Bourbon Pumpkin Mousse

Haven't updated the blog in a while, so here is a quick and easy recipe for fall.

Bourbon Pumpkin Mousse garnished with walnuts and honey handkerchiefs

Bourbon Pumpkin Mousse

A light and airy mousse with a hint of bourbon to liven things up.

1 Can Pumpkin Puree
1/2 Cup Sugar
2 TBSP Molasses
1 packet Gelatin
2 oz Bourbon
1 TSP Cinnamon
2 C Heavy Whipping Cream
Walnuts to garnish

Put bourbon in a heat-safe bowl, and sprinkle gelatin over the top to bloom. After 5 minutes, set bowl in a small pan of simmering water until gelatin melts.

In a food processor, combine pumpkin, sugar,  molasses and cinnamon. When gelatin is melted, add to pumpkin and continue to process until well combined and very smooth.

Beat the heavy whipping cream until it is stiff. Add about 1/4 of the whipping cream to the pumpkin and pulse to combine. This will lighten the pumpkin mixture and make folding much easier.

Fold remaining whipped cream into pumpkin, being careful not to over mix. Spoon into dishes and chill until well set. Garnish with walnuts and, if you are feeling particularly adventurous, honey handkerchiefs.

Stuffed Fairy Tale Eggplant

Two dollars. That's the cash I had left when I approached the Coleman Brothers tent at SKY Farmers Market. They were selling Fairy Tale Eggplant, a tiny variety of the purple vegetable, smaller even than the Japanese variety I've come to favor in the last few years. I wanted to try a few, so I asked for two dollars worth.

He gave me 35 of them - a perk of shopping before closing time, I suppose.

The lovely and delicious Fairy Tale Eggplant

Meltdown ice cream and a few Shade Tree sauces

I get inspiration from a lot of places, be it beer, music, or family. When I meet somebody else who is inspired to cook, the feeling is contagious and it makes me want to play off their creations.

Meltdown Lemonade Sorbet with Rooibos Caviar

My first exposure to Meltdown, Susan Warrell's upstart ice cream business here in Bowling Green, was through my priest. I was doing a dinner for him, and he had gotten some Chocolate-Covered Strawberry ice cream from her and asked me to work it into our dessert. Had he said vanilla or chocolate something else like that, I may have been tempted to relegate it to a mere garnish, a topping for whatever-pie a la mode. Instead, and fortunately, I decided to let the ice cream be the main player - without having even tasted it - based on the intriguing flavor we were given. The addition of a simple sauce and some fresh berries was all it needed to be the star of the meal, and to make me anxious to try what else Meltdown had to offer.

I've gotten to try a couple of other flavors since that night, and quite honestly they could all stand alone. But I can't help but experiment when the inspiration hits me, so here are three recipes, all using different flavors of Meltdown ice cream, to liven up your summer afternoons.

Apple-cumin pork ribs

Been forever since I've posted. Taken on some new responsibilities, and it has made it tough to find time to write. But I'm still cooking!

I had to come up with a recipe yesterday, on the fly, for some boneless pork ribs my brother and I picked up. What came of it was some heady aromas and tender, tasty ribs with very little clean up. Best of all, it used stuff you probably have in your kitchen right now anyway.

These are a great addition to a cookout as an appetizer - or a chef's treat. You can make them ahead, and they just take a few minutes to finish on the grill.

Apple-Cumin Pork Ribs
2-3 tbsp olive oil
1/2 of a sweet onion, diced
1 jalapeno, finely diced (leave in the seeds for more heat)
2-3 small apples, chopped
2 lbs boneless pork ribs
1 tsp salt, to taste
1/2 tsp cumin powder
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp thyme
Black pepper, to taste
1 cup apple juice

The ribs we found were pretty small, so I was able to do this all in a large sauce pan. You could scale it up easily for larger, bone-in ribs, or even make this as a marinade for chops.

