Orange-braised Celery

Even before I challenged myself to eat as locally as possible during the winter months, I favored the fruits and vegetables of cold months, eschewing zucchini and eggplant and tomatoes as summer fare. Citrus and celery fall into the chosen group. Citrus is obvious since it is abundant in the south. Celery maybe is less obvious, but on my list because of its association with carrots and onions (good keepers), as the aromatic base for European dishes. Celery, however, is one of the “dirty dozen,” foods most likely to retain – and therefore transmit to us – pesticides that treat them. As a result, I buy only organic celery, choosing mostly to rely on the Asian celery perennial in my garden for broths and on the (way too tough) stalks that are harvested (sometimes) from our CSA.

 All that said, I can’t resist a winter braise of Pascal celery, since cooked celery is a family favorite. While I normally braise celery on top of the stove, I chose the oven because the celery takes some time (over an hour) and I didn’t have the patience to babysit it. After washing the celery (it harbors dirt) and cutting the stalks to fit a buttered roasting pan, I chopped the tender tops and leaves along with some onion and sautéed them lightly in butter. I added the juice of an orange and a teaspoon of orange zest and let the liquid reduce. In went chicken broth, halfway up the volume of the celery stalks. Covered with foil, it baked in a slow oven until tender, over an hour! I cranked up the heat and topped the celery with coarse breadcrumbs tossed in orange zest, celery leaves, thyme and butter, to form a crispy crust. This had great textural and flavor contrasts. The silky and almost unctuous celery was sparked by the addition of the orange, an antidote to what promises to be a damp and chilly evening.

You might notice that I added no salt. Celery is naturally high in sodium so I didn’t feel the need. The next time I make this, I might add chopped black olives cured in oil to the topping. 

Orange-braised Celery

About 6 inner stalks of celery

Butter

1 small or half a medium onion, chopped

Zest and juice of 1 orange

About 1/3 c chicken broth

¼ tsp dried thyme

½ c coarse fresh breadcrumbs

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Butter a small casserole dish such as an oval Le Creuset enameled cast iron pan. Wash the celery well and remove any tough strings. Cut the base of the stalks in lengths to fit the pan. Chop the tender tops, including the leaves. Set about a tablespoonful of leaves aside.

Saute the onion and chopped celery in butter until translucent. Add the orange juice and half of the orange zest, adding the other half to the reserved celery leaves. Let the orange juice reduce in the pan, and add 1/3 cup of chicken broth to warm it. Pour the liquid and vegetable mixture over the celery stalks, adjusting the liquid so that it comes about halfway up the sides of the stalks. Cover the pan with foil and bake in the oven for about an hour. Check the tenderness and continue to cook until the stalks are tender but not falling apart.

Increase the oven heat to 425 degrees. Sauté the breadcrumbs in a little butter and toss them with the reserved celery leaves, orange zest and thyme. Spoon over the top of the celery and bake until the breadcrumbs are brown and crispy, about 7 minutes.

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Dark Days 15 Vegetarian Challenge: Pumpkin Polenta with Kale

A continuing series on weekly meals that use sustainable, organic, local and ethical food during the challenging winter months. For more information, go here to the DDC section of Not Dabbling in Normal’s website: Dark Days Challenge.

In which I serve a satisfying pumpkin polenta on a bed of kale, another in a series of vegetarian winter meals

My discovery of cornmeal from Cayuga Pure Organics, the same outfit that supplies dried beans to our neighborhood organic food market, has opened new doors for the Dark Days. Since corn can readily be grown here and in many other parts of the country that don’t support other grains like wheat, grist mills used to dot many local landscapes. It will be interesting to see what happens with the resurgent interest in growing and processing grains locally.  I’m thinking about growing some corn myself next season, but obviously not in my shady in-town yard. Alternatively, since I may take a road trip to western New York in the fall, maybe I can visit Cayuga and stock up.

For this meal, instead of making plain polenta from cornmeal and water, I used an Italian method of cooking the cornmeal in milk and pureed pumpkin, which I read about in Sylvia Thompson’s Kitchen Garden Cookbook, the companion volume to a gardening book that I am consulting while I plan my own kitchen garden.  Planting will start in a couple of weeks!

