This is a guest post from Gen at North Coast Gardening

This year for Halloween I tried something a little different. Instead of carving a cheap, fibrous jack-o-lantern pumpkin, I opted for a medium size sugar pumpkin instead so I could re-use it after carving for pumpkin curry!

This required that I carve my pumpkin on Halloween itself, and that I only leave it outside for the duration of trick-or-treating. Once the raiding marauders went home to eat candy, I brought my pumpkin inside and made curry.

This is one of the simplest dishes to make, and could totally be done in a slow-cooker if you prefer. The hardest part is carving the hard outer skin or shell off your pumpkin, the rest is just checking and tasting every so often.

You need:

a six-pound sugar pumpkin

2 cans coconut milk

Yellow curry (powder, paste, or fresh, to taste. If you want to make one from scratch, use the freshest (preferably whole) ingredients you can find. It goes something like this:

• 9 part turmeric
• 3 parts cumin
• 3 parts ginger
• 6 parts coriander
• 3 parts black pepper
• 1 part Cardamon
• 1 part nutmeg
• 1 part cinnamon (cassia)
• habanero to taste

Optional ingredients: (I love the simplicity of pumpkin curry with just pumpkins, but if you like a more chunky curry, go for it)

potatoes, carrots, Fresno peppers

What you do:

Get about a six-pound sugar pumpkin or other eating pumpkin (not the jack-o-lantern types that sit outside Safeway in huge boxes – they are fibrous and watery) and scrape out the guts just like you would if you were carving it for Halloween.

Then hack it in half so you can set the flat ends on your cutting board, and carefully cut the shiny outer shell off your pumpkin.  Take off the top and bottom stemmy bits, too, then cut it into chunks about 1-1.5 inches around. Don’t be too precise because it’s fun to have some of the pumpkin incorporate into the sauce and some stay chunky, so variety in size is great.

Put two cans of coconut milk into your pot or slow-cooker with half the spices.

If you want to add potatoes to your curry, add them now, and don’t add your pumpkin till you can slide a fork a tiny way into your potatoes.

Otherwise, add your pumpkin now along with any peppers you wish to use. When your pumpkin is still chunky but you can put a fork through the chunks, add sliced carrots if you want them. (If you’re using baby carrots instead of sliced, then add them earlier as they’ll need to cook longer.)

When everything’s generally soft and the pumpkin has fallen apart a bit, add the rest of your spices and simmer on low just a few more minutes.

I eat this dish on its own, no rice needed, but if you like rice with your curry, add some extra peppers or spices to the curry, so it will be bold next to the rice.

Gen is a landscape designer who loves to write about her favorite plants and the best organic gardening methods. Visit her website to learn how to control weeds organically and how to prune your garden plants with video tutorials.

I have done it! I have successfully melded two of the worlds greatest foods into a flavor the gods would surely decry as too decadent for mere mortal tongues, if they only knew (but I’m not sharing with them).

When the idea struck me to try and make truffles with bacon in them, I figured I’d just throw some things together and see if the idea had potential, but the first batch came out so perfect I can’t think of anything to change. I’m sure I will, because I never cook anything the same twice, and truffles are the kind of food that really thrives on an exotic ingredient or two.

This recipe takes some time, so don’t start it unless you have a few hours to spare waiting for things to heat and cool. The crucial ingredients:

• Chocolate
• Sweetened condensed milk
• bacon
• coarse salt (for garnish)

For the chocolate filling, I chose Galler 85% chocolate. Use something quite a bit darker than you want to have as the end result. I went with good quality ingredients for everything, and I think it makes a big difference to the end result.

