Pumpkin Paradise: Something New for the Season

Dear Suzy,

I love pumpkin flavored things, so of course this is my favorite season! Still, I find that after more years than I'll own of eating all the traditional fall desserts, I am sick of classic pumpkin pie! I know it's a terrible thing for a pumpkin lover such as myself to say, but I just think it could be... jazzed up a bit, don't you? I'd ask for a pumpkin cheesecake recipe, but cheesecake is so very heavy! What can I make this year to spice things up?

Pumpkin'd Out,

Mrs. Spratt

Dear Mrs. Spratt,

I have the perfect recipe for you! It's called "Chai Cheesecake Pumpkin Pie" and it's one of my original recipes. 

This pie can be and has been multiplied to serve large groups.

This is a hotel pan serving about 40.

It has everything you love about pumpkin cheesecake without being quite so heavy. It does include both weight measurements and volume measurements, so a scale is useful. If you don't have a scale, there are some excellent weight-to-volume converters on google to help you convert it easily. I really like this one. I hope you enjoy! I encourage all of my readers who try this recipe to post photos of their results in the comments- I love to see them!

Chai Cheesecake Pumpkin Pie

        Yield: 2 pies

Filling:

1#2oz cream cheese, SOFT 17oz sugar .5oz corn starch 10oz sour cream 3 chai tea bags put through a strainer to get the big pieces out 15oz Pumpkin puree 5 eggs 1.5 tsp vanilla 1 can evaporated milk

Crust: 8 Graham crackers .5 box club crackers 2 sticks butter 4 tbsp sugar

Instructions:
- First combine sugar and corn starch in a sifter/strainer, sift into a mixer bowl and mix well - Add soft cream cheese and mix at medium power. - Scrape whole bowl and mix again - Scrape whole bowl and mix again - Scrape whole bowl and mix again (seriously all 3 times, it's super important- trust me!) - Scrape bowl well and add sour cream - Mix @ half power - Scrape bowl well
- Add chai spices and pumpkin puree and mix - Scrape bowl completely and mix again - Add eggs one at a time while mixing - Add evaporated milk and vanilla while mixing - Pulverize the crackers into crumbs - Melt butter - Pour sugar and butter into crumbs and mix well - Smooth crust mix into two pie pans - Par bake crusts for 5 minutes at 325 - Pour filling into crusts - Place pans into a cookie sheet and place the cookie sheet into the oven (preheated at 325) - Pour hot water from a pitcher or liquid measuring cup into cookie sheet so that shallow water covers the whole surface without splashing into the pies - Bake pies until just barely jiggley in the center - Pull out pies, leave cookie sheet - When oven is cooled, remove pan of water - Cool pies for about an hour, chill overnight.

You may be wondering why on earth you need to scrape the bowl so many times. Simply, the biggest difference between a perfect cream cheese dessert (particularly cheesecake) and an... amateur one... is that a perfect cream cheese dessert has no spots, specks, chunks or blobs of white when you cut into it. The more you scrape and re-mix, the more likely you are to have it come out perfect. Especially with a pumpkin pie with orange filling, those white specks of cream cheese are nobody's friend.

Sweet Smoothie Secrets

Dear Suzy,

I've noticed when I order a smoothie at any place that uses fruit puree rather than real fruit- or even in addition to real fruit- the puree always has sugar added in the ingredients. Why can't the smoothie purees just be a puree of the fruit? Obviously the people who order smoothies are probably health conscious, why would they make it MORE sugary?

Flummoxed

Strawberry Shortcake

Dear Strawberry,

Excellent question! It does seem odd for the smoothie puree companies to add sugar to a product that is supposed to be healthy and fresh, but there IS a good reason! As a healthy foods consumer, you may have noticed that a strawberry in December never tastes as good as a strawberry in May. This has to do with seasons! While greenhouses and exports allow for most fruits to be available anywhere, any time, seasonality and the location of the farm have a large impact on the flavor of fresh produce. 

The big difference between a winter strawberry and a summer strawberry is that the summer strawberries naturally have more sugar. In order to provide a consistent product with a consistent sugar content and a reliable, familiar flavor all year round, chefs use a tool called a refractometer.

A refractometer uses light refraction to determine the amount of sugar in a liquid. By adding sugar - or water - to a smoothie base until each batch achieves the same light refraction, it becomes possible to take something out of one's control, like the natural sweetness of fresh fruit, and make it consistent. 

When I worked at the four seasons, we used the refractometer to measure the sugar in our sorbet bases and sauces. Sometimes, when the fruit was in season, we actually had to add a little water to lower the overall sugar in order to have a consistent product! Other times we would have to add a little or a lot of simple syrup (sugar and water brought to a boil to dissolve the sugar) to make the sorbet taste palatable.

