Guess the Color: Pumpkin Seed Oil (dressing recipe for potato or kale salad)

pumpkin seed kurbiskernol vinaigrette — *Looks more appetizing on the kale*

Over the course of my culinary exploration, I’ve been amazed by just how many different types of oil there are. Some are pretty standard and widespread. Canola and vegetable (often soybean) oils are neutrally flavored, easy-to-find, affordable, and widely used in baking and frying. Some cooks prefer corn or peanut oil for deep frying. For sautéing and salad dressings, olive oil is a favorite. In a well-stocked grocery store, you often find sunflower, sesame, flaxseed, grapeseed, avocado, and coconut oils.

Certain oils are largely restricted to particular cuisines or uses. Sunflower is popular in Eastern Europe due to Orthodox fasting rules and the inability to grow olives. Toasted sesame oil is common in East Asia, especially China, while Middle Easterners prefer untoasted. Nut oils like almond or walnut are sometimes used in European salad dressings. And bright reddish-orange palm oil gives many West African dishes their distinctive flavor.

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In Austria, a local specialty is pumpkin seed oil, called kurbiskernol, made from the appropriately-named oilseed pumpkin. It’s typically used in salad dressings and as a dip for bread. Due to its low smoke point, it’s not suitable for cooking, which damages its distinctive flavor. But here’s a question for you. If the stereotypical pumpkin is orange and inner seed kernels (pepitas) are green, what color is pumpkin seed oil?

Answer: It’s a lovely deep purple, with yellow-green undertones.

In 1000 Foods to Eat Before You Die (pgs. 323 – 324), Mimi Sheraton describes pumpkin seed oil as resembling liquid amethysts. If it had been available during the Middle Ages, sophisticated diners would have been all over it. They loved bright, even tacky colors, and very few foods are naturally that shade of purple. For people who created elaborate gilded dishes with egg yolks and saffron, liquid jewels sound right up their alley.

Pumpkins arrived in Europe after Columbus. Exactly when Europeans began eating them or pressing their seeds is unclear, but the oil makes a great vinaigrette base. To boost its color, I added red wine vinegar, minced shallots, a little salt, and a dash of mustard and honey to keep the dressing from separating. If you find the flavor of the pumpkin seed oil a little strong, try replacing about half of it with sunflower oil, which is typically pale, for a lighter shade of amethyst. Yellow or greenish olive oil will make it look muddy.

Thinner layers of the oil can look muddy anyway, but the taste, clearly that of roasted pumpkin seeds, is worth it. It’s a fantastic complement to potatoes, and makes salads much more satisfying. Kale is especially good, because its strong flavor is less likely to be overwhelmed. It also holds up in the fridge for a few days, even with dressing.

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To dress about six medium potatoes or one bunch of kale, just combine 6 tablespoons of pumpkin seed oil, 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar, a minced shallot, and a little salt. Mix in a teaspoon each of Dijon mustard and honey and whisk until combined. Toss with cubes of hot cooked potatoes (waxy varieties like reds or Yukon golds are best, peeled or not is up to you) or chopped kale and let rest for an hour at room temperature. Store leftovers in refrigerator, bringing potato salad back to room temperature before serving. If desired, rewarm for about 30 seconds in the microwave. The kale salad is ready right out of the fridge.

Vinaigrette-based vegetable salads are perfect year-round. They stay crisp (if applicable) better than lettuce, are more interesting than a veggie tray, and provide a pleasantly light counterpoint to grilled or roasted meats, heavy sides, and desserts. With no egg or dairy, they’re safer on hot days than those with mayonnaise. And during the winter, sturdy vegetables like potatoes and kale (or even frozen vegetables like green beans) are more consistent than fresh sweet corn, tomatoes, or lettuce.

And with how popular pumpkin spice is, pumpkin seed dressing would be perfect on a fall or Halloween theme menu. Perhaps a kale or other cabbage salad with pumpkin seed vinaigrette and toasted pumpkin seeds to start, followed by pumpkin or squash ravioli with butter and sage, and concluding with a pumpkin or apple dessert. With plain coffee or tea, though. Pumpkin spice belongs in desserts, not beverages.