This couldn’t be simpler to make, but you do have to plan for the two-hour baking time.  Basically, you stir cornmeal into pureed pumpkin, add milk and spoon the mixture into a baking dish. Sprinkle with onions sautéed in a little olive oil and bake it in a slow oven.  You can add grated cheese on top at the end, or not.

I was pleased to use up some of the large volume of pumpkins and squash that I still have from the fall, and I found a volume of fresh greens at a Slow Food winter indoor farmers’ market.  A local organic farmer has been growing kale and other greens in an unheated hoop-house all winter, with great success.  As we heard at the winter conference of the Northeast Organic Farmers Association, this is an increasingly popular way of growing and farmers are lining up to apply for aid to serve local communities. I’m all for that.  

Pumpkin Polenta adapted from Sylvia Thompson

1 c pumpkin puree

½ c coarsely ground cornmeal

½ tsp salt

1 c milk (I used non-fat)

Butter or oil for the pan

1 onion, finely chopped

1½ tsp olive oil

1 tsp finely chopped rosemary

Optional: finely grated hard cheese, such as Parmesan

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Combine the pumpkin puree, cornmeal and salt. Gradually add the milk and spoon the mixture into a buttered or oiled baking dish (with 4-6 cups capacity).

Cook the onion slowly in the olive oil until translucent, adding the rosemary toward the end. Spoon over the pumpkin-cornmeal mixture.

Bake for 2 hours until golden brown. Remove from the oven and top with the grated cheese.  Serve immediately (best) or refrigerate and reheat in the oven.

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Red Cabbage and White Bean Soup

Comforting flavors for a cold and blustery day, an old standby adapted pretty liberally from Marcella Hazen’s The Classic Italian Cookbook. That’s another book that I quite literally cooked my way through, looking for authentic Italian recipes and methods.  The first few times I made this, the beans and sausage turned an alarming shade of violet, like the red cabbage. “Purple” meat was really questionable but the soup’s flavor is so good that it’s worth keeping in the repertoire. Add the beans and the sausage if you use it, just before serving. The piney flavor of the rosemary was a good counterpoint to the richness of the melted cabbage, beans and meat. I used dried beans that I cooked, but canned beans would also work.

Red Cabbage and White Bean Soup inspired by Marcella Hazen

1 or two slices of slab bacon or salt pork, cut into ¼-inch dice

Olive oil

1 small onion, chopped

1 stalk celery, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 small head red cabbage or ½ medium head (about 1 lb), coarsely shredded

½ c homemade tomato puree, 1 medium fresh tomato, chopped or 2 canned tomatoes, chopped

2-3 c chicken or beef stock (include some bean broth if available)

Salt and pepper

½ tsp chopped fresh rosemary

1–1¼ c cooked white cannellini or kidney beans

Optional: 1 mild Italian sausage, skin removed, meat crumbled and browned

Parboil the bacon or salt pork, drain it and let it cool. Put a teaspoonful or so of olive oil in the stockpot and slowly cook the bacon until light brown. Add the onions and celery and cook until translucent. Add the garlic and stir to cook for a minute. Add the cabbage and toss, cooking, to wilt slightly. Add the tomatoes and liquid and a little salt and pepper, cook, covered, over very low heat for 2 hours. You can make the soup ahead to this point.

When ready to serve, add the rosemary and bring the soup to a simmer. Add the beans and sausage if using. Adjust the seasonings.

Serves 4.

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Lentils with Sour Cherries, Bacon and Blue Cheese

Bursting with sweet, sour, smoky and salty flavors, this salad is a riff on a delicious-sounding recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi (The Cookbook), I used my home-pickled sour cherries instead of his dried cherries, vinegar and sugar. A new crop of cherries is still months away, but I’m already plotting what to make with them based on the contents of my pantry.  The cherries are wonderful by themselves, served alongside a pate or rillettes, as I did with duck around the holidays.

 But what to do with the juice? It is too good to throw away. You can combine it with seltzer water, making a “shrub” to drink, which is probably what will happen after the cherries are consumed. Here it’s used as the basis for a salad dressing that infuses warm lentils with great flavor before they are combined with local smoky organic bacon and some local blue cheese that I bought last weekend at a Slow Food winter farmers’ market. Tossed with baby spinach, this could be a complete meal, although I garnished ours with a cube of pan-roasted wild salmon.

