Holiday Cooking Marathon - Pumpkin Mascarpone Pie, Pumpkin Soymilk Pie, Broccoli Casserole with cheese sauce

Holiday Cooking Marathon:

Pumpkin Mascarpone Pies –

3 ½ cups cooked, mashed pumpkin

1 ½ cups honey

6 large eggs

2 cups milk/cream mixture

12 ounces mascarpone cheese

8 ounces apricot preserves/jam

1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon sea salt

Mix all until smooth.  Pour into glass or ceramic pie pans (at least 2).  Bake at 350 for 60-90 minutes until dry on top and starting to crack.

Pumpkin Soymilk Pie

8 ounces cooked, mashed pumpkin

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup honey

4 eggs

8 ounces vanilla soymilk

Mix all until smooth.  Pour into metal pie pan.  Bake at 350 for 1 hour until dry on top and starting to crack.

Broccoli Casserole with cheese sauce

Broccoli

3 bunches broccoli cut into bite-sized bits.

3 cups thick chicken broth (chicken broth boiled down to at least ½ original amount to concentrate flavors and to make freezer storage easier)

½ onion, finely minced

3 cloves garlic, minced/crushed

1 cup water

Put all ingredients in large stock pot.  Bring to boil.  Cover.  Boil 4 minutes until broccoli starts to soften and turns bright green.  DRAIN – SAVING THE BROTH!!.  Run cold water over broccoli to stop cooking.  Set aside.

Return broth to stock pan to use in cheese sauce.

Cheese sauce

8 ounces Colby cheese, shredded

8 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded

4 ounces feta cheese, shredded/crumbled

4 ounces finely shredded Asiago cheese

4 cups full-flavor broth (ex. Broth from the broccoli, thick chicken broth, chicken broth plus extra bouillon cube, etc.)

1 cup 50/50 bean flour (Besan flour) and starch (I used a blend of tapioca starch and sweet potato starch)

2 cups cold water.

16 ounces sour cream

6 eggs

Bring broth to boil.  While broth comes to boil, mix water and flour/starch until smooth (Important that there are no lumps!!). 

Set cheeses in bowl beside stove.  Set sour cream beside stove. 

Once broth boils, drizzle flour/starch/water mixture into broth STIRRING CONSTANTLY.  It should thicken quickly.  IF too thick add more water.  If too thin add more starch/flour/water mixture.  Target is thick gravy consistency. 

Once thickened, still stirring constantly, start dropping handfuls of cheese into the pot.  Stir until melted.  Add another handful.  Continue until all cheese is added and melted. 

Stir in sour cream.  Bring to simmer.  Remove from heat.

In a large, metal bowl - Whisk eggs until smooth.  Slowly add hot cheese mixture ¼ cup at a time to temper the eggs.  When cheese mixture is completely added, sauce is complete. 

Put cooked broccoli in casserole dish.  Pour over cheese sauce until covered.  Bake in oven at 350 until browned and bubbly on top.

TIPS AND DISCUSSION

I had a ton of extra cheese sauce, so I also cut up a casserole dish worth of baby potatoes and covered those with the cheese sauce.  Still had a quart left, so am going to see if it mixes into mashed potatoes well.

My hands get sore because of fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis – so I did all mixing with a mixer. 

I have allergies, so I used safe for me ingredients.  Because so many of my friends and family have allergies, there are no brands listed here – too much possibility of reactions.

Thick broth – I make my own broth from chickens I stew.  When the bones and skin have had all the wonderful nutrients stewed out, I strain out the solids and then boil the broth down to about 1/6 of what the original volume was.  This creates something like a gel, which has an intense and wonderful flavor.  I use this for my base in lots of things that other people might use bouillon. 

Pies- the pies would probably be more flavorful with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, clove, and other sweet spices – however I am now reacting to cinnamon and clove.  L  However, if this is not the case for you, go for it!

There are no crusts on the pies because I am cooking for myself and several family members so I am working around multiple food restrictions.  If I were making this just for myself, I would use ground nuts, honey, bean flour, and butter to make a crust.

