Pumpkin Pancakes

I am finally, officially on maternity leave and boy, does it feel good. The last few weeks of work were beyond hectic and tiring but I had more than enough work to see me through to the end, and some I'm still finishing up at home. I can take up to a year of leave (even if I don't get paid for much of it), and being an American-abroad who knows plenty of friends who only get 6 weeks/a couple of months off, I haven't lost sight of how lucky I am to have a few weeks to rest and relax before the baby arrives (I hope). T-minus a-bit-less-than-3-weeks, and the hospital bag is packed since baby really can come any time now.

To celebrate my first morning of not having to go to work (even if I still woke up at 6.45, as I normally do), I made myself a breakfast of something more than shredded wheat biscuits mashed up with banana. If we owned a waffle maker, I would have indulged in some waffle action; instead, I pancaked myself up. Not your average pancakes for me, though. This being a dreary autumnal day on which I was celebrating the ability to take afternoon naps (for a couple of weeks) and not to do my hair and make-up (which I'm told stops being a luxury after having a baby and becomes a source of shame), these pancakes were going to be tarted up a bit.

In what could have been a section of a self-help book called How to Pick Yourself Up When the Weather is Grim and You'll be Laying Around in Your Pajamas All Day, I found a recipe for Pumpkin Pancakes in a breakfast book a friend had given me ages ago. Pumpkin pie is part of the holy trinity of Thanksgiving to me, along with turkey and the Macy's parade, but I'm also keen on using pumpkin in other things when it's in season. Working pumpkin into a breakfast seemed like a glorious gift from the breakfast fairies as well as a way to warm up my pumpkin tastebuds for Thanksgiving next week.

The pancakes stayed a bit soft even after they were fully cooked, pushing the pancake slightly in the direction of actual pumpkin pie. I would have preferred them to be more cake-like, since it's the texture of pancakes that is a much a feature of their glory as the taste is. I had been eager with my pumpkin, though, which did throw off the texture so I can't blame the recipe (yet) for the squishiness. Also for the next time around, I will play with the sugar and spice content a bit more since I'm happy to stand my pumpkin up against stronger allspice and nutmeg flavors to have the pancakes be firmly on the sweet rather than the savory end of the spectrum. I served the pancakes with a bit of crumbly sugar topping and maple syrup, which to me was the only way to properly embrace these creatures.

I'll certainly be trying the recipe again with the tweaks I mentioned, though the recipe below is reproduced from the original for those purists out there.


Pumpkin Pancakes, from The Big Book of Breakfasts
makes around 16 decent-sized pancakes

• 1 C flour
• 1/4 C cornmeal
• 2 Tbs sugar
• 1 tsp allspice
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/3 C milk
• 3/4 c canned pumpkin
• 3 large eggs, separated
• 3 Tbs melted butter
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, allspice and salt in a large bowl.
2. In another bowl, whisk together milk, pumpkin, egg yolks, melted butter and vanilla.
3. Add the wet mixture to the dry and whisk until smooth.
4. Beat egg whites until soft peaks form, and then fold them into the batter.
5. Pre-heat your normal pancake-making pan over a medium high heat and melt some butter or vegetable oil in it.
6. Pour desired pancake-sized batter amount into the pan, and turn once small bubbles appear along the surface of the pancake. Cook for half the amount of time again.

Pumpkin Bread

I was recently asked a question by a fellow American-in-London which resonated deeply with me: did I know a good recipe for pumpkin bread, because the last several she tried out all smelled and tasted like very bad things. Sweet pumpkin things are much more an American affair than a British, and even just finding tins of pumpkin in the UK can be very difficult (or, when you find them, they're two to three times as expensive as you'd expect back home). Messing about with substandard recipes is a hazard on both the wallet and the stomach. No pressure on me to come up with the goods, then.

Pumpkin pie I'm very familiar with making, but I've only made pumpkin bread once in my memory. I was 14 and was in a flush of post-Thanksgiving turkey eating, and wanted to carry on the Thanksgiving spirit through seasonal baked products. At 14 I was comfortable with baking, but my mother's cooking repertoire had changed in the preceding years to shun any use of an oven or stove top in lieu of the microwave. Although I grew up with her baking for us (granted, from packets), once she returned to work it was microwaves a go-go. I would occasionally be allowed to make a banana bread when we had bananas half a step away from being thrown in the bin, but otherwise the oven was cast suspicious glances and only used at holiday times and discouraged at all others.

Just before my foray into making pumpkin bread, my family got a counter-top convection microwave oven - essentially a microwave with a bit more excitement thrown in. The convection microwave came with a recipe book, and within that book was - behold! - a recipe for pumpkin bread. This was akin to divine intervention for my mother: she hadn't wanted me to use the normal oven to bake, so this opportunity to make a convection microwaved-approved baked good meant that my fate was sown. I was young enough then to still listen to my mother, but I now would know better. My overriding memory of that pumpkin bread was that it was rubbery, slightly flat and sunken, fairly tasteless, and shockingly orange.


