FFwD: Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good

When I told Matt we were having Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good (pg 364 of Around My French Table) for dinner, the semi-annoyed look on his face revealed his suspicions that I was not-so-smoothly masking a recipe that fills pumpkin with liver and maggots.

"Everything good? Like what?" he asked slowly. For a split second, I was tempted to list all his most loathed foods. "Oh, don't worry, honey, I just threw beets, mushrooms, cottage cheese, crappy chocolate, and mango into a pumpkin and let her bake." Instead I told him the truth: bread and cheese and bacon, lots of garlic and scallions and cream. "Oh," he said. "That is all good."

Boy, was it ever! It's the comfiest of comfort foods.

 Dorie suggest several methods of serving this. I went with the option to scrape the pumpkin flesh into its lovely molten filling, mix it all up, and scoop it into bowls. It didn't look pretty by the time I was done with it, but it tasted amazing. I'm sad that it took me 31 years to find this recipe. I'm already thinking of variations I want to try next time. For one thing, I think I'd prefer sweet sausage instead of bacon, because bacon is best when it's crispy, and this was pretty flacid after its two-hour bath in cream and pumpkin juice. Toasted pecans would be awesome, as would dried cranberries and apples and corn bread and corn, and the list goes on and on.

Matt wants to serve this with Thanksgiving dinner. If I had two ovens, I'd agree. I don't see any workable way to cook this and a turkey and have them both be finished at the same time. I'll definitely be serving this during Thanksgiving week, though. In fact, I may be serving this once every week while pumpkins are in season.

Dorie says it's better to eat this fresh than to have leftovers. Perhaps that's true, but the leftovers are still pretty damn good.

Conclusion: LOVE IT.

For book club last night, I baked Lime-Marshmallow Pie (pg 77 of Ready for Dessert). It was good, but there were a number of things I would change about it. For one thing, three tablespoons of melted butter was not enough to moisten 1.5 cups of graham cracker crumbs. It looked dry to me, but I thought maybe when I pre-baked the crust, the butter would melt and fuse the crumbs together, so I didn't add more. In the finished product, there was a thick layer of loose graham cracker crumbs under the pie.

It looked so pretty before I cut it.

The ratio of crust to filling seemed off. The lime custard did not go very far. I would prefer more lime custard and less graham cracker.

The marshmallow topping tasted good (homemade marshmallows always do, though, don't they?), but it was extraordinarily difficult to slice. Between the un-crusty crust, the invisible custard, and the way the marshmallow stuck to the knife, these slices win no awards for presentation.

Yikes.

Conclusion: Don't get me wrong, this did taste good. There was only one slice left by the end of the night. However, I would be very surprised if the crust was supposed to come out as it did, and the custard was completely dwarfed by the graham and the marshmallow. When I eat a pie, I think that most of my bites should include filling. More often than not, I found myself rolling marshmallow in the crumbs, without any custard to be found. I'm going to label this one Just Okay.