All this to say, while it is understandable that you are not interested in adding sugar to your smoothie, if you got a smoothie that reflected the natural sweetness of the season you ordered it in, you might never go back after a winter whim turned sour (literally). The smoothie companies aren't trying to trick consumers by making their smoothie bases sweet like soda, they are doing what they can to offer a consistent, reliable flavor year-round. Generally speaking, the amount of sugar per serving is not significantly more than would be naturally occurring in whatever fruit flavor you order during that fruit's peak season. 

There are, however, better and worse companies of course, and some companies do add more sugar and other additives as preservatives, so that their purees last longer. The better ones actually arrive at their distributors' locations frozen, so that they can be thawed one unit at a time and be used up within a week or so without requiring extra preservative sugar.

The Best Meals of My Life -- So Far

I was asked recently what the best meal I've ever eaten was. It is obviously hard to pinpoint that after 25 years of eating solids, so the best I could do was narrow down a list of top contenders. Here they are, in chronological order:

1) Bogota, Colombia. I was 16, in Bogota with a group from my church, helping a children's home and their ministry to the street children of Colombia. We were on top of a gorgeous mountain, working hard to take down a fence and build a large playground for the children to visit on field trips for an escape. We had been working hard all day, and when we broke for lunch they passed out wrapped sandwiches. Those sandwiches- OOOH those sandwiches. Homemade, with 3 slices of bread, a medium-fried egg, sliced cold chicken, shredded lettuce, cheese, I think avocado, some kind of spread- I inhaled it so fast I wish I'd paid better attention to its contents. But up on that mountaintop, overlooking the city, after doing hard, physical work, in this beautiful place-- that was a perfect sandwich. 

[Bogota, Columbia, 2005]

2) Paris, France. I went for a mini-vacation with my mom, and one evening she took me to one of the fanciest restaurants I have ever set foot in, where the only thing I recognized on the menu happened to be my all-time favorite dish, Boef Bourguignon. The Coke I ordered was more expensive than my mom's wine, and the dish came out piping hot in a rust colored ramekin remarkably fast. The sauce was dark, rich, reddish brown, and the thing that distinguished it from other versions I'd had in the States was that the sauce in that single ramekin had to contain at least half a bottle of reduced burgundy. It also had large sprigs of fresh thyme that packed an aromatic and savory punch. The overall experience in Paris of course adds fondness to my memories of this dish, but it was also genuinely one of the best things my mouth has ever experienced.

[Photo taken by me!]

3) Seattle, Washington. I was visiting Seattle for a friend's wedding. My parents and I visited Pike Place Market and "caught" a side of smoked salmon from the famous fish market. We then went to the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks and set out a blanket and a picnic of bagels & lox, with the salmon from the market, cream cheese and bagels. There we ate while watching the live salmon jumping upstream at the site of the dam, in perfect weather at sunset.

[Photograph obtained from Google]

4) My wedding reception. While you might be thinking, "OK, DUH- of course on the best day of your life you would consider it the best meal of your life." But in all practicality I did plan that meal very carefully to be exceptionally awesome. On the menu were food trucks; the Easy Slider Truck (www.easyslidertruck.com) and the Guava Tree Truck (www.theguavatreetruck.com) in Dallas. My Husband and I partook in the best of the East Slider's offerings- The Sweet & Low-Down burger; Angus beef with goat cheese, strawberry jam, salty, crispy bacon (though both my Husband and I both picked it off) and toasty buns. For dessert, because I am a pastry chef and I have actually never been much of a fan of cake, we instead arranged to have two croquembousche (conical towers of cream puffs) and a tree of macaroon cookies made by an amazing local baking company called Bisous Bisous (www.bisous-bisous.com).

[Photos courtesy of Becca Ann Photography in Dallas, TX]

What about you? What is the best meal or item you've ever eaten? Did the setting make a difference? Leave your story in the comments!

A Delectable Dilemma

Dear Suzy,

I recently bought an enormous jar- no, barrel- of Nutella at Costco, BECAUSE I COULD. Now that the euphoria of my awesome deal has worn off a touch, WHAT am I going to DO with this glorious bounty of hazelnutty goodness?!?!?