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food history, italian cuisine

Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 32 (Pgs. 107 – 111): Menu for 4, Bergamo

Region: Lombardy

Menu: Bergamo-Style Ravioli, Rabbit Roasted in Red Wine, Bergamo-Style Polenta, Cheese with Mixed Salad, Sambuca-Flavored Cocoa Roll (orange flavor instead)

Recommended Wine: Spumante

Bergamo is in the northern Italian province of Lombardy, north of Milan. As in the rest of northern Italy, there is a lot of fresh pasta and polenta, butter often replaces olive oil, and there are plentiful cow’s milk cheeses like fontina, gorgonzola, parmesan, and mascarpone. While generally overshadowed by its larger neighbor, Bergamo has its own specialties. One of these is a unique ravioli, filled with a mix of chicken, pork, salami, vegetables, and a little cheese. They are dressed in melted butter and sage, parmesan cheese, and toasted bread crumbs.

This was my first attempt at making my own pasta, and it went surprisingly well. Since I don’t have a pasta roller, I rolled little pieces of dough into circles with a rolling pin and folded them around the filling in a half-moon shape. It was a slow process, but making the ravioli bigger sped things along. The meat-and-vegetable filling was deliciously different from the usual cheese-heavy varieties, though there’s nothing wrong with those.

The only thing I would change is to cook the larger ravioli for an extra minute or two. Having thicker pasta kept the ravioli from bursting open, but not factoring it into the cooking time left it a little tough. It was still delicious, and the extras are in the freezer for whenever a quick homemade dinner is desired.

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Another first for this menu was the rabbit. The idea was a little tough at first, until I reminded myself that this rabbit (which according to the package was a product of Spain) was bred and raised exclusively for food. It was never someone’s pet, or a former resident of the nearby farm/petting zoo. Besides, people have been eating rabbits for a lot longer than they’ve been keeping them as pets. They were a common protein into the 20^th Century, and one 1930s menu even had rabbit pot pie as an economical alternative to chicken.

Rabbit does, in fact, taste sort of like dark meat chicken, but a little different and very lean. The fact that chicken is easier to farm on an industrial scale probably explains why rabbit isn’t as popular as it used to be. Or maybe it’s just that people didn’t grow up with the Easter Chicken. Or the fact that chickens won’t stand on their hind legs like a prairie dog when offered a banana chip.

Black rabbit — *Not the second course…and I wasn’t rabbit sitting when I made this menu either.*

Regardless, most rabbit recipes seem to involve slow-cooking it in liquid and/or adding some extra fat. In this case, the fat came from a bit of Italian sausage, and the liquid was red wine. It did taste very good, though in the future I would probably just use chicken thighs, which are cheaper and easier to find. At least for this recipe.

Upon reading the recipe, I was surprised at how quickly the polenta cooked. Once the salted water was boiling, the corn grits/polenta only had to cook for about five minutes. It required frequent but not constant stirring, and didn’t get lumpy, which is a common problem. Was the addition of a little buckwheat flour the key to a good consistency? Perhaps, and either way, the addition of butter, sage, and fontina cheese gave the final mix a pleasant rich but mild flavor that contrasted well with the stronger flavors in the rest of the meal.

The salad was similar to many others in the book; a mix of greens dressed with a flavorful homemade dressing. The store didn’t have the endive called for in the recipe, so I just used the arugula and radicchio. Unlike other lemon juice and oil “vinaigrettes,” a little bit of orange zest and some minced shallots seemed to sweeten the mix, keeping it from becoming too sour and letting it balance the bitter radicchio. Don’t worry if the oil solidifies in the refrigerator. Fifteen to thirty minutes at room temperature will take care of that.

For the cheese, I used fresh mozzarella instead of taleggio because that’s what was available at the store. Even though it’s a southern Italian cheese not native to the Bergamo area, it went very well with the salad, especially when served on the dressed greens instead of next to them. The bitter arugula and radicchio, sour and slightly sweet dressing, and mild mozzarella all contrasted beautifully without clashing.