 The dressing starts with cooking chopped shallots in olive oil until light brown. To that, I added pickled sour cherry juice and chopped cherries and cooked it down a bit.  I thought it would be a little too sweet so I added a splash of red wine vinegar.  Ottolenghi’s version used dried sour cherries, red wine vinegar and sugar.  He also used a much greater proportion of bacon and cheese than I did.

Lentils with Sour Cherries, Bacon and Blue Cheese adapted from Ottolenghi

¾ c organic French lentils (such as Puy)

1½ tbsp olive oil

1 shallot, peeled and finely chopped

¼ c juice from pickled sour cherries (or 2 tbsp red wine vinegar and 2 tbsp water)

2 tbsp chopped pickled sour cherries (or chopped dried sour cherries and 1 tsp sugar)

Salt

Red wine vinegar

1-2 pieces of smoked bacon, cooked and drained

2 tbsp creamy blue cheese

Freshly ground black pepper

Handful of spinach leaves

Rinse the lentils and place them in a pot, covered with twice the depth of water. Simmer for about 20 minutes until tender but not falling apart. Drain the lentils and toss with the warm dressing and set aside to cool.

Make the dressing while the lentils are cooking. Slowly cook the chopped shallots in olive oil until light brown. Add the pickled cherries and juice (or red wine vinegar, water and dried cherries) and cook slowly until slightly reduced.

When ready to serve, taste the lentils and adjust the seasonings with a little salt (remember that the bacon and cheese will add salt) and a splash of red wine vinegar. Cut the bacon and cheese into pieces and add to the lentils, along with freshly ground black pepper. Add a handful of spinach and toss. If too dry, add a little oil and vinegar or cherry juice.

Serves 2 as a meal or 4 as a side dish.

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Dark Days 14: Hungarian Pork and Sauerkraut Goulash

A continuing series on weekly meals that use sustainable, organic, local and ethical food during the challenging winter months. For more information, go here to the DDC section of Not Dabbling in Normal’s website: Dark Days Challenge.

In which I make a spunky Hungarian goulash and learn how to make homemade sour cream…

This has been on my list for the Dark Days from the beginning.  However, because the fall growing season was so compromised by the August hurricane that put whole fields of cabbages under water, I didn’t make my usual sauerkraut out of produce from our CSA. This weekend, I bought local kraut from an Amish farmer and re-created this old standby. This is a delicious meal, a traditional Hungarian stew, sometimes referred to as Szekely Goulash, after its place of origin, the southern region of the country. The first time I tasted it was at a professor’s house during graduate school, and I was surprised at how gutsy his wife was to make this. I grew up eating sauerkraut but few of my classmates did, not to mention that some probably didn’t eat pork. Besides, the professor taught Italian art and architecture, so this was a culture shock.

I like this goulash for Dark Days meals since it hails from a country that has a real winter, much like we do here. The goulash presented a couple of challenges for the Dark Days, however. One was the inclusion of green pepper. At the end of the fall, I had frozen some de-seeded poblano peppers and green bell peppers without blanching them first. I tossed them in their frozen state onto a baking sheet set in a 400-degree oven. They charred up perfectly. These were much better than the ones I blanched before freezing. Check! Mental note for next year.

The second challenge was sour cream, an essential ingredient to smooth out the flavors of the sauerkraut. This was a complete experiment, and worked out reasonably well. I added ¼ cup of local organic yogurt (with active acidophilis and bifidis) to1 cup of local organic heavy cream and heated it to 100 degrees. I let it sit in a covered heatproof glass cup next to the pilot light on top of my (ancient) stove for 24 hours. It probably maintained a temperature a little over 100. The mixture became coagulated and soured perfectly. It was a little runny for my taste so I drained it.

The third challenge turned out to be more problematic: ground dried paprika. Using store-bought paprika is in-bounds for my Dark Days rules, but I had hopes that the red peppers that I dried in the fall would include some that could be ground for the purpose. Though I used a little of my stash, most of it was too hot. I have been ordering seeds to plant this summer, which include sweet peppers that supposedly make great paprika.