Salivating,

Forsythe P. Jones

Dear Jughead,

I'm going to do this post list-style, and then you can ask for any recipes you'd like to try in the comments:

1. Frozen-nutella-dipped-banana-on-a-stick
2. Nutella Fondue
3. Nutella stuffed french toast
4. Nutella filled begnets
5. Ennumerable non-PG sexy applications I won't list here
6. Nutella filled croissants
7. Nutella mascarpone filling for cannolis
8. Warm Nutella over ice cream
9. Nutella Popsicles
10. Nutella truffles
11. Nutella cream Pie
12. Fruit tarts with Nutella cream filling
13. Nutella funnel cake
14. Nutella Pancakes/Waffles
15. Just plunge your whole hand into the jar like Winnie the Pooh does with a jar of honey
16. Nutella buttercream for a cake
17. Baked Brie with Nutella
18. Nutella cake
19. Nutella Cheesecake
20. Nutella chocolate Milk
21. Peanut Butter and Nutella sandwich (best on toast)
22. Nutella Bread
23. Nutella Mocha
24. A hot grilled cheese sandwich with a gooey milder cheese such as havarti or fresh mozzarella is delicious when dipped in Nutella
25. Pretzels & Nutella
26. Nutella Brownies
27. Nutella Cookies (optionally with toffee or hazelnut chips)
28. Nutella Souffle
29. Nutella Monkey Bread
30. Nutella Italian Egg Cream
31. Nutella Egg Nog
32. Nutella and strawberry sandwich
33. Nutella and Banana sandwich
34. Frozen Nutella Dipped Pineapple
35. Nutella Empanadas
36. Nutella Fruit Pizza
37. Peanut Butter Nutella Mousse Pie
38. Nutella Crepe Station
39. Nutella S'mores
40. Nutella as a dip for a Monte Cristo Sandwich
41. Nutella Biscotti
42. Nutella Molten Cake
43. Nutella and pear filled Filo pastries
44. Nutella French Toasted Quesadilla
45. Nutella Pots du Creme
46. Nutella Creme Brulee
47. Nutella Scones
48. Nutella 'Nana Puddin'
49. Nutella Oatmeal
50. Nutella Filled Cream Puffs/ Eclairs

There are so many more, but hopefully I've given you a few ideas to try for now. This post is a little shorter, but only because I anticipate your requests for recipes in the comments section, so I'll see you there!

Please write to me with your questions about recipes, romance, relationships, family, life... anything! Just click the "email us" link on the right hand side of the page, or email me at asksuzyadvice@gmail.com.

Easy Summer Dinner Party

Hello, dear readers- I've missed you too!

Tonight I'm having my community group from church over for swimming and supper. I want to keep it simple because, well, I'm human and lazy and not a masochist, I need to keep it cheap because I'm a student working part time right now, but most importantly I want to make it absolutely delicious because I'm a chef, which means the expectations of my cooking are already high, and also I have an innate desire to show off a little.

Now that I've assembled the ingredients for my menu and I'm getting ready to put them together, I thought I'd take a moment to share my recipes, in case any of y'all plan to put on a summer shindig sometime soon.

For dinner, I've decided to make "Summer spaghetti", my own take on something I had at a friends' house one time. For dessert, I'm making a fresh Peach Crostata. If you want to know how to make these items the recipes are listed below. The total money I spent for 8-10 people was about $25. I made the invitation BYOB so cokes and wine will come with the guests.

You'll need:

• Angel Hair pasta or spaghetti for however many guests you'll be feeding
• 1 qt Chicken Broth (I use the lower sodium kind because there is too dadgum much salt in EVERYTHING these days)
• 2 lemons, juice & zest (zest them first!)
• 2-3 tbsp fresh Parsley, chopped
• minced garlic
• grated parmesan (I buy the cheapest off-brand stuff, they're mostly the same when you're cooking it into the dish, and half the price!)
• Asparagus, broccoli or summer squash like zuccini (as much or as little as you want)
• chicken (about 1 breast for 2 or 3 people, depending on the size of the breast)
• grape or cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered

First, tenderize the chicken. If you have a fancy tenderizing hammer, awesome. If you don't, do what I do- cover the chicken with a piece of plastic wrap and use a rolling pin or heavy recipe book. You're just beating the tar out of the meat, it's not exactly a scientific procedure. 

Next, place the chicken into a well greased skillet or onto a stove-top griddle or outdoor grill. keep the heat medium/lowish so that the chicken cooks all the way through before the outside of the chicken dries out. You'll know it's done either when you stick it with a meat thermometer and it reads at LEAST 165 degrees, or when you cut it with a small knife, right in the center, and there is no pink to be seen.

MEANWHILE, Place a pot on the stove, and pour the chicken stock into it. Add the lemon juice (strained) and lemon zest. Now add your pasta and turn on the burner. Let the pasta cook in the liquid, covered for the first 10 min and then uncover it and let the pasta absorb it as it boils until it's fully cooked.

