alexandra’s kitchen: Pumpkin Waffles, Bread Pudding

Friday, October 26, 2007

Pumpkin Waffles, Bread Pudding

Canned For The Sweets ... Fresh For The Savories
The Bulletin October 26, 2007

There’s nothing like gourd season to separate the purists and the pretenders in the kitchen. As I grew up indoctrinated with my mother’s culinary canons — chicken stock is made at home from real chickens, herbs and vegetables; salad dressing does not come from a bottle; homemade bread is simple to prepare; pie crusts are made only with butter; and the best burgers are made with freshly ground meat — I always considered myself a purist.

On Tuesday, however, I made the mistake of telling Sam Consylman, one of the farmers at the South and Passyunk Farmers’ Market, I had just made some pumpkin bread. “What kind of pumpkin did you use?” Mr. Consylman asked me. I paused. I knew what he meant. And as I looked around, I felt a sudden pressure, a collective stare emanating from the farm-stand table spilling with butternut, acorn, delicata, hubbard, kabocha and red kuri squashes. I sheepishly confessed: “Libby’s.”

“Oh man,” was all Mr. Consylman could say, his face twisting in disbelief, bordering on disgust. As he shook his head, he extolled the light texture and pure squash flavor of a real pumpkin pie, and he implored me to travel to Lancaster to taste one. I promised him I would.

I hope before winter squash season ends, I will get out to Lancaster, and I hope at some time, I do get around to making my own pumpkin pie from scratch. And in the meantime, I guess I’ll have to revise a little axiom of my own: Canned pumpkin for the sweets, fresh for the savories.

In the next few days: Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting, Thai Pumpkin Soup with Sweet and Salty Pumpkin Seeds, and Pumpkin Ravioli with Crispy Sage and Brown Butter Sauce.

Pumpkin Waffles
Serves 3 to 4

2 cups flour
3 tablespoons sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
1½ cups buttermilk
1 cup pumpkin purée
4 eggs, separated
1 stick butter, melted
1 tablespoon vanilla
powdered sugar, maple syrup and butter for serving

Preheat a waffle iron to hot and preheat the oven to 200ºF. Whisk together the flour, two tablespoons of the sugar, baking powder, salt and spice together. In a separate bowl, whisk the buttermilk, pumpkin, yolks, butter and vanilla until smooth. Combine wet and dry ingredients and mix only until just blended. Beat egg whites with an electric mixer until soft peaks form. Slowly add the remaining tablespoon of sugar and beat until glossy peaks form. Stir one-third of these egg whites into the batter to lighten, then gently fold in the remaining whites. Ladle into heated waffle iron and cook until crisp and golden. Meanwhile, place a cooling rack on top of a cookie sheet. As the waffles come off the iron, place on the cooling rack and place pan in oven to keep warm until all the waffles finish cooking (the rack keeps the waffles from getting soggy on the bottom).

Pumpkin Bread Pudding
Serves 8

1 baguette or loaf of white bread, cut into one-inch cubes, preferably cut and left to stale overnight
¾ stick (6 tablespoons or 3 oz.) of unsalted butter, melted
3 eggs, lightly beaten
3 cups whole milk
½ teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon kosher salt
¾ cup pumpkin purée
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Place cubed bread in a bowl and pour the melted butter over top. Toss to coat, then transfer to a baking dish such as a 9x12 glass baking dish or any other similarly shaped vessel.

In a separate bowl, whisk eggs, milk, vanilla, salt, pumpkin, sugar and spice together. Strain mixture then pour over the bread in the baking dish. Bake for 55 minutes to an hour. When pressed gently, mixture will feel slightly jiggly but set.

Let cool 15 minutes before spooning into bowls and sprinkling each with powdered sugar.

The Eggmobile

The eggmobile houses laying hens. It follows the herd of cattle, arriving to grass they've grazed on four days earlier.The hens peck at the four-day-old cow pies, eating various insects, larvae and parasites - rich sources of protein - and accomplishing a whole lot more along the way: By eating the fly larvae and parasites, they rid the land of potential pathogens and disease; by scratching through the droppings and spreading them across the grass, they enable the manure to sink into the ground and fertilize the soil; and by eating the pesky insects, they reduce the presence of one of the cows' biggest irritants.

The Barn

Joel Salatin stands in the open-sided shelter where his cows spends a portion of the winter. During the winter, the cows eat hay (dried grass accumulated throughout the growing season), and live on a bedding consisting of woodchips, sawdust and old hay to absorb the cows' excrement. When the heavy cows tread on their nitrogen-rich manure and on the carbon-rich bedding, packing it together, they allow the mixture to ferment (anaerobic composting). By adding corn to the bedding, Salatin entices his pigs to turn the bedding into compost: When the cows return to pasture in March, the pigs dig through the densely packed bedding, searching for the tasty fermented corn, aerating the pile and turning it into compost for the spring.

Corn Pudding