Dessert was one of the best things I’ve made in a while. The “cake” is a mix of egg yolks whipped with sugar, melted chocolate, a bit of flavoring, and separately whipped egg whites folded in at the end. The original recipe calls for three tablespoons of sambuca to be mixed in with the chocolate. Since I didn’t want to buy a whole bottle that I would be unlikely to drink or use in other recipes, I considered replacing it with a teaspoon of anise extract mixed into some cream, until I remembered that replacing wine with milk caused a previous attempt at zabaglione to fail. To keep the chemistry similar, I initially settled on a teaspoon of anise extract mixed into three tablespoons brandy.

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Then I considered that anise (the flavor of black licorice) is not generally my favorite flavoring. Trying a bit over a scoop of ice cream with a sprinkle of coffee granules is one thing. It’s a single serving that takes two minutes to make. Even though that turned out well, I was hesitant to put anise flavoring into an entire cake that was a bit fiddly to make. Other extract options were vanilla, almond, and orange. Since I was already making an almond cheesecake for a different event, I settled on orange for something different. A teaspoon went into the “cake,” and half a teaspoon went into the whipped cream filling.

The cake was spectacular. The texture ended up somewhere between a brownie and a mousse, intensely chocolate lightened with a touch of orange. While the cake did crack slightly as I rolled it up, the inside still formed a recognizable spiral. Not pastry shop window perfect, and it wouldn’t pass muster on the Great British Baking Show, but still a pretty special occasion dessert. And of course, it’s the taste that counts. From time to time it’s well worth the effort.

american cuisine, food history, recipes

Cobb Salad: A Cold Main Course for Hot Weather

1000 Foods (pg. 547) for information, recipe is my own creation

This upcoming weekend is supposed to be hot. At times like these, most people don’t want to heat up the kitchen by turning the oven on. Grilling, quick-cooking pasta, and stir-fry are all popular options for home cooks, as are a variety of cold salads.

Supposedly, cobb salad was invented in California in the 1930s as a way to use up leftovers. Turning leftovers into salads was just as common then as now, though inexplicably this often involved mayonnaise and/or gelatin. Thankfully, cobb salad avoided this in favor of a vinaigrette flavored with lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, and garlic. Original ingredients included hard-boiled eggs, blue cheese, chicken, bacon, avocado, and tomatoes, presented in rows for a striped effect.

Inevitably, cobb salad’s popularity in Hollywood spread the recipe nationwide, with some variations. Since avocados were harder to find outside California, they were frequently omitted, and sometimes other diced ingredients like ham were added. Shredded cheese might replace the blue cheese, and some cooks might use the mayonnaise-based dressings popular at the time.

For my own recipe, I made three adjustments. Since I don’t like boiled eggs or blue cheese, I replaced them with feta and lentils. The French-style green lentils I found at Woodman’s were particularly good, with an almost meaty flavor. And I omitted the tomatoes because they are not yet in season fresh.

The final result was a mix of chicken, avocados, bacon, feta cheese, lentils, and romaine lettuce with a flavorful vinaigrette. All the different textures and flavors contrasted well with each other, and the platter was just so pretty.

Ingredients:

1 head romaine lettuce, washed and torn into bite-sized pieces
About 1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts or thighs, cooked, cooled, and cut into cubes
About 8 oz feta or blue cheese
About 8 oz bacon, sliced across the grain into roughly 1-inch pieces, cooked, drained, and cooled
1 cup French-style green lentils (I used Bob’s Red Mill brand) cooked and cooled, or a few chopped hard-boiled eggs
2 ripe avocados, halved, seeded, and cut into cubes
Sliced ripe tomatoes, if in season
Juice of ½ lemon
1 tbsp red or white wine vinegar
4 tbsp olive oil
1 or 2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed with the side of a knife
A few dashes Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

For the dressing: combine the lemon juice, vinegar, olive oil, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper in a bowl and beat together with a fork. Let rest for at least an hour to infuse the garlic flavor.
Arrange the remaining ingredients either on a platter or individual plates. Rows are the most traditional, but feel free to let your creativity run wild.
Remove the garlic cloves from the dressing. Whisk the dressing and pour over the salad before the liquids separate. Serve.

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