1. I started a pot of water lightly simmering on the stove and floated a smaller pot inside of it, which I filled with the chocolate. This is known as a double boiler.
2. Add in the sweetened condensed milk. I found some made with cane sugar instead of gross stuff. Use about an equal portion to the chocolate, and stir it in until it smooths out.  I also added some liquor at this point. I don’t think it is necessary, but I think it added to the richness and softened things a bit. I didn’t want to make things soupy, so I used some potent 151 proof rum and a bit of home made spiced liquor.
3. Set the mixture in the refrigerator until it firms up to playdough consistency.
4. Scoop out the chocolate and roll it into little balls about 2/3 the size you want the end result.
5. Make some bacon. I prefer the microwave for this, since it will make the bacon extra light and crispy. It will retain its crunch better. If you are too much of a purist for this, I’m sure it will still work. Once the bacon was cooked, I tossed it in the coffee grinder and made bacon bits. I bet any similar appliance, like a Magic Bullet would do the trick.
6. Roll the chocolate balls in the bacon bits and get a good coating of bacon on the outside.
7. The cores are done. Put them in the freezer while you work on the next step.
8. Melt some more chocolate as above. For this I used Dove milk chocolate. There are other chocolates out there that melt better, but most of them will drag the quality down. The Dove came out great.
9. Once the chocolate is melted, take the cores out of the freezer and one by one, drop them in the melted chocolate, roll them around until coated, and then lift them out with a fork. Put them on something non-stick like wax paper or Teflon. As you finish each one, garnish it with a bit of coarse salt on top.
10. Put them back in the fridge until the cool, which doesn’t take long, and they are ready to serve.

I made a bit over a dozen. Due to the amount of time involved compared to the work, I think they are probably better made in larger quantity. I gave most of them away to friends, and they were universally loved. The comment I heard from every single person who tried them was that the salt on top was a really perfect addition. I used Black Pyramid Salt, which you can see in the detail of the above photo. It was the perfect combination, being both exotic with its crystals looking like Mayan pyramids, and coarse without being hard.

If you’ve ever wanted your kids to be excited to eat radishes, here is your answer. The Super Mario themed Bento above is the awesome work of Anna The Red. Complete instructions here.

Japan has had a wonderfully fun, light hearted, and healthy impact on the world of food. A couple more examples of work by Anna The Red:

Manga Meat Bento, for the cave man in your life.

Inarizushi Totoro Bento, and Totoro Cream Puffs definitely fall into the category of too cute to eat…well, almost, they are cream puffs after all.

This is the greatest turkey sandwich ever.

Food doesn’t always have to be pretty. I’m sure we’ve all have a recipe that looks horribly unappetizing but more than makes up for it, but there are times when making your cooking look great can be a big part of the reward of cooking; on the other hand, there is really no excuse for things like fondant. Just because it is ‘edible’, doesn’t mean you should sculpt things out of it and eat it. Thank you Japan for making cute food edible again.

I leave you with a somewhat related clip, via geeksaresexy:

Salsa has too long been a bastion for the onion, but it’s totally unnecessary. Unless you want your salsa to taste like armpit, toss out the onion and go back to the core elements that make a salsa great.

If you’re really not into the DIY thing, there is one commercially available salsa with no onions, and it’s excellent. I’ve posted a review here: Salsa With No Onions

What does salsa absolutely have to have for it to be valid? Chili peppers. You need other stuff too, but that is the only ingredient I’m calling non-negotiable. One of the things to think about before you begin is appearance. If you mix red ingredients and green, you end up with brown salsa; not that there’s anything wrong with that, but if you are big on appearances, either pick on e or the other, or keep the chunks big. I’ll put up a list of things I’ve found to be good salsa ingredients. Pick and choose what you like or have on hand. I’d recommend at least one item from each section:

Chilies (mandatory):

• Habanero. Great flavor, but deadly hot (orange).
• Fresno peppers: Excellent and quite hot (red).
• Jalepeno: Boring, but easily available, hot (green).
• Poblano and Anaheim: Mild, and they taste pretty green (green).
• Bell Peppers: Mild, but they make a decent base for those who can’t handle any heat.

Base:

• Tomatoes: Highly recommended, any variety will do.
• Tomatillos: Those little green paper lantern looking things.
• Mild Peppers.
• Corn.
• Mangoes.

Herb and Spice:

• Cilantro
• Lime
• Cumin
• Black Pepper
• Salt
• Vinegar

Preparation: In a pinch, you can just cut things up by hand or use a blender, but I prefer to use either my magic bullet or an auger style juicer. The magic bullet stops everything from just bouncing up and dwn above the blender blades, and I run the juicer with the sorbet attachment that is standard on such machines. It essentially just crushes all of the ingredients rather than chopping them, and I use the mesh catch to separate the excess liquid from the salsa as I make it. I save this liquid for other cooking. It makes a great addition to taco meat while it cooks, or for soup stock.