While the pasta is cooking, flip over your chicken to ensure that it's cooked evenly on both sides. Take the chopped parsley, 2tbsp parmesan and 1-2 tbsp garlic (depends on how much garlic you like), combine them and stir them into the pasta.

Place your vegetables onto the grille or into a skillet or saute pan. You'll want to pre-chop the broccoli or summer squash, but leave the asparagus whole for cooking and then chop it up after you take it off the grill. 

Chop up your chicken breast into bite-sized pieces and add the chicken and vegetables to your pasta, stir it in over a low heat. Leave the whole combination on the heat for a few minutes, then take it off the heat and stir in the tomatoes (raw). Serve!

Peach Crostada:

• Flaky Pie dough- if you would like a recipe, let me know. They do sell it at the store in the freezer section, which is ok (not great), or you can use most flaky pie crust recipes.
• Peaches- for a 9" crostata, about 7 peaches will suffice.
• 1-2 tbsp sugar
• 1 dash ground nutmeg (fresh is best!)
• 1 egg white
• some Turbinado sugar if you want (not necessary!)

Peel the peaches and slice them into thin slices, about 1/4" wide.

Toss them in a bowl with the sugar and nutmeg. (Save the Turbinado sugar!)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Roll out the pie dough into a circle about 14" in diameter (no need to be perfect).

Fold it up and lay it out onto parchment paper on a flat cookie sheet. 

Pile the peaches in the center of the dough circle with a 3" radius around the edge, then carefully fold up the sides of the dough all the way around, fanning the overlaps (ideally in the same direction for aesthetics).

Take a strip of Aluminum foil and wrap it gently around the outside to hold the crust in place, leaving the top open.

Bake for 25-35 min or until the peach filling begins to boil.

Allow to cool a bit, remove the foil and brush the outside with the egg white, then coat the outside with the turbinado sugar.

Put the Crostata back into the oven for 2 more minutes, to make the sugar stick.

For a summer dish, a peach crostata is ideally served at room temperature, but if it is still warm from the oven when you serve it, that's ok- it might be just perfect with some vanilla ice cream!

"C" is for Cookie that's Good Enough for Me

Dear Suzy,

When I bake cookies they tend to be flatter than other “professional” cookies.  How can I solve this?  And do you have a good recipe for snickerdoodles?

Hungry,

The Hatter in Wonderland

Dear Hatter,

Most of the time, when a cookie recipe is coming out of the oven too flat, the fat to flour ratio is probably off- two things you can do to remedy this problem are to make sure your butter is not overly soft- you don't want it to be so cold that it wears out the motor of your mixer, but it shouldn't be so warm that it goes "Ploooshppp" limply in your hand when you try to pick it up. It should be able to hold its shape against very gentle touch. The second thing you can do is add a bit of flour. I know it can be difficult for a novice baker to know how much flour to add, so here's a super simple trick: When it's come together, most cookie doughs should be just tacky to the touch, but not leave any residue on your fingertip- like a post-it note. If you're close to finishing the mixture and it's still gooey enough to leave a bit of dough on your finger, add about 1/4 cup of flour slowly as it's mixing until you can touch it without getting any dough on you.

As for the snickerdoodle recipe, I'm not one to give away ALL my secrets, but I'll be happy to share one excellent recipe with you:

Ingredients:

1 cup                 Butter

1.5 cups            Sugar

2                        Eggs

1/2 tsp              Vanilla Extract

1/4 tsp              Salt

1 tsp                  Baking Soda

2.75 cups         All Purpose Flour

Directions:

"Cream" together the butter and the sugar (combine until they are one- for this particular recipe you can use softer butter, but if  you do, chill the dough before rolling and baking it.)

Add the eggs and vanilla and mix until fully combined, but no longer.

Add the remaining ingredients and mix until just incorporated- over mixing makes for tough cookies!

In a bowl, combine 2 tbsp of cinnamon with 1-1.5 cups of sugar. I like to add a dash of nutmeg just to make mine a little more unique than other recipes, too.

Roll the dough into balls about 2" in diameter, and toss them in the cinnamon-sugar mixture.

Place the balls evenly spaced on a cookie sheet and bake in a 350F oven for 5 minutes, then turn the pan and bake for another 3-5 minutes until the cracks in the cookie are not visibly glossy and the very edges of the cookies are beginning to turn golden.

Thank you for the excellent question, and I encourage all my readers to continue sending in their wonderful questions to asksuzyadvice@gmail.com, or just click the "email us" link on the right hand side of the page. Beginning this week I've decided to slow the pace of my posts to about 3 times a week, in order to favor quality of content over frequency and to hopefully get a little more consistency in my posting times. Thank you for reading and I do hope you'll share this blog on your social networking sites if you're enjoying the content.