This recipe has evolved over years, and I’m looking forward to this next experiment.  I served it with potatoes that I boiled, cooled, skinned and cubed before sautéing them in duck fat.

Hungarian Pork and Sauerkraut Goulash

1 pound pork stew meat

1 thick slice slab bacon, preferably unsmoked, cut into ¼-inch dice

1 large onion, chopped

1 green bell pepper or a combination of poblano and green bell peppers, chopped

1 large clove garlic, chopped

1 tbsp paprika

1/3 c home-canned tomato puree (or 1 medium fresh or canned tomato, chopped)

1/3 c water

3 c sauerkraut

1 tsp caraway seeds

¾ c sour cream

Optional: 2 tbsp flour

Trim fat from the pork stew meat and cut into 1-inch cubes. Slowly render the bacon in an ovenproof pot or small Dutch oven. Pour off all but 2-3 teaspoons. Add the onions and cook slowly until translucent. Add the green pepper and garlic and cook for a few minutes. Add the paprika and stir to combine for a minute. Add the tomato puree or chopped tomato and water. Simmer, covered, at a very low temperature on top of the stove or in the oven for 50-60 minutes, or until the meat is very tender. The goulash can be made ahead to this point.

Meanwhile, drain the sauerkraut, reserving the liquid, and rinse it. Drain the sauerkraut for a few minutes and add it to the meat mixture. Simmer for 20 minutes. The goulash could be made ahead to this point also.

When ready to finish the dish, preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Add the caraway seeds and sour cream (combined with flour if using) to the goulash.  Caraway seeds are added at the end since they become bitter if cooked too long. Adjust the sourness by adding some of the reserved sauerkraut juice, to taste. Some recipes say to eat it at this stage, but I prefer to bake it.

Place the goulash in a shallow baking dish (or leave it in the Dutch oven) and bake for 30 minutes or until bubbling. Let sit for 10 minutes before serving.

It can be served with noodles, potatoes or carrots, or just as is.

Serves 4-6.

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Seafood Chili

This is the season of the dried bean. Soups, stews, chilis and chowders, and even a few salads and sides have benefitted from the addition of these nutritious legumes. That’s how this seafood chili originated. I had cooked the last of Rancho Gordo Yellow Indian Woman beans that we brought back from the famed San Francisco Farmers Market, and I thought that their color, size and flavor would complement a seafood chili. I rescued organic yellow and red peppers from the local market’s markdown bin and used up the odd amounts of stocks and broths – including the bean broth of course – as the liquid.  The chili base can be made ahead, which improves its flavor. The seafood goes in at the last minute.

As an accompaniment, I “toasted” whole corn tortillas in the oven with a little olive oil and salt, and cut them into quarters for scooping up the delicious chili.

Seafood Chili

One or two ¼-inch thick slices salt pork or bacon, but into ¼-inch dice (1/3 c)

Splash of water

1 large onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 red Bell pepper, chopped

1 yellow Bell pepper, chopped

1 tsp whole cumin seed

1 tbsp paprika

½ tsp cayenne pepper

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1/8 tsp ground allspice

1 pint homemade tomato sauce (or 1 large can peeled whole Italian tomatoes, buzzed in blender)

1-2 c combination of chicken stock, fish stock, bean broth and water

1 c cooked red or yellow beans (I used Rancho Gordo Indian Yellow Woman Beans)

½ lb bay scallops or sea scallops, quartered

½ lb whole fresh medium shrimp, peeled, deveined and roughly chopped

Salt and red pepper

Cilantro

Slowly render the salt pork or bacon in a little water and cook until crisp. Spoon off all but one tablespoonful of fat. (You can remove the brown bits and add them later or keep them in the pot.) Add the onion and cook until translucent. Add the garlic and peppers and cook until the peppers start to soften. Add the spices and stir to combine.  Add the tomatoes and chosen liquid and simmer for 20-25 minutes. Add the beans and cook for 15 minutes. The chili can be made ahead to this point, which improves its flavor. When ready to serve, bring the chili to a simmer and add the seafood, cooking for only for a couple of minutes. Set aside to cool slightly. Adjust seasonings. Serve garnished with cilantro.