This is one of the easiest foods ever to make, just guess how much of everything you need, throw it in a blender-like appliance, blend to desired consistency, taste it, and make any adjustments. I recommend you make it too hot to eat. You aren’t likely to just eat it plain, so it will be toned down by the food, sour cream, etc. If you use cumin, it’s best if you toast it up a bit first; it makes it taste less green. Go light on vinegar if you use it, it doesn’t take much. If you want to go the extra mile, roast or smoke the peppers.

When I first saw this Batter Blaster can of spray on pancakes, I was a bit horrified. There is just something about food in a spray can that screams artificial, but check out these ingredients:

1. Filtered water
2. Organic unbleached wheat flour
3. Organic cane sugar
4. Organic whole egg solids
5. Organic soybean powder
6. Sodium Lactate (from beet sugar)
7. Dicalcium phosphate and Baking Soda (for leavening)
8. Organic rice bran extract
9. propellant

Nothing scary in there. The beauty of this product is that it makes pancakes into such a quick and clean operation, that you really can just make one or two without being late for work or making cleanup for yourself. It has been getting good reviews, including the below video review at CrunchGear, or if you prefer your reviews in text format, here is an amusing cauliflower free variant.

I hate blenders.

The Magic Bullet is not a blender, not in the traditional sense, it is a vast improvement and now a central part of my kitchen. Blenders seem to keep getting bigger, they take up more and more space in the kitchen and get harder to clean. The bullet is tiny like a coffee grinder, yet manages to get the job done in less time than its larger competitors. Blenders advertise how many speeds they have, each button listed with a different and more spectacular sounding name than the last, each only serving to make the blender louder and increase the smell of burning motor. The Bullet has one speed, and that is all it needs.

One of the most notable features is that it seems upside down as compared with a normal blender. This serves several important purposes. When you screw the blades on the top of the container full of blendables and turn it over, it is airtight. This means that while you are blending, air and particulates aren’t shooting up out of the top, so you don’t end up with that resonance that causes all of the food to just get stuck at the top. It also reduce the number of parts to deal with by one, as the blades are also the lid. It comes with separate lids so after you use the Magic Bullet mixer to mix a smoothie, you can just screw the lid on and take it to work. For especially helathy dirnks, I use the Omega Juicer Model 8005 to juice up some greens to add to the mix.

In my cooking I’ve found it helpful in quite a few areas. In making things like salsa and chili, I cut chilie peppers into coarse sections and give them a few quick pulses in the Bullet food processor. Puring this into near any soup or mexican dish as you start cooking adds a flavorful base. I’ve found I can even throw spices in it with a cup of some portion of the meal and use it to grind the spices right into the meal.

I use the Magic Bullet Mixer for making mixed drinks. Just throw in a bunch of ice and some lime and tequila and make a near instant blended margarita. The thing is shockingly durable and has multiple blade types for different uses. It often comes with several tops, so you can just keep using them and putting the dirty ones in the dishwasher. I can only think of two blenders that I would even consider having in my kitchen. This is the one that costs under $400. Last I checked, Amazon sells them for $49.99.

There is a story behind this chili. The first time I made chili, it was for a chili cookoff. I’m not a big fan of beans, so I decided to make a chili without beans, and of course, like everything on this site, this is a chili without onions.

I decided that what I really needed was to replace the missing ingredients with something fitting that wouldn’t seem like filler. I wanted it to be very meaty, which more than makes up for the lack of beans. I wanted the flavor to be fruity and smoky, like pipe tobacco, but fiery enough to make you think you had just dropped the coals on your tongue. Going to our local Co-op, I found my answers. Dried cherries (nothing added) and Fresh, rather green mangoes. They also had a fresh shipment of beautiful red, fiery Fresno peppers. As I picked one up, I noticed the produce sticker with its SKU#: 666. Chili of the beast was conceived. I picked up quite a few other ingredients while I was out.

If you plan to make this, you should read the full process first so you know what you are getting into.

