Bourbon Persimmon Pudding

So my pawpaw ice cream spent a long, tempting week in my freezer awaiting my monthly potluck club. I had a sneaking suspicion that pawpaws and persimmons were meant for each other, so I made my annual bourbon persimmon pudding to find out.

Persimmons grow wild in Southern Indiana and they have always had a special place in my heart. For me, persimmons are the harbingers of fall and one of the few fruits that I have never eaten out of season. And since gathering persimmons requires one very loving mother searching the ground up and down my family’s road and storing the persimmons for my next visit, they really are autumn treasures.

(For those of you without a country road of wild persimmons or a mother willing to hunt for them, I actually found persimmon pulp at Paul’s Fruit Market in Louisville and you can also use Hachiya persimmons, which can be found in many grocery stores.)

It’s best to clean and pulp the persimmons with a food mill when they’re fresh, but you can also freeze them until you’re ready. It takes about two cups of pulp for most recipes, although you can make whatever you have work. There are a thousand persimmon pudding recipes (I adapted one I found on chow.com), but the nature of a pudding is very forgiving so the flavors you use are more important than the exact measurements. And, aside from the food mill (which is helpful but not necessary), you don’t need any special equipment or techniques.

Just mix the ingredients together in one bowl and bake in a cake pan lined with parchment. People will tell you that it’s better than all the other baked goods you’ve made that actually required some baking savvy.

And now I can tell you without question that persimmon pudding was meant to be eaten with pawpaw ice cream.

Roasted Chicken with Autumn Vegetables

It is funny what can inspire and change a persons outlook on things. The birth of my son changed my entire world, including how I look at food and ingredients. I no longer look at just the sheer enjoyment of wolfing down something I previously deemed palatable, but as more of an experience, and nourishment. It is also important to me now that I protect the environment that my son will be using later down the road. I now am mindful of where the food is coming from and the impact on the land. I try to buy local and seasonal, organic and quality. All that being said, let me share with you one of my current favorite family meals...
(I recently treated myself to a Staub 7 qt oval cast iron enameled dutch oven. LOVE it!)
I start by patting a mixture of curry seasoning (my favorite brand for spice is spice hunter) cumin, fresh oregano, chopped garlic, sea salt and crushed black pepper, in and outside of a beautiful free range organic whole chicken from Maple Valley farms. I sometimes stuff a little lemon inside if I have one handy.
I have been preheating the oven to 350, and a burner on medium with the staub heating some olive oil to almost smoking. I lay the chicken breast side down and let it sizzle for about 5 minutes, then turn it over to brown the back.
At that time I toss in quartered butternut squash, and onions, maybe some carrots, or potatos if I have them handy. I sprinkle some more of the spice mix onto the vegetables and take a big whiff of the bounty. I then put a lid on the pot and put it in the oven to let it cook, self baste and get happy.
At this point I try to go outside and play with Jett or take a walk with the family, so I can come back in the home and smell aroma as if walking into someone elses home.
One hour or so later, depending on the size of the chicken I take it out of the oven and let it rest for a few minutes, afterall, it has been doing some hard work. I take the chicken out and onto a cutting board to prepare it for deboning and presentation. Meanwhile I stir together the juices with the vegetables to make an amazing flavour and texture.
I then serve it to my eager and appreciative family.

Pawpaw Ice Cream

I've never blogged before but the pawpaw has inspired me. The pawpaw is a fruit that grows wild in the woods of Southern Indiana during the fall and we're lucky enough to have a brother-in-law who happens to love pawpaws so much that he cultivates them on our homestead, Brambleberry Farm.

My birthday present this year included two pounds of heirloom Appalachian guinea hog ribs, six pawpaws and a few cups of wild persimmons. If you're at all familiar with these ingredients, you would know that I had just received the makings of a culinary feast. I wish I could say that I made the feast all at once and threw a party, but I didn't. I drove the pork ribs to a friend's in Chicago and let him braise them in some delicious way I didn't pay any attention to, but I kept the pawpaws all to myself. I've been waiting a year to make pawpaw ice cream. I figured ice cream was just the right platform for the humble pawpaw to shine. It's naturally custardy and tastes something like banana (in fact it's nicknamed the Indiana banana), mango, and pineapple.

For the ice cream, I made a basic heavy cream (2 cups), sugar (3/4 cup) and egg yolk (2) custard. You can heat up the cream and sugar first and then temper the eggs before whisking them in, but I prefer to mix it all together cold and whisk it as it warms up slowly and thickens. As the custard cooled, I cut into my completely black (yeah, I thought that meant they were ripe, but in retrospect I should have made the ice cream two days sooner when some green was still left on the poor things) pawpaws and scraped out the flesh, which wasn't as easy as I imagined it would be. The seeds cling on to the flesh more than expected and I definitely overestimated how much fruit I would get from them, but I went with what I had, blended the fruit and some vanilla in with the custard and in about 30 minutes, my cuisinart served up something that looked deceptively vanilla and tasted unexpectedly tropical.

My plan is to serve the pawpaw ice cream with my favorite persimmon pudding, which I would include here, too, but I haven't made it yet. Stay tuned...

French Toast with Chocolate & Pistachios

It's rich and not on any diet!

Ingredients:
4 slices of cheap, thin white bread
2 Eggs
2 TBS cream
1 tsp vanilla extract or 1/2 vanilla bean
1 tsp cinnamon sugar
2 TBS raspberry or peach jam
2 TBS crushed Pistachios
1/4 cup of melted chocolate
Butter
Powdered Sugar


Whisk eggs, cream, vanilla, cinnamon sugar
Spread chocolate on 2 slices of bread and jam on 2 slices of bread
Spread Pistachios between chocolate and jam making a sandwich

Preheat skillet and add butter
Dip bread/sandwiches in egg mixture and cook until golden on medium heat

Dust with powdered sugar

Jumbo Shrimp with Papaya Sauce

Ingredients:

1 lb. Jumbo Shrimp
1 small Papaya
1 can Coconut Milk
1 tsp. Peach Jam

Shrimp Seasoning:
1/4 tsp. ground cardamom
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. turmeric
1/2 tsp. Chinese five spice
1/4 tsp. curry powder
1/4 tsp. cayenne

Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Ground Salt and Pepper

Prep shrimp.
Coat shrimp in seasoning mixture and butterfly.
Drizzle with Extra Virgin Olive Oil and toss.
Cover and refrigerate.

Bring coconut milk to simmer.
Add mashed papaya and peach jam to coconut milk.




Simmer to reduction and consistency of thick pudding.
Approximately 20 minutes.
Keep on low and start cooking shrimp.

Heat pan to medium heat.
Place shrimp in pan.
Cook evenly - approximately 2 minutes on each side.