined it with a pastry blender and chilled it while making the filling.

I cleaned and peeled half of a small pumpkin. Then chopped it up along with some red and purple potatoes, garlic, onion, carrot, parsley, and thyme.



I chopped up some cubed steak and browned it. I then added the other ingredients. I added salt, pepper, crushed red pepper, cayenne pepper, and nutmeg. BTW, I REALLY liked what nutmeg did here. Overall, it was a good savory seasoning.



I rolled out the dough and cut it into small circles.



I filled the dough, shaping the empanadas into crescents. I pressed a fork along the edges and cut a small x into each one to vent steam. I brushed them with an egg wash and baked them at 350 until done.

[SamIAm]

Mermade, very cool! Sorry your sauce didn't turn out as red as you'd like, but the roasted pumpkin definitely saved it. Good call on the tri-texture squash. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

How do you make empanada dough? Do you chill it just so it's workable, or is it for a flaky dough when it's baked? About how much filling can you fit in a circle that size?

P.S. If you read the thread via email, you get a super-secret empanada picture. Mwah ha ha. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]