Still to make – grain-free bread which will then be made into stuffing.  Roast.  Wild Turkey.  Devilled Eggs.  Sweet Tea.  Mashed potatoes. 

I think the cooking is my favorite part of ANY holiday!

Broth x 3

A local store has 10 pounds of chicken legs and thighs for sale at $0.68 per pound (a total of $6.80).  So, I got a couple sets.  In a LARGE stock pot, I put chicken, onion, garlic, and a bit of salt.  Filled the thing up with about a gallon of water (which is why I use a large pot), and let that simmer (with a lid on it) for about 8 hours.

Strained out the chicken, onion and garlic.  Boiled the gallon of broth down to less than 1/6 of the starting amount.  Cool.  Freeze in ziplock bags or in mason jars.  This is broth 1.



Cool the chicken pieces and the onion and garlic.  When cool enough to work with, pick the meat out of the skin and off the bones.  Put skin, bones, joints, and onion and garlic back into the large pot.  Fill with 1-2 gallons of water.  Simmer for 12 hours.  Remove the solids and boil down to 1/6 the amount of liquid.  Cool.  Freeze in Ziploc bags or in mason jars.  This is broth 2.

Crack the bones (use a meat hammer).  Put the remaining solids, the cracked bones, an onion, some celery, and some garlic into the large pot.  Add a gallon of water.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and put a lid on the pot.  Simmer for 12 hours.  Remove solids and discard the solids.  Boil the broth down.  This is broth 3.  For broth 3, the flavor is less intense than in broth 1 or 2.  So this is the perfect broth to use for delicately flavored soups, to use for boiling potatoes for mashed potatoes, or for cooking fish.

Dehydrating Watermelon, doing household tasks, putting up broths.

Today - dehydrating watermelon and dehydrating pear sauce (makes fruit leathers).  -

• Cut the watermelon into strips.  
• Pour the pear sauce (pears from neighbors trees, cinnamon, all spice, nutmeg, honey, water - cooked 24 hours on low in the crockpot, processed through the ninja, sieved of chunks/skin/etc; makes pear sauce.  Same can be done with any fruit) into a liquid tray of a food processor.  
• Dehydrate both for 16-24 hours on 110.  Makes very tasty fruit leathers and pieces of watermelon "leather".  

Unhappy moment of the weekend - I think I am starting to react to cinnamon. Tried several different sources and all cause mouth burning and twinge my head. So, cinnamon is on the no-go list for a couple months. Will try it again about Christmas time/January 2014.



BROTH
CHICKEN

• Cook Chicken in a VERY LARGE stock pot with onion, garlic, salt, other seasonings as preferred.  
• When chicken is pull off the bone tender, remove chicken.  
• Boil the broth left down to 1/3 of the level it was when you removed the chicken.  
• Put in fridge overnight.  
• Skim off fat if you want to.  
• Bag in ziplocs or in freezer storage containers.  
• Freeze.  
• Good for 6 months in a deep freezer.  

VENISON - Same with the venison broth.

TINY STORAGE OPTION FOR BROTH:
You can reduce further, spread on the liquid tray of the dehydrator and dehydrate to store in smaller containers

USES FOR BROTH:
Then, Take the broth and use it to cook beans that you have soaked.  Once done, remove the beans and eat those.  Then use the leftover broth for making dumplings.  (I make grain free dumplings).

All broths from cooked veggies and meats can be AWESOME to save to increase nutritional value of your foods.


THE DAY'S SCHEDULE ... AND THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS
Happy Moment - Got the things packed from the kitchen. So, when I find a job, and start having money, a little more packing is done for moving out. YAY!


Today's list - laundry and hanging out clothes, Coursera Class starting (free class, topics of interest to me...) Global Health. Dishes. Freezing Chix broth and venison broth. Packing a couple boxes of books. giving the dog a bath.
We will see how far I get!

Monday - final signatures for internship and submitting the final paperwork. Job interview.

Tuesday - Job Fair, meeting with pastors of youth groups.

Wednesday - depending on how I am feeling, hiking or maybe just level ramblings about the outdoors.