Carrot and pumpkin risotto

My cousin J. gave me two beautiful pumpkins from her neighbour's garden, hooray!
Today I used one half for this delicious risotto.
The recipe comes from 'Italian vegetarian cooking' by Emanuela Stucchi.


Serves 4

120g butter
1 small onion, chopped
210 g pumpkin, chopped (weight without skin and seeds)
4 carrots, chopped
2,5 l vegetable stock
400 g Arborio rice
90 g grated Parmezan
pinch of nutmeg
salt and pepper

Fry the onion in half of the butter until it's transparent. Add pumpkin and carrots and cook for about 30 min. until they are soft. Mash them with a fork.
Add the rice and cook this for a few min. on high heat, while stirring. Add boiling vegetable stock and lower the heat. Let the risotto simmer for 20-40 min. until the rice is done. Stir regularly.
Switch off the heat, add the remaining butter, Parmezan, nutmeg and pepper and salt. Cover the pan and let it stand for 5 min.

Thai pumpkin and coconut dessert

A long time ago, an Indonesian roommate taught me how to cook this simple dessert, which she called kolak.
I also found a recipe in 'THAILAND The Beautiful Cookbook' by Kevin Weldon.
I used palm sugar (gula djawa) which I found in an oriental supermarket but you can use any type of sugar.

Serves 4

5 dl coconut milk
60g sugar
300g pumpkin, chopped (weight without skin or seeds)

Heat the coconut milk with the sugar. When it boils, add the pumpkin and let it simmer for 15 min. until soft. Serve cold.

This is the version from the book. My roommate boiled the pumpkin in water and added a glass of coconut milk in the end.

Bolo de abóbora delicioso - Delicious pumpkin cake

I found this recipe on a Brazilian blog, Pecado da Gula. It reminded me of the carrot cakes (bolo de cenoura) which I had in Brazil. I made it for brunch with my cousins.


80g unsalted butter at room temperature
1,5 cup sugar (240g)
3 eggs
200g pumpkin (weight without skin and seeds)
0,5 cup grated coconut
1,5 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
0,5 cup coconut milk
pinch of salt

1 cup = 200 ml

Chop the pumpkin, cook it until soft with a little water, and at the end let the remaining water evaporate. Mash it and let it cool.
Mix sugar and butter with a wooden spoon until it has a creamy texture. Add egg yolks one by one and keep stirring. Add the mashed pumpkin and stir again.
Add grated coconut and coconut milk.
Mix the flour with baking powder and salt and then add all of this to the mixture.
Beat the egg whites and incorporate them carefully into the mixture.
Grease a cake tin and add the mixture.
Bake it for around 30 min. at 180° C.

Chestnut soup and Danish apple dessert

Today I had lots of time to cook, hooray! So I invented a soup with the last of my chestnuts.


Chestnut soup

Serves 2-3

150 g chestnuts
1 leek, chopped
1 sprig of white celery, chopped
1 small potato, chopped
1 shallot, chopped
1/2 tsp. vegetable stock
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 bay leaf
thyme

Peel the chestnuts (see Chestnut and pumpkin pie) and cut them in 4.
Fry the shallot in olive oil for a few min. Add leek, celery, bay leaf and thyme, and fry for a few more min. Then add potato and chestnuts and fry for a few more min.
Add boiling water, vegetable stock, salt and a lot of pepper.
Let the soup boil, then let it simmer on low heat for 15-45 min. until the chestnuts are soft.
The taste is just divine!

For dessert I finished off the apples from my mother's garden with a recipe from Claudia Roden's 'The book of Jewish food'.