Tortilla Crisps

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place corn tortillas on a baking pan, Brush lightly with olive oil or other vegetable oil, and sprinkle with salt. Cook until lightly browned on one side, 3-4 minutes, and flip, cooking just for another minute until crisp but not overly brown.

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Waste Not Want Not: Using Bean Broth

Stewing pots of dried beans and chickpeas and lentils all winter yields nutritious legume broth that is simply too good to pour down the drain. I save it for soups and stews including shellfish chili that I made on Super Bowl Sunday.

Here, with some leftover cooked red beans from Cayuga Pure Organics, a regional source, I decided to use the beans and stockpiled broth to made delectable bean soup. I had a small section of smoked ham hock in the freezer that went into the pot, along with a chopped onion and garlic.  After stewing all of the ingredients for a while, I lightly pureed the soup, leaving it slightly chunky and adding little bits of meat from the hambone.  You could make this with canned beans, adding vegetable broth or a meat stock, and use bacon or smoked ham instead of a ham hock.

Red Bean Soup

1 onion, diced

1 tsp vegetable oil

1 clove garlic, minced

1½ c cooked red dried beans

2-3 c bean broth or a combination of bean broth, vegetable broth, meat stock and/or water

1 small piece of smoked ham hock (or diced smoked ham or slightly cooked bacon)

Salt and pepper

Herb garnish (cilantro or parsley)

Gently cook the onion in vegetable oil until translucent, add the garlic and cook for a few minutes more. Add the beans, liquid, and ham hock and bring to a simmer. Cook, partially covered, for 30-40 minutes. Remove the ham hock and cut the meat from the bone, dicing it into very small pieces. Set aside. Puree the soup, leaving it somewhat chunky (or make it smoother if you prefer). Add the diced pieces of ham, season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve hot, garnished with cilantro or parsley.

Cooking Dried Beans

The conventional wisdom about cooking dried beans is to soak them overnight in ample water to cover, which hydrates them. Some add baking soda or salt but I do neither at this point. When ready to cook the beans, drain the water and add new water to cover the beans by at least an inch. They will continue to swell as they cook. Bring them to a simmer on the stove, using a flame-taming disk. Turn the heat as low as possible and let the beans cook, covered for 1-2 hours, checking partway through to make sure that there’s adequate water and to check for tenderness. Different beans cook for different lengths of time, depending on their type and their age.  Alternatively, you can cook them in a Dutch oven or other heavy pot in a 250-degree oven for a couple of hours. In the fall when dried chickpeas come into the markets, I find I can skip the overnight soak and cook the beans entirely in the oven, starting with a cold oven and heating it to 250 degrees. The beans are typically fully cooked in an hour or an hour and a half.

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Dark Days 13: Root Soup with Cheese Wafers and Slaw

A continuing series on weekly meals that use sustainable, organic, local and ethical food during the challenging winter months. For more information, go here to the DDC section of Not Dabbling in Normal’s website: Dark Days Challenge.

In which I make a garnished root soup that combines hominess with sophistication…

I need to clean out my refrigerator. I have been hoarding (well that’s a little harsh)… storing … lots of roots from our CSA and local farmers’ markets since late fall, and it’s time for them to go. Even though the Dark Days Challenge asks for local, sustainably produced and preferably organic meals once a week, I’m quite pleased that I cook that way all week, with the addition of a few non-local items here and there. Those are mostly grains that simply can’t survive our climate when grown here. And citrus fruit of course, though we’re still working our way through the crate that arrived from Florida as a gift at Christmas. I’ve barely touched the pantry, which remains voluminous. Next challenge. 

This meal is an amiable, kitchen-sink soup that can be made with various combinations of root vegetables and various combinations of liquid, including chicken stock, vegetable or bean broth, or simply water.  I used a little of each. I tend not to “junk up” the soup by including too many base ingredients. Here I used onion, rutabaga, parsnip, celeriac, and potato…

To pep things up, I made cheese “crackers” by baking grated cheese – a particularly dry and nutty type from Cherry Grove Farm called Havilah – on parchment paper in a hot oven until crisp. I made a slaw of carrots and parsnip combined with frizzled leeks and dressed with local white port from Hopewell Valley Vineyard and Stony Brook Finger Lakes Butternut Squash Seed Oil. The slaw garnished the soup and also floated on cheese crisps. This was lovely, sophisticated and homey all at once.

