Pumpkin focaccia

Having bought two pumpkins at the farmers market on saturday, of which we used only half for this lovely stew, I had to ofcourse come up with other things to make! Luckily Jo from Foodjunkie (she has fabulous recipes at her blog, so you should really check it out!) came to the rescue with her recipe for pumpkin focaccia which used quite some pumpkin and makes a major focaccia…

Charlotte

I had a lot to cook yesterday as Charlotte was coming to dinner (yes, yes, I told you I would mention it!! ) and she reads my blog too, so I better be careful what I say… lol.. and I thought that the focaccia would be perfect for dinner. The recipe is quite easy to follow and because I loved the ingredients I followed it pretty much except for the addition of pecannuts where Jo has used walnuts. No walnuts to be found in the supermarket yesterday. And then thinking it is actually walnut season.. Go to the market and you can find them everywhere! But noooo, not in Almere. I think I need to move if only for the sake of finding ingredients that I need.

Since I also bought a new panini toaster yesterday as well, I am sure that the rest of the bread will be put to good use very soon!

As for the rest of the dinner; the starter was good (a little chanterelle pie with blue cheese and pecorino in puff pastry), the main was a bit disappointing (can’t tell you more about that until a much later date though!) and I didn’t make dessert (what??!! No dessert?) I did tell Charlotte she would be the guinea pig, so she was forewarned that we might have to go and visit the local snackbar if it all failed. That was not necessary thankfully, but I gotta figure out a way to improve on the main we had… More to follow on that… (I am building up the suspense here..)

Fresh walnuts we did not buy at the farmers market

Back to the focaccia; as you can see the bread turned out quite yellow, which is thanks to my pumpkin. I would maybe add a little bit more cheese next time, but then only if I know Tom is not eating it and I know he will eat this.

Here is the recipe!

Delicious Pumpkin, Gruyere and Walnut Focaccia (from Foodjunkie, not junkfood)
(based on  a recipe by myrecipes.com)
INGREDIENTS for a large focaccia (30 x 35 cm)

Dough rising

2. Clean the pumpkin from seeds and cut into large chunks, skin on. The skin is easier to remove once the pieces are cooked.
In a bowl toss the pumpkin with olive oil, salt and pepper  until all pieces are covered. Place them on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper or silicone mat and roast until tender and slightly browned, 30-40 minutes. The pieces need some space around them, otherwise they will boil, not roast. If your tray cannot hold them all together roast them in two batches. Let pieces cool down and remove the skins.

Gizmo wondering what I am doing... dough rising in the background

Pumpkin beef stew

There is something so comforting about typical fall food. It’s the smell, the colors but above all the taste that make it so. When I read about the three ingredients for the Royal Foodie Joust I just had to participate. It’s my first time in the Joust and I am not a star in making up my own recipes, so I figured that this would be a perfect opportunity to start practicing!

The three ingredients for this months joust where in the colors of Halloween; black and orange and the ingredients itself would be pumpkin, beer and sugar. So sitting with Tom in bed on our regular weekend ‘breakfast in bed’ we started brainstorming on what we could make with those three ingredients and it was Tom who actually came up with the idea to make a stew out of it (see honey, I promised I would give you all the credits!!) and the rest was really fairly simple.

I had never before used pumpkin to cook or bake anything, so the first thing we had to do was buy a pumpkin. We went to the Noordermarkt in Amsterdam where they have a lovely organic market, so that is where we bought pumpkins (yes, I bought two different ones, so expect at least one more pumpkin recipe soon!) and organically produced beef for our stew. For the beer  wanted to use stout as that is dark and lovely and all the other ingredients I still had in the kitchen so here is the recipe that we made:

Beefstew with beer and pumpkin (serves 2 or 3)

350 gr. beef

30 gr butter

4 small onions

Half a medium sized pumpkin

200 gr round carrots or another vegetable you like

1 bottle of Stout or another dark beer

5 cloves

1 pcs of mace

2 bay leaf

1 cinnamon stick

sugar to taste

Serve with mashed potatoes or rice (we picked the mashed potatoes)

Cut the beef in chunks of about 2 cm and put pepper and salt on them. Put the butter in a casserole pan and once the butter stops foaming add the meat. Bake the meat for about 10 minutes on medium high till it is browned.

2. Cut up 3 onions in rough pieces and add them to the meat. Bake for another 5 minutes. Add the bottle of beer.

3. Stick the cloves into the remaining onion (you can leave it whole, it will fall apart anyway) and add this together with the mace, bayleave and cinnamon stick to the meat. Bring to a boil, add pepper and salt and sugar to taste. You don’t want it to be overly sweet. Put a lid on the pan and simmer for approx. 2 hours. Add the carrots in and simmer for another half hour before you add the pumpkin. Simmer for another half hour and check if the meat is fall apart tender and the pumpkin well done.

You can add potatoes to the mix together with the pumpkin and have a one pot meal or you can make mashed potatoes and serve those on the site. Sprinkle some freshly grated nutmeg over the mashed potatoes!

You can easily make this dish the day before as the flavors will only get better after a day.

I could see endless variations of this dish really and the pumpkin and sugar give it a nice little bit of sweetness. While simmering on the stove the smells that came of it where delicious!! Especially the cinnamon was very noticeable. I did detect a very slight bitter aftertaste to the dish, which I somehow feel might be because of the cinnamon but not sure.

In any way, we were both really really pleased with this lovely stew and will definitely be making this again! Perfect for a rainy and stormy autumn day (well, it’s sunny here today… ) but you know what I mean.

So this is my official entry for the Royal Foodie Joust, hosted every month by the Leftover Queen. You can vote for me here after november 1st! Ofcourse you can always join as well in this fun event!