Saute onion and jalapeno in olive oil over medium heat until softened. Add apples, and continue cooking until apples have softened and start to give off some juice. Add ribs. You'll finish these on the grill, so don't worry about browning them. Just get them down in amongst the apples and onions. Add seasonings and enough juice to barely cover the ribs and bring to a boil. Lower heat, cover, and simmer 60-90 minutes (you'll need longer for bigger ribs). You want the meat to be tender, but not absolutely falling apart so they hold up on the grill, so check them every 15 minutes or so.

Finish ribs on a medium-hot grill, 2-3 minutes per side.

As for sauce, we didn't make one and didn't miss it. I didn't have my stick blender with me (shame on me), but I would have liked to try pureeing the blending liquid with just a hint of added sweetness - agave nectar comes to mind - and maybe a little added cayenne. I'd add that either as a last-minute glaze or a dipping sauce.

Pho, Egg Rolls and a Trip to the Market (Part 2)

Finally getting around to finishing this post, which is long overdue. I'll skip to the good parts, and just post the recipes. If you missed it, here is part one.

My niece's handiwork, with a bit of Chinese mustard, Hoisin and Sweet and Sour. 

How to Cook an Elephant

I picked up a copy of "Cuban Home Cooking" at the thrift shop the other day. Spiral-bound cookbooks tend to be pretty hit-or-miss, but this one has some good recipes and will serve me well if I ever need to put together a Cuban meal. The last recipe in the book is for Elephant Stew, Cuban Style. It's too good not to share.

Elephant Stew, Cuban Style

Caldo de Elefante

1 Elephant, medium size, obtained legally

1 Barrel garlic cloves, finely minced

1 Crate sour oranges, squeezed

1 Barrel salt

2 Chickens (optional)

Cut elephant into bite-size pieces. (It is reported to take about two weeks.) Work garlic into the meat well. Cook over a kerosene stove fo 4 days at 450F. Sprinkle with sour orange juice and salt.

This recipe will serve 3,800 people for lunch. If you run short of food, add the two chickens. If seating is a problem, you may invite 1,000 people for four days (some may want to come twice), but most importantly - be sure to keep everything properly refrigerated!

                                                         -- from Cuban Home Cooking by Jane Cossio

Swordfish with a Caribbean Flavor

Still need to finish the Pho post, but I wanted to get a few recipes up this morning before I forgot them.

The inspiration for this meal was pretty simple. Dad wanted swordfish for his birthday, mom wanted to try a new recipe for asparagus, and I needed something to tie them together. We play kind of quick and loose with the definitions of different cuisines, so we'll call this a Caribbean-inspired dish. Not terribly accurate, but it looks like an island dish.

Swordfish and Purple Yam Sauce

Pho, Egg Rolls and a Trip to the Market (Part 1)

What is an uncle to get his niece for her 14th birthday? If he's lucky like me, the answer is a trip to the International market and a day in the kitchen.

Pho for your birthday? Sounds right to me.

This all started with a the idea that we needed to learn how to make Pho, a Vietnamese soup that Peyton and her family had come to love at the late, great Asian Express. I'm not up on my Viatnamese, so I won't offer a primer on all of the different names for the different ways pho is made, but I know what we made, with rare beef and noodles, is called Pho Tai. The process of making the soup is long, but not terribly difficult if you know what you're doing. I won't claim that we did, but we had a general idea.

Vivaldi, Carbonara, and That Little Extra Something

People love to ask me what is my favorite dish. For as many times as I've tried, I've never been able to come up with an answer to that question. There are dishes I love to eat, dishes I love to cook at home, and dishes I like to make for crowds. There are sentimental favorites, technical accomplishments, and flat out comfort foods. Then there are dishes that are so common that it almost seems trite to mention them, but that have a small secret that, when discovered, makes them sublime. Any of these could be my favorite dish on a given day, and a few have even been my answer when I've felt particularly decisive. But the truth is, I don't have one favorite dish, I have a lot of favorite dishes.

