Gorgeous Gourds

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Pattypan to Crookneck

Hello Cutie, You Look Delicious!

It’s been a pumpkin bonanza at the Berkeley Bowl for last few weeks. The entire front entrance has been crowded with huge boxes of pumpkins of all shapes and sizes. They even have a few giant pumpkins on display. I’ve been LOVING it, there is something really festive about that many pumpkins in one place. It puts me in an perfect autumn-y mood.

Every time I walk by the pumpkin display, I can’t help but pick up one of the baby pumpkins. I go to the Berkeley Bowl at least four times a week  (I live around the corner) so quite a few pumpkins have come home with me lately. Some of them are busy being adorable on my kitchen table but I’ve tried to cook the majority of the pumpkins that I’ve bought. Pumpkins are awesome because they easily lend themselves to either sweet or savory dishes. This is my second pumpkin recipe post, after writing about pumpkin pie a few weeks ago.  This time around I would like to share my recipe for savory pumpkin quiche.

This recipe for pumpkin quiche is my own rendition of a dish served by Gregoire Restaurant that I picked up while I worked there.  It is basically an egg quiche inside the hollow of a small pumpkin. When you eat it, you get a little scoop of the egg and a little scoop of the squash. Sounds delicious, right?

Pumpkin Quiche Ingredients:

• 3 baby pumpkins
• 5-6 eggs
• about 1/2 cup cream
• 1/2 cup oyster mushrooms
• 1/2 onion
• salt & pepper
• olive oil
• day-old bread

Step One: Preheat the oven to 350°F and clean the pumpkins. Slice each baby pumpkin in half, through it’s equator, and scoop out the seeds. Cut the stem off the top half of the pumpkin so that it can lay flat.

Step Two: Fill the bottom of a cookie sheet or baking dish with water. You don’t need much, just enough to cover the entire bottom. Place the pumpkins upside down in the dish and steam them in the oven for 15 minutes.

Step Three: While the pumpkins are steaming in the oven, sauté the mushrooms and onions in one tablespoon of olive oil for about five minutes or until the onions are translucent.

Step Four: After you remove the pumpkins from the oven, increase the oven temperature to 375°F. Flip the pumpkins over and place the sautéed mushrooms and onions in the bottom of the the pumpkin cavity. Slice the day old bread into small cubes and place them into the cavity along with the mushrooms and onions.

Step Five: Whisk the eggs and cream together along with the salt and pepper. Use 2 teaspoons of cream for every egg. You’ll have to use your judgement for how much custard you’ll need. If your pumpkins have a larger cavity, you’ll need more. If you’re using smaller pumpkins, you’ll need less. Pour enough custard into the pumpkin cavity to cover the bread, mushrooms, and onions.

Step Six: Brush the edges of the pumpkin flesh with olive oil and bake for 20-30 minutes. When the egg is set, the quiche is done!

This is one of my favorite fall dishes, I hope you have a chance to give it a try. Pumpkin quiche makes an excellent side dish for Thanksgiving, as well. In the past, I’ve made it with larger pumpkins that get passed around the table and you just take a scoop out for your plate.  If mushrooms and onions aren’t your thing, you can use any filling that you want. I’ve made sweet pumpkin quiche with cranberries and walnuts and a little brown sugar in the custard, and it turned out well. This is a good dish to improvise and experiment with and really make it your own.

Before I go, I just wanted to share with you the finished product of the cover for the Mauitime I mentioned in my Pumpkin Pie post. You can check it out on my website heatherdiane.com. It was a fun and successful collaboration with Justin “Scrappers” Morrison. I hope you have the chance to check it out! Have a great week, everyone!

Love,

Heather Diane

Garden Babies

I’m growing a little vegetable garden in front of my apartment. It’s a tiny little plot of earth that I hope will yield a little produce in the coming months. Even though the garden is only about 5’x5′ I’m trying to squeeze as much out of the little space as possible. I’ve planted tomatoes, squash, cucumber, green beans, green pepper, basil, and strawberries.

Today, I transplanted the green pepper, basil, and strawberries that I started from seeds into my garden. I felt like I was sending my kids to college. For the past 5-6 weeks they’ve been living safely in front of a window, indoors. But I today I sent them out into the big world full of snails and who knows what else that could wreak havoc on their tiny leaves. I’m being melodramatic but with such a tiny garden, it’s high stakes. Each plant counts!

This garden is a fun experiment. I don’t have a particularly green thumb and this is my first attempt at growing vegetables. I’m not one of those people that can kill a plant just by looking at it but I do tend to over water and make similar mistakes. When I was little, I tried to plant sunflowers every spring but none of them ever made it.  I would stand over them, in awe of germination and admire their little cotyledon leaves. Inevitably, I would end up petting the little fuzzy leaves. They were just so cute!  But I guess I didn’t pet very gently because I would always end up crushing them. My Mom thought this was hilarious and would have to explain to me through her giggles why my plants weren’t growing. When I told her recently I was planting a vegetable garden, the first thing she said was “Just try not to pet them to death.” I’m trying not  to let my expectations get too high. I am a novice gardener after all, I’m sure there will be mistakes to learn from. But I’m already looking forward to caprese salad with fresh basil and tomatoes, sweet strawberries and cream, and delicious and refreshing cucumber salads. Does anyone have good gardening tips for beginners like myself?

CSA Box

I recently became a member of a CSA (community supported agriculture) project with Full Belly Farms. Every week you receive a box of fresh, organic fruits and veggies and in turn you are supporting local farmers.  My first produce box came this week and I was so excited! I didn’t know what the box contained and after picking it up at the farmer’s market I rushed home to see what was inside. This week’s box contained butternut squash, celery root, leeks, red russian kale, oranges, cabbage, and walnuts. I couldn’t be more pleased. It was a great mix of old favorites and new (to me) veggies. I have to say, I’m hooked. The produce is delicious, it mixes up my diet, and you get that tingly (and slightly self-righteous) I-just-did-good-for-the-earth feeling for eating organic and local.

I’ve already dug in and ate much of what the box contained. So far, my favorite thing was the red russian kale. I cooked it with leeks, walnuts, and some golden raisins I had in the pantry. It was a delicious blend of sweet and savory. Here is the recipe in case you want to try it for yourself.

Red Russian Kale with Walnuts & Golden Raisins

• 1 bundle of Red Russian Kale
• 2 leeks
• 1/3 cup chopped golden raisins
• 1/3 cup chopped walnuts
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 tbs. olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste.

1. Chop the the kale stems, garlic and leeks and sauté in 1 tbs. of olive oil  for 5 minutes.
2. Add the walnuts and raisins and cook for a few more minutes.
3. Reduce heat and add the leaves of the kale and a few tablespoons of water and the remaining tablespoon of olive oil. Cover and steam for about five minutes.
4. Stir, cover, and repeat until the leaves are tender but not mushy.
5. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. By the way, if anyone out there has a good recipe for celery root or butternut squash, please let me know! This is the first opportunity I’ve had to cook celery root and I only have limited experience cooking with butternut squash, so I need some ideas. Be well and have a wonderful weekend!