This would not be the recipe I would suggest to an American looking for a good pumpkin bread, then. So while I didn't have a known pumpkin bread on hand, I did have a favorite recipe for zucchini bread which I figured I could tweak a bit. Zucchini was swapped for pumpkin, cinnamon found itself accompanied by nutmeg and allspice, and I made a simple crumb topping which made me question whether or not it would be gastronomically acceptable to just eat a tray-full of crumb topping.

I made both a loaf as well as half a dozen extra-large muffins, all of which looked and came out beautifully. The bread stayed moist and all the spices come together in a lovely warming medley. The pumpkin, as it often is, was so subtle it threatened to disappear if you didn't concentrate on it; I would try making the recipe with more pumpkin next time to see how that worked out, although I've written the recipe out as I made it. But I will most certainly be making this again, and forwarding it on to any Americans-in-London yearning for pumpkin bread as well.



Pumpkin Bread
Makes 1 large loaf or 18-36 cupcakes, depending on size

• 3 C all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 1/2 Tbs cinnamon
• 3/4 Tbs allspice
• 3/4 freshly grated nutmeg
• 3 eggs
• 1 C vegetable oil
• 2 1/4 C caster sugar
• 3 tsp vanilla
• 1 15 oz tin of pumpkin (or 15 oz of fresh pumpkin, after roasting and draining it of excess water)
• 1/2 C walnuts, chopped
• For the topping: (I admit, this is approximate - you may need to even out my measurements, but the consistency when made should by like big grains of sand)
• 10 g butter
• 20 g flour
• 15 g brown sugar
  

1. Pre-heat the oven to 165 C / 325 F
   
2. Sift together all the dry ingredients - the flour, salt, soda, baking powder, and spices
3. Beat together the eggs, oil, vanilla and sugar until they're well mixed
4. Sift dry ingredients into the wet ingredients in batches, mixing thoroughly each time
5. Stir in the pumpkin and mix thorougly
6. Stir through the walnuts
7. To make the topping: combine the butter, flour, and brown sugar in a bowl, and using two forks turned upside-down from normal, cut the three ingredients together until they resemble rough grains of sand
   
8. Pour either into a large, greased bread tin, or into cupcake tins
9. Sprinkle the topping onto the bread/the cupcakes
10. Bake the bread loaf for 60-70 minutes, the cupcakes for apprx 25 minutes for normal sized cupcakes, 35 minutes for large cupcakes
    

Pumpkin and Sage Risotto

Autumn has definitely arrived in the produce section. From romanesco broccoli to the veg box full of squashes given us by Mr A&N’s mother (who runs such a formidable home vegetable garden she can just about sustain their two-person household all year) – as much as summer delights with its sweet berries and fresh greens, autumn holds a cornucopia of delights.

I like the fact that in the UK most of the pumpkins you'll find are intended to be eaten. Coming from America, I’m used to carving a pumpkin at Halloween or magically finding a pumpkin transformed into pie-state at Thanksgiving, but the pumpkin is never quite taken seriously as a food. Pumpkin can be fantastic roasted or made into soup, and home-roasted pumpkin seeds are as delicious to me as a big bowl of popcorn (and I rank that high on the deliciousness scale).

The petite pumpkin I picked up was designated in my mind to become a risotto; I had never tried it before, but the creaminess of a risotto seemed right to be paired with the pumpkin. It was also conveniently timed to let me join in the risotto relay event held at The Baker and the Curry Maker. I really wanted to include sage in my risotto (that, too, just felt right) but sage is a very hard herb to find fresh. After going to 3 grocery stores I had to admit defeat (and I also had, I vowed again, to grow a hearty sage plant in the garden once our building works are done). We have emergency dried whole sage leaves in the cupboard which are little more than a sad gesture but I used them in the risotto anyway.

I roasted the pumpkin seeds with a bit of olive oil, salt, and plenty of pepper, and sprinkled the seeds on the top. The pumpkin was probably not as flavorful as it could have been, so along with the lack of real sage the risotto on the whole lacked a bit of a punch. Stoked up by generous amounts of parmesan, it was still a properly creamy and tasty risotto, and with an autumn full of pumpkins ahead I will probably be eating this again (if, please someone, I can find some fresh sage).


Pumpkin and Sage Risotto
Enough for 4 adults as a main course

• 1 small pumpkin (up to 1 kilo)
• 500 grams of risotto rice
• 1 medium onion
• 3 cloves of garlic
• Handful of fresh sage, roughly chopped
• 1 1/2 - 2 litres soup stock (chicken or vegetable)
• Knob of butter
• Parmesan, salt, and pepper to taste

1. Skin and dice the pumpkin into small cubes (about 1 cm square is ideal)
2. Chop the onion and garlic into small pieces
3. Heat a bit of olive oil in a large pan or good cast-iron pot, and sautee the onions until soft
4. Add the garlic and sage and stir
5. Add the risotto and pumpkin and stir to coat
6. Add the stock a cupful or two at a time so that the pumpkin and rice are covered
7. Stir the dish constantly, only adding more liquid when the stock added has been absorbed.
8. Keep stirring and adding stock until the rice and pumpkin are soft; about 20/25 minutes.
9. Turn off the heat and add a knob of butter, and stir through the risotto.
10. Add parmesean, salt, and pepper to taste. Serve immediately, with pumpkin seeds on top or on the side for a bit of crunch.