Best Meal Of Your Life (Part 5): Dessert & ?????

Just a reminder that this is the last part of a 5 part serial, and if you're interested in understanding the whole picture, I encourage you to scroll down and start at part 1. I'd also like to repeat my plea for y'all to click the "email us" link on the right-hand side of this page and send me any questions you have about... well, anything! Those emails will prompt the bulk of the future content on this blog. But enough about that, who's ready for some Dessert?!

Dessert

(Shameless bragging: I made this!)

So let's do a brief review of this metaphor comparing a healthy dating relationship to a fine dining, 5 course meal: We've discussed the Appetizer; a small, first taste of the savory, heartier elements of a relationship- a time when our appetites are whetted for the rest of the meal. Next came the Salad course; crisp, light, refreshing, uncomplicated- the part of the relationship when we enjoy each other and have fun. Right in the middle I introduced the Intermezzo; a very small dose of bittersweet sourness to cleanse the palate- the point in a relationship when we encounter potential issues and decide whether to continue on or leave the table. After that came the Entree, or main course; hearty, filling, multifaceted- here is when all the elements of the previous courses meet each other in one place, and some combination of the routine and the flavorful hopefully create satisfaction. This all brings us to many people's favorite course, the Dessert. 

When a couple reaches the "end" of the entree, they are yet again faced with the choice to find themselves full and unwilling to move forward, or to order dessert and commit to the full experience of the meal. Dessert only comes to couples who decide to commit- it's the wedding cake. Ideally, a person only orders dessert once. You can take the metaphor wherever you please from here, to say that you've "committed to the restaurant" or whatever. My preference is to say that when you order dessert, you are saying that you want (literally and metaphorically) to have all the rest of your meals for the rest of your life with this person. I know I'm not really digging too deeply into the mechanics of the dessert course, and this may have to do with the fact that it's the only course I have yet to taste- I will do my best (but only briefly) to outline what I DO know.

Dessert is fun. It's sweet. It's exciting, because if you've gotten through 4 courses and you still have room for it, that's purely because you wanted it!  It's what we celebrate with and mark special occasions with because Dessert is inherently special! It's actually pretty rare, if you think about it- most meals do NOT end in Dessert- mostly just the really special ones, and the ones you approach intending to end them that way. 

NOW for the moment you've ALL been waiting for, I'll reveal my super-secret-mind-blowing metaphorical concept that will tie this whole series up so nicely and perfectly, you will likely find yourself saying "nicely done!" to noone in particular, or at the very least raising your eyebrows and twitching your mouth towards a brief smile as you read to yourself, much as you do before you type "lol" to people. I'm going to let you  guess what it is: What is the ONE thing that is a part of EVERY COURSE of EVERY MEAL you EVER EAT in your life? What is the one thing without which, you would have a hard time getting past the BREAD in the middle of your table muchless through 5 courses? Think about it.....

...

...

...

...

...

...

Beverages.

I know, I know, you're thinking "ooooh, that makes perfect sense.... but Suzy, that didn't exactly blow my mind...." just a little more patience and I promise it'll be worth it:

Up until this point a person could easily read this metaphor and all my previous posts and wonder to themselves why I would limit my metaphor from the get-go to only a description of a healthy Christian dating relationship. THIS- this is why. 

The beverages are God.

I know- BOOM. :P

You might make it through the bread, the entree, even the salad without a sip of water- it might not even bother you (too much) though I would argue you'll have a less enjoyable experience overall. But just you try to make it through a whole meal without something to drink- nothing before, nothing after. It's not impossible, but it's a pretty crappy experience. And now take into account that I'm talking about the Best Meal of Your Life! If you really want to have the penultimate dining experience, there will be water on the table the moment you sit down, the first thing you're asked for is a drink order, you might have a soda or a beer with your calamari appetizer, water or soda with your salad and intermezzo, a nice wine with your entree, and champagne to celebrate your dessert. So it should be with your relationship- you should have God as a part of it before you even begin. Prayer is what will sustain you- If you have something to eat but nothing to drink, you will die much, much sooner than if you have water but no food. So it is with God. If you are focused on God and keeping prayer as a constant part of your emotional "diet", you will survive with few or even no other relationships for a time. This is a great moment for me to back up my metaphor with some of the original material from the greatest parable-teller of all time:

"Jesus answered, 'Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.'

The woman said to him, 'Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.'" ~John 4:13-15 (The Bible, NIV translation).

I'll let you mull this over now, I welcome your feedback (positive and negative) in the comments or by email. Thank you for reading, please share this blog if you like what you're getting!