Pumpkins, Pumpkins, and more Pumpkins, not to mention the odd Tomato

Just some food notes. Deadlines loom, and musing about food is a good respite from writing about the Democrats for Life, the Republicans, the origin of Berkeley street names, and food already consumed (no, not all for the same story). These are more rough sketches than actual recipes. Ideas and images more than specific road maps to dishes. Feel free to make suggestions, to ask for clarifications, and to pester me for details next week (after I have actually made the dishes).

In addition to painting a lot, I have been on a bit of a pumpkin bender. Roasted pumpkin seeds with butter and Worcester Sauce. Roasted pumpkin chunks with chestnuts. Pumpkin risotto.

On Thursday I am going to make a pumpkin soup, and I am trying to figure out which garniture to use. I am tending towards an avocado cream with a dollop of red pepper coulis and a drizzling of sage oil, but then I think that thyme croutons with crumbled goat cheese might be good. Then the idea comes around to make the soup with fresh Thai coconut and cardomom and to garnish with sprigs of cilantro and basil (If not the coconut goes into cocktails before hand).

The soup itself is going to be the basic French pureed soup: chicken stock, roasted pumpkin chunks, maybe a potato for texture, herbs, salt, pepper, and cream.

Of course one good squash deserves another, so we also picked up a spaghetti squash and a butternut squash. Spaghetti squash gets roasted, then tossed in crisped pancetta and sugo finto (I am pretty sure that I have given recipes for sugo finto before. Heat olive oil, gently fry a couple of peeled cloves of garlic, add diced onion, fry for a minute, add diced celery and carrot, fry for a few minutes, add peeled and seeded tomatoes, simmer briefly, salt and pepper to taste).

The butternut squash will go in a risotto, probably a basic risotto with thyme.

Also, we are still getting some excellent tomatoes, although the season is coming closer and closer to ending. Next week it will be fried green tomatoes, but now we have dry farmed tomatoes as well as the best tomatoes I have ever tasted (from the Monterrey Market in Berkeley - a mix of organic heirloom tomatoes). If I can get more of them today, we will have our final ensalata caprese.

In under two weeks, raw tomatoes will go on hiatus until July. Makes me want to hibernate.