EDF Cooking Contest--Pumpkin Challenge

[BK_]

Ron - Thats a nice looking skillet you have there. What kind is it? The desert looks tasty.

[Ron Burgundy]

It's a Le Creuset cast iron.

[Mermade]

Ron--Nice. By the way, I added bourbon to something I was cooking the other night and I must have been a little heavy handed. I tilted the pan to the flame (I have a gas range) and I almost lost my eyebrows. It looks like you've added ice cream to this, right? What kind? This is reminding me of cobbler. That's a good thing.

[Ron Burgundy]

It was vanilla ice cream.

Also, I used an heirloom pumpkin from Whole Foods. It didn't say what it was called, but the skin was white with orange vertical stripes. It didn't seem to taste any different than normal pumpkin.

[ElSapo]

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks. I should be asking you the same question though - yours came out really nicely this month.

But to answer your question, I use a canon rebel dslr with a tripod and reset the custom white balance every night. I just started using the tripod again recently and everything is coming out alot more crisp. The lighting sucks in my apartment for pictures and I use a crappy stock lens for food, but I guess the other things make up for it. I also have a 50mm fixed lens but I can't get the whole dish to stay in focus for some reason.

[/ QUOTE ]

White balance is probably a lot of it, actually. How's the lighting in your place? Seems really even and muted, but in a very appealing way.

(I'd ask these in the photo thread but (a) fot all the great photo pics they don't get posted there' and (b) food photography is a tough *!&^$@ of its own)...

[BK_]

My lighting is kinda dim and somewhat yellow. All of my lights have glass covers that mute the brightness a bit. The tripod keeps it from coming out too dark though.

[milliondollaz]

wow

just got back in the states, thanks for all the nice comments!

looks like my entry strength predicting ability is on par w/ my cooking ability. non-existant. mrs. utah even came in for this one, jeez, tough crowd.

mermade,

great choice w/ the pumpkin, it was the perfect ingredient to rile people up, nice job. also thanks for the encouragement!

[Greenbird]

Silky Coconut Pumpkin Soup





Pumpkin Tempura




Pumpkin Spice Bread Pudding







Recipes to follow.

[BK_]

All look good greenbird. Care to throw in some recipes or descriptions?

[SamIAm]

I never got around to making my Pumpkin Tasting. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] I chopped and cleaned and roasted and scraped all three pumpkins, but never got around to making pie out of 'em. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Luckily my wife used a lot of the whole pumpkin I had left to make the recipes above. I admit that I helped post her pictures in the forum, but otherwise I was merely her sous chef. BK, I think she'll post recipes and descriptions some time tomorrow; she wanted at least the pics posted tonight.

Here are my pics of the heritage breed pumpkins:

The blue-green is "Jarrahdale". The white is "Fairytale".The kinda orange one is "Long Island Cheese".



I cut all of them in quarters and gutted them. Even at this stage, I noticed real differences between the pumpkins. For instance, he Long Island was stringy, sorta like spagetti squash. The Jarrahdale was supposed to have more starch; when I picked it up, my butcher suggested that it'd be the best for something like gnocchi. When cutting it, it cracked, because the thing was so strong. You can see the texture in the quarters.









The seeds were really different, too. Just by appearance, the seeds were actually white, orange, and blue, respectively.



After roasting and scraping out the flesh, the orange is the soupiest, with visible strings. The blue is still pretty tough, and the white acted largely like a normal pumpkin.



Again, sorry I didn't make pie in time for the "contest". At least it provided good color variety for Greenbird's soup, and I'll get to pie sometime soon.