David is still being attacked by some foul gastro-intestinal beast. He spent most of Thanksgiving dinner on his sister’s sofa. Sad for him, the dinner was delicious. Ryan and Julie did a straight up traditional dinner with the turkey, cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and even green bean casserole! My contribuions were pumpkin cheesecake and figgy pear parnouti.
The cheesecake was the Cook’s Illustrated spiced pumpkin cheesecake with bourbon cream sauce. I love the Cook’s Illustrated recipes because not only are they amazingly detailed but they determine the common problems with a recipe and tackle them for you. The result was a very light, not too wet, not too dry, very tasty pumpkin cheesecake. I’m having a slice right now with the sauce.
Figgy pear parnouti was a recipe I made up based on other recipes I had researched:
5 red bartlett pears
1/2 pound dried Kalamata figs
1 cup toasted walnuts
4 ounces chevre
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 stick butter
1/3 cup water
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
Preheat oven to 425
Cut pears in half, cut each half into 3rds, remove cores.
quarter figs
toss pears, figs, and walnuts in a bowl and set aside.
Melt butter and sugar together, whisking constantly. Once it starts bubbling add the water and heat to boiling until the sugar dissolves. Mix in spices.
Dump sugar sauce over pear/fig/walnut mixture and stir to coat. Dump into casserole pan. Cut the corner off chevre wrapper and squeeze out little blobs to evenly dot the surface of the casserole. Bake for 20 minutes. Serve warm.
Variations:
1) use a reisling instead of water in the sugar sauce
2) use mirableu sheep’s milk blue cheese
Huzzah for figgy pear parnouti.
Hope you had a happy one my peeps.

To be filed under “too much effort”?
I’m in a pasta mood lately, specifically, in a roll my own sort of mood. Also, in a pumpkin, apple, kale, sage kind of mood.
I mixed one pound of flour with one can of pumpkin, let the stand mixer knead this for me and I let it rest. Well, obviously, the ratio was way off and it needed way more flour, the dough was too wet. The problem is that of you knead in any more flour you have to let it rest again. So I added the flour and let it rest.
It was still wet when I went to roll it, but not terribly so. At this stage, if the dough is not too wet, you can dust it liberally with flour before each rolling.
I made a sauce of kale, apples, garlic, sage and fennel seed and the whole meal would have been perfect had I not overcooked the pasta by just a minute. Dang.
David is telling me lately that I’ve been working too hard on dinners, but it’s the best I have to give so I keep doing it.
There’s still half the dough left and I am thinking gorgonzola, pear, hazelnut sauce…

While I was putting away groceries the other night I found an unopened bag of guajillo peppers. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten them. And like most of my food experiments, it starts with a craving and a single found ingredient and a need to combine the two to make it work out. I wanted to make my butternut squash enchiladas and decided to make my own sauce…
spicy enchilada sauce
into the crockpot…
1 can diced tomatoes (with the juices)
1 dried guajillo pepper, ripped to pieces
1 dried ancho chili ripped to pieces
2 diced jalapenos
2 tbl chili powder
1/2 tsp oregano
1 tbl cocoa powder
1 cinnamon stick
1 bay leaf
1/2 tb pepper
1/2 tbl salt
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp lightly crushed coriander seeds
1 cup water
1/8 head of garlic
Optional:
1 black (not green or white) cardamom pod
1/2 tbl smoked spanish paprika
Set on high, cook for 3 hours. Remove cinnamon stick, bay leaf and cardamom pod. Run through food processor or blender until smooth.
I used this on squash and sweet corn enchiladas last night. It ended up being spicier than I expected but it was really good.
The black cardamom pod adds a subtle sweet smokiness, same as the smoked spanish paprika but I know those are both hard to come by if you don’t have a good spice shop near you.

Like every hipster kitchen geek I own an Atlas pasta maker. I’ve had it for years. I bought it at a garage sale, i think it had only been used once. Used once and deemed “pain in the ass” and set aside, later to be sold because it was heavy and taking up too much space.
I brought it home and I used it…once.
I didn’t even use for making pasta. I used it for a Martha Stewart recipe for rustic pizza dough.
A few weeks ago I made homemade raviolis and hand formed the dough. A few days later I wanted to make them again for dinner at David’s sister’s house. Wanting to be more authentic I pulled out the pasta maker and rolled out sheets of pasta dough.
It was the first time I’d really made pasta in it. It was disastrous.
Okay, not really disastrous, but there were many mistakes mades. Thoughtless errors that could hae been avoided and a bruise on my forearm that was the result of not having the c-clamp to hold it in place. The raviolis tasted fine, but they were problematic. There were lessons to be learned.
There was leftover dough. Undeterred, the next night I rolled the dough again to make fettucini for dinner. I started to get the hang of it. It’s not a battle to fight, it’s not a triumph that you win.
It’s a calming process.
It’s not unlike making chicken stock, the end result is great, fine, but the process that got you there is what soothes and calms you.
You start with your dough and your machine. You cut your dough into manageable pieces. You start working it through at the widest setting. The dough wants to fight you, the proteins want to bind up, the dough wants to break. Your job isn’t to break the spirit of the dugh, but to finesse it. Much like navigating the holidays with divorced parents, you have to leave everyone thinking they won.
You crank it through, fold it in half, crank it through, fold it in half, crank it through. Soon, it starts cooperating, but it only cooperates so long as you stay calm and focused.
zenlike.
if you fold it too thick, run it through too fast, look at it funny, the proteins could bind and you go back a step or two. And this is good for you.
Stay focused, go slow, don’t rush. If you do you lose a turn, you have to back up. You have to clear your mind of all the frustrations of the day, all the worries of the season. You and your pasta machine and the noodles.
Then you take half a butternut squash, cooked and chopped and 2 peeled, chopped apples and add them to some garlic sauteeing in butter. A good sprinkle of sage and a dash of allspice along with a cup or so of water. cover, turn the heat down and let it simmer. Cook your pasta, drain, toss with the squash sauce.