Root Soup

1 medium onion, coarsely chopped

1 tbsp ghee, butter or vegetable oil

1 3- or 4-inch rutabaga, peeled and cut into ½-inch cubes

2 small parsnips or 1 medium parsnip, peeled and sliced

1 2- or 3-inch celeriac root, peeled and cut into ½-inch cubes

1 large potato, peeled and cut into ½-inch cubes

A few cups of liquid: chicken stock, vegetable and/or bean broth, water

Salt and pepper

Place the onion and butter/ghee/oil in a medium saucepan and cook until the onion is translucent. Add the remaining vegetables and stir to coat. Add liquid (of choice) just to cover the vegetable. Bring to a simmer, cover the pan and cook until the vegetables are tender, adding more liquid if needed. Puree slightly and thin to desired consistency. Season to taste.

Cheese Wafers

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Finely grate 4 oz of a semi-hard and flavorful cheese. Place in ¼-cup mounds on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 4-5 minutes until crisp and lightly browned. Remove from the oven. Let sit for a couple of minutes, and then remove to a plate to cool.

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Dark Days 12, Part 2, Valentine’s Day Challenge: Lemon Verbena Ice Cream, Cranberry Sorbet and Maple Candied Cranberries

A continuing series on weekly meals that use sustainable, organic, local and ethical food during the challenging winter months. For more information, go here to the DDC section of Not Dabbling in Normal’s website: Dark Days Challenge.

In which I pull out the stops to make an all-local delectable fancy dessert, much to my surprise

Happy Valentine’s Day! Getting ready to satisfy sweet expectations, I succumbed to the Dark Days Challenge to create a second all-local V-day dessert. The first one, a pumpkin flan, was totally in bounds for my challenge but did include a few non-local spices. This time, everything was sustainable, organic (as much as cranberries can be), local and ethical. I formed the ice cream and sorbet using cookie cutters so that my red and white presentation was perfectly themed. And oh so schmaltzy. All I needed was a rose between my teeth. But at this time of year, for this challenge, it would have to have been dried. Hmm. The photos don’t do this justice. The sorbets were the same exact colors as my antique plate from Holland . 

My husband’s first remark about the ice cream was to say that I cheated by using lemon juice. Not so, as he should know by now given the volume of lemon verbena tea that I consume. I infused milk with dried organic lemon verbena from our CSA and combined it with local honey, eggs and cream to make the base for a delicious ice cream. I had made this with fresh lemon verbena in the fall, which I prefer because I love its grassiness. But dried was perfectly fine and added a slightly different taste dimension. Definitely lemon.

Second, I still had local cranberries from the holidays, and saw some at a farmers’ market a couple weeks ago so I knew I could give my self a second chance if I blew it.  Most of the berries were combined with water and maple sugar from eastern Pennsylvania to make sorbet, which I spiked with local Tomasello Vineyards cranberry wine to cut any potential iciness in the sorbet. Finally, I candied cranberries in simple syrup made with water and maple sugar, coated in more maple sugar, and used them as a garnish.

Lemon Verbena Honey Ice Cream – Local Style

1½ c milk

½ c honey

1 c loosely packed dried lemon verbena leaves

4 large egg yolks

1½ c heavy cream

Warm the milk and sugar over medium heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Add the lemon verbena leaves and heat until the milk is nearly boiling. Turn off the heat and let the mixture steep for an hour.

Beat the egg yolks in a medium bowl.  Remove the lemon verbena leaves from the milk and discard the leaves. Reheat the milk. Add a little milk to the egg yolks, whisking or stirring to warm the yolks without cooking them. When the yolks and milk are combined, return the mixture to the saucepan and cook gently, over medium low heat, stirring, until custard forms and is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Meanwhile, place the cream in the bowl and put a strainer over it. When the custard is done, pour it into the cream. Let the mixture cool and refrigerate until well chilled.