Danish apple dessert

4 apples
175 g sugar
3 tbsp. flour
3 eggs
150g ground almonds
1 tsp. cinnamon

Peel the apples and cut them in pieces. Cook them with a few tbsp. water until they are soft. Mash them with a wooden spoon.
Add 75 g sugar and flour and 2 eggs and cinnamon. Mix this well.
Grease a tin and pour in the apple mixture.
Mix almonds, 100g sugar and 1 egg into a paste.
Rub a little oil (e.g. sunflower) on your hands to avoid that the paste will stick.
Take pieces of the paste and press them flat between your hands.
Cover the apples with these pieces.
Bake in the oven at 180° C for 25 min. until the paste is brown.
You can eat this hot or cold.

Chestnut and pumpkin pie

Lyn sent me her mother's recipe for pumpkin pie. Inspired by this I made a new pumpkin pie, in which I also added chestnuts.


230 g puff pastry
200 g chestnuts
400 g pumpkin, chopped (weight without skin and seeds)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla seeds
juice of 1 lemon
1 dl cream
1 tsp butter

Peel the chestnuts. I've perfectioned my method for this:
Make an incision in the form of a cross at the top of the chestnuts. Make sure you cut deep enough.
Boil them in water for 5 min. Pour off the water but leave 0,5 cm in the pan. Leave the chestnuts in the pan with the lid on, so that they stay warm and moist. Take them out one by one to peel them.
When they are peeled, put them in a pan of boiling water again and let them simmer for 15-45 min. until they are soft.
In the mean time, boil or steam the pumpkin for 10-15 min. until soft.
Mash pumpkins and chestnuts together and add the other ingredients.
Roll out the puff pastry, put it in a buttered pie dish, cover with baking paper and beans and pre-bake for 10 min. at 220° C.
Remove baking paper and beans, add the filling, lower the heat to 180° C, and bake the pie for 20 min.

Memories from Süd-Tirol

Lots of hats...


and lots of prosecco!


Jerusalem-artichoke/topinambour soup, with small pumpkin dices


and pasta with seppie, a type of squid


Walking in het mountains


Eating in het mountains: speck-knödel with salad and noodle soup with beef. Speck is a type of bacon which you find everywhere in this region. The bread is also very typical, with cumin seeds.


Apfelstrudel with vanilla sauce, of course!


Nice tyrolian architecture




You can get apple-carrot juice, freshly made, just about anywhere. There are loads of apples in this region and their taste is delicious. The 'white' (Hefeweizen?) beer from Bavaria tastes good too.


In this season you can eat many dishes with chestnuts, such as chestnut parfait, a type of semifreddo.


Nice design, by Matteo Thun


Great wine


Fantastic mignardises


and don't forget the grappa!


Perfect cappucino



Food lovers, Süd-Tirol is definitely a place to go ;-)

Jerusalem artichoke soup

In Süd-Tirol I had lots of Jerusalem artichoke, once as a soup and then as puree. Today I saw them at the grocer's and they were fairly cheap, so maybe it's the season now.
In French they are called topinambour, in Flemish aardpeer (= earth-pear).
The taste is delicious, a bit like artichoke. I improvised this soup.


1 kg Jerusalem artichoke, peeled and chopped
1 leek, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 turnip, peeled and chopped
olive oil
2 garlic cloves, chopped
thyme & bay leaves
1 tsp sugar
a little veg. stock (in cubes or paste)

Fry the onion in olive oil for a few min. Add garlic and fry until it gives off its scent. Add leek and fry for a few more min. Add turnip and Jer. artichoke, thyme & bay leaves and fry for a few more min.
Add boiling water and bring to the boil.
Add pepper, salt, stock and sugar.
Let it simmer on low heat for 10 min.
Mix the soup with a hand mixer.
The soup has a really nice creamy texture.

Negroni

Just went for a few days to Süd-Tirol in the north of Italy, where we sampled quite a lot of this local cocktail.

We also watched the barman make it:

Take a tumbler glass, fill it with ice cubes, fill 1/3 of the glass with Campari, 1/3 with red Vermouth (e.g. Martini Rosso), stir, then add a shot of gin, stir, and add 2 slices of lemon.