Lets start with the meat:

1. Turn on the pan good and hot, and throw some cumin in the pan. Don’t skimp, this will be your primary spice.
2. Keep an eye on it and stir it around until it gets good and hot. It may start to brown slightly. Taste it when you think it may be toasted. It shouldn’t be bitter or you have over done it. Remove it from the pan, toss it in your spice grinder and grind it just enough to crack each seed into a few pieces.  Set it aside or in the pot or crock pot you will be cooking the rest of the chili in.
3. I started with a hefty quantity of ground beef. This should account for about 1/3 of your finished volume of food. I’ve also used cubed sirloin or chicken to good effect.
4. Add the ground beef to the pan and chop it up with a spatula until it is in one inch sections. It should be sizzling hot. Add a dash of soy sauce to sear some extra flavor on the outside of the meat. Continue stirring and cooking like this until there is just a bit of pink left on the meat. Remove the liquid out of the pan and pour it into a paper cup and put the cup in the refrigerator. 
5. Add  a small amount of spices to help give the meat a bit of a different flavor than the rest of the chili. I used some Five Pillars and some turmeric and coriander. 
6. If you have done this before, get the previous cup of skimmed broth from your freezer and add it to the meat, putting  it on a low heat until the liquid has condensed into the meat, otherwise call it done. I do recommend cooking the meat well in a broth. I’ve found that the flavor of the chili doesn’t do well with added salt and meat flavor directly blended in, but is really good when the meat carries these flavors. 

On to the base:

1. Start with a good quantity of fresh Pasilla and Ancho peppers. They should make up about a third of your total volume.
2. Find a source of clean fire. A gas range will do, but I used some burning applewood. A barbecue works well, or if you use your fireplace, make sure you haven’t been burning anything nasty in it.
3. One by one, put each pepper whole on the end of a kabob and hold it directly in the fire, turning to blacken all sides thoroughly. When it starts to slide off the kebab, it is done. For a more smoky flavor, cut the top and bottom off of the peppers and stand them up in a metal steamer over fire or hot coals, but be careful with this, as it is a LOT more smoky.
4. Take the peppers to the sink and rinse them. Then peel and discard the skin; It should come off easily now that it has been steamed from the inside.  If you are feeling lazy, you can skip the charring and removal of skin, but I do highly reommend getting some smoky flavor in the peppers; alternately, you could add something like smoked pimenton or paprika, or Pasilla de Oaxaca
5. Cut off the tops and remove the seeds. Slice them up and run them through the Magic Bullet or blender. Add the result to the crock pot.
6. Let it cook for a little while to settle out some of the raw greenness of the peppers.
7. Skin and slice up some green mangoes (about half as much by volume as the peppers). I’ve found they are best when they are showing the first signs of ripening, not crunchy or green as an apple. Put them through the Magic Bullet food processor, and add to the crock.
8. If the pepper or mango flavor is too potent, add tomatoes until it tones down to where you like it.
9. If there is too much liquid, slowly stir in corn flour or fine corn meal. I find it dulls the flavor, but it doesn’t clash.
10. Remove the tops and seeds from some fiery peppers (I use Fresnos or Habaneros). Dice them and add them to the mix. Let it cook for a while and taste. Repeat until it is a little too hot to eat.
11. Mix in the meat.
12. Let it sit just below simmering for a bit longer for everything to settle.

I never quite know what to do with chili once I’ve made it. It is tasty in so many ways. I often just serve it in a bowl with sliced avocado, lettuce, tomato, grated cheese, and sour cream. Garnish with cilantro and black olives. Remember, we made it too hot to eat. This makes it just right when served with accessories.

This one is in honor of Stanza over at CookingOnSundays, who couldn’t make it today, but the people must be fed!

True to Stanza fashion, this one is a soup made from stuff I had sitting in the freezer in the garage (I don’t have a closet) for too long, and that is the way it should be made, but with no onions! Any time you are looking for something in one of your many food storage options and you find there is just too much stuff you have to move out of the way, it is time to make some variant of what I erroneously call Jambalaya.

Every year, we plant a garden in the back yard, and impatiently wait for all the little sprouts to sprout, and then spend a portion of each day urging the cats to keep the gophers out, and yelling at the cats that the garden is not a litter box. Then we complain that there are snails and we need to get the chickens to eat them, which ends with us flapping our arms as we chase the chickens out because they are kicking up the sprouts and eating our lettuce. Somehow, a couple months later we are fretting about what to do as we bring in a bucket load of produce out of the garden every day. In the end, we freeze it in one of our many freezers. Now as we are beginning to plant this years sprouts to begin the process over again, I’m realizing I have a lot of stuff to use up before a new load of stuff arrives.

Today we’ll be making Hambalaya. Why Hambalaya? According to Gen it is better than Shrimpbalaya.