Process in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Cranberry Sorbet — Local Style

2 c fresh cranberries

1/3 c water

1/3 c maple sugar

2 tbsp Tomasello cranberry wine (or 1 tbsp vodka)

Pick over the cranberries to remove any stems inferior berries.

Bring the water and sugar to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add the cranberries and cook them until they pop and turn into a puree. There may be a few skins in the mixture. Srt aside to cool. When cool, add the wine and refrigerate until well chilled.

Process in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Cranberries Candied in Maple Sugar

½ c – 1 c fresh cranberries

¼ c maple sugar

2 tbsp water

Additional maple sugar for coating

Pick over the cranberries to remove any stems inferior berries and place them in a shallow bowl.

Bring the water and sugar to a boil in a medium saucepan and cook until it starts to form a light syrup. Set it aside for a few minutes before pouring over the berries. (You don’t want the berries to split open from the heat.)

Set aside to cool and then refrigerate them for several hours or overnight. (This allows the syrup to penetrate the berries.)

Sprinkle additional sugar on a plate, drain the berries (save the liquid for the sorbet or for a sauce), and roll them one at a time in the sugar to coat. Set aside, not touching each other, on a plate, to dry for several hours. They will turn into slightly crunchy, almost hard candies. Store in an airtight container.

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Dark Days 12, Valentine’s Day Dessert Challenge: Pumpkin Flan

A continuing series on weekly meals that use sustainable, organic, local and ethical food during the challenging winter months. For more information, go here to the DDC section of Not Dabbling in Normal’s website: Dark Days Challenge.

In which I caramelize local maple sugar and bake a yummy pumpkin flan for dessert

Looking forward to Valentine’s Day, this week’s Dark Days Challenge is to make a special dessert from local ingredients according to the rules that we each set up in the beginning of the season. At first I thought this would be really hard, but it turned out not to be once I realized that I would use dairy ingredients and either local maple sugar/syrup or honey as a sweetener. I decided to make a pumpkin flan (with permitted spices) rather than a plain one since I needed to clean out my freezer and use up the pumpkin puree from the holidays.  I still have more fresh pumpkin and squash so I’ll be happy to have the freezer space.  Especially since I have another Valentine’s Day dessert coming up!

Pumpkin Maple Flan adapted from the Boston Globe online

For the caramel:

¼ c maple sugar

1 tbsp water

For the flan:

¾ c milk (I used non-fat)

¾ c heavy cream

½ c pumpkin puree

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp ground allspice

1/8 tsp ground ginger

Pinch of ground cloves

Pinch of salt

3 jumbo eggs

½ c maple sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place 4-6 ramekins, each holding ¾- to one cup, in a shallow roasting pan with 2-inch sides. Heat some water in a teakettle (which will be for the pan when you’re baking the flan). Place a small bowl of cool water and a pastry brush near the stove. Get all of the ingredients measured and ready, and set out the equipment.

First make the caramel. Place the sugar and water in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. As soon as it boils, stop stirring, but lightly brush the sides of the pan with water to prevent sugar crystals from forming. Swirl the pan a couple of times and cook until the caramel turns dark brown. This will take about 3 minutes for maple sugar, about 5 or so for white sugar. Immediately spoon the caramel into the ramekins. It will harden and may not completely cover the bottom before it does.

Make the pumpkin custard. In a saucepan, whisk the milk, cream, pumpkin, spices and salt and heat it just until it starts to bubble around the edges. Pour it through a fine mesh strainer set over a bowl, pushing down on the solids to push them through and create a smooth liquid (this is important if you have roasted your pumpkin and are not using canned pumpkin).

Whisk the eggs, add the sugar and continue to whisk until smooth. Add a little of the warm pumpkin mixture, being careful not to cook the eggs, and then mix everything together, beating well.  Spoon into the ramekins.

Place the roasting pan containing the ramekins in the middle of the oven and carefully pour hot water into the pan, to come about halfway up the sides of the ramekins.

Bake for 35-40 minutes until the custard is set but the centers are still wobbly. Remove the pan from the oven and let sit for 10 minutes before carefully removing the ramekins to a rack to cool. After they are cool, refrigerate them for at least 2 hours, or even overnight, before unmolding them to serve.

Makes 4-6 servings depending on the size of the ramekins.

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