Old Fashioned Cookery

The news that we're going to be working on another historical meal has got me a little amped up, especially because I get to work with some of my favorite people on this event and raise some money for a great cause.

For the third straight year, Fr. Andy and Fr. Josh down at St. Joseph's are going to auction off a dinner party to benefit St. Joseph School. Two years ago we did A Taste of Kentucky, with all of the dishes either being traditional Kentucky favorites or dishes inspired by the foods of the region. Last year the theme was A Tour of Italy. For this year, we're going to change things up, and instead of focusing on a place, we're going to take our inspiration from a bygone era. I'm not quite ready to reveal all the details of that event, but it did get me thinking of another event I did recently that had an historical theme: A Dickens Christmas.

This event was put on by the students at St. Thomas Aquinas on the WKU campus. I first met some of them when they were volunteering at our St. Patrick's Day benefit, and we've been working together ever since. What I really like is that they have some creative ideas, and I was excited when they approached me about doing a party themed around Victorian England. I knew it meant an excuse to do some research and maybe learn some new recipes. That's music to my ears.

To anybody familiar with English food, the menu won't be terribly surprising. We had a green salad with radishes and remoulade, roast beef, and Yorkshire pudding. That may not sound like anything unusual, but how many people have ever actually made Yorkshire pudding? Or prepared mincemeat from scratch? Those are the kinds of things that I don't get an excuse to make very often. It will be interesting to see how I can incorporate them into a modern menu somewhere down the road.

Beer Pairing Recipes - Chicken Roulade

The last installment from the Beer Pairing dinner

Cherry Chicken Roulade

6-8 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/4 Cup Walnuts
1/4 Cup dried cherries
1/4 Cup frozen spinach (frozen pulses better in the food processor)
Salt and Pepper to taste
2 TBSP vegetable oil
1 bottle Founders Cerise, or similar cherry flavored beer

This was one of the quickest dishes we came up with when planning the menu. Chris suggested we use the Cerise, then suggested cherries in the dish as a logical choice. I had some good walnuts on hand, he said spinach and it was born. For the filling, put the walnuts in a food processor and pulse 4-5 times. Add the cherries, pulse 4-5 times, then the spinach and pulse 4-5 more times. You want the texture to be smooth enough to hold together yet still have some texture from the fruit and nuts. Season up with salt and pepper and set aside.

Beer Pairing Recipes - Pretzels

As promised, here are a few recipes from my Charity Beer Pairing post.

Handmade Pretzels
3 Cups warm water
1 1/2 Tbsp Kosher Salt
1 1/2 Tbsp Yeast
6 1/2 Cups Flour

This is a pretty basic bread dough recipe, and pretty much any dough you have will work. Bloom the yeast for a few minutes, then stir in the flour and salt. Knead for a few minutes (the stand mixer is excellent for this) then set aside to rise for about 90 minutes. At this point, you can refrigerate the dough for up to two weeks* - just let it warm for an hour or so before proceeding.

Charity Beer Pairing

A couple of months ago, I was approached about donating an experience to be auctioned off to benefit the United Way at the WBKO Holiday Bash. They wanted something unique, and I bounced around the idea of a wine-tasting or a world-tour kind of multi-course meal. When I really got thinking about Bowling Green, it occurred to me that this town has really developed a taste for good beer. So I set out to put together a 4-course beer pairing meal.

The first step in putting together a beer pairing is getting great beer. For that I went to my friend Chris Abend down at Bowling Green Pipe & Cigar, who not only knows great beer, but is quite wise on all things culinary as well. We decided to feature a single brewery, Founders, picked four beers from their selection, and within a few minutes had a menu worked out for the event.

Of course you need something to drink a great beer out of, and for that I turned to my friends at The Fancy Pigeon. They have an extensive line of custom-etched glassware as well as other personalized gift items, and graciously offered to add 6 monogrammed pilsners to the winner of the beer pairing.

The "B" is for bad photo, which I'll blame on my camera.