Go find the biggest pot you have in the kitchen. I use a 5 gallon stock pot. Take stock of everything you want to get rid of that wouldn’t be gross in a hearty soup. Think about how you want each ingredient to come out. Do you want to cover the flavor of it and cook it in? Leave it crunchy and fresh? Throw the longest cooking item in the pot with some water and crank it up. Consider all these ingredients suggestions, they change each time. Here is how mine went :

1. After Christmas there were great sales on ham, so we got a few and cooked them, but didn’t know what to do with that much ham or ham broth. Yes, we froze it. Throw the ham and the broth (or substitute a similar meat product) into the pot (frozen if need be) and crank up the heat.
2. Rummaging through freezer#3, I found six gallons of zucchini. One gallon goes into the pot. I don’t much like zucchini, but it grows like a weed, so I grow it anyway. Cooked into the soup from the start, it won’t be zucchini flavored at all. What will I do with the other 5 gallons of zucchini?
3. Someone gave us a bunch of tomatoes last year (I don’t know why), but I froze them (cut the top bit out before you freeze so you don’t have to mess with them frozen). Toss ‘em into the pot.
4. Bought some miscellaneous peppers at the store. A green bell. I think this is an important ingredient to get the flavor right. A Poblano, and a couple Anaheims. I would have gotten more, but they were squishy at the store. Dice them all up and throw them into the pot.
5. Someone gave me a little jar of lentil and barley soup makings that they had made as gifts for everyone. In the pot. Make sure there is some liquid for things to soak up so they don’t burn. If the soup is bubbling, turn it down. A little bubble is optimal, but while you are still tossing stuff in it is hard to gauge.
6. Sliced up a hole bunch of celery into little horseshoes. If you have a sharp enough knife, you can just slice them right into the pot.
7. One of our local markets makes an awesome spicy Italian sausage. I bought about a dozen sausages. Toss them in whole, if they are linked, leave them that way.
8. Went through the fridge drawers and found some ingredients from last weeks egg roll makings that were just starting to look sorry for themselves. Some diced ginger, cabbage, and carrots. Set aside the cabbage and threw the rest in. Go light on the carrots, they clash with the tomatoes.
9. Took a break to write a blog post. Once things get to a bubble, leave them there for 40 minutes or so.
10. Fished out the sausages, now cooked. Dice them into rounds like a carrot and toss them back in. This is way easier than cutting them raw, and adds more flavor than boiling them separate. Don’t worry too much about grease, it is a big stew, and if there is any, you can fish ot off the surface tomorrow when it comes out of the fridge.
11. Time to stir it up and taste. At this point it should be smelling really good and tasting like it needs something. Take note of what is missing.
12. I decided it was too hammy. I added a bowl of turkey broth and meat from the freezer. The beauty of this stew is that the more meats you put in it, the better it is.
13. Dumped in two cans of tomato puree as hambalaya reddener. In addition to making things more red it adds a nice tang and makes visible those little broth circles on the surface.
14. Added some spices, ground on the spot: Coriander, which is a generally good soup flavorizer. Summer Savory (dried), you will know why if you smell it while you are cooking this. A large, three fingered pinch of cumin, a small handful of pequins for heat, and a large pinch of smoked paprika to round things out. Also a pinch of fennel and a pinch of  caraway to add that occasional healthy interest among all the meaty wickedness.
15. Stir, wait a few minutes, and taste. Tastes pretty good. Add enough salt to feel like you think it might need more salt and stop. It will get saltier as it sits, and you can always add more later. I actually didn’t need any because the ham and celery are both salty.
16. Turned off the heat and dumped in a cube of frozen juice from that giant mangle beet I found last year, and threw in the cabbage. Cabbage is really good for you and your digestive system raw, but cooked, it is the opposite. Adding it now will get it to about the consistency of the vegetables you get in Chinese food.

At this point I’ve managed to fill the whole 5 gallon pot to the top. I’ll remove half of the soup tomorrow and put it into paper cups and back into the freezer, which may seem counter to my mission, but frozen soup in a cup is easy to carry to work, and tastier and cheaper than anything I’m likely to find there.  Most people cook a soup like this for a long time. I find if you cook each ingredient just right it ends up much better. I think the most common mistake cooks make is overhomogenization.

Serve the soup with slices of french bread toasted with butter, a few cubes of cheese, fresh sprigs of parsley, grated Parmesan, and black pepper.