Pumpkins drying on a sunny Swiss veranda in October

We harvest 20-40 pumpkins from our Alpine garden every October, dry them for a month on the warm stones of the veranda to harden them off, then store them in a cool dark area for winter eating. We grow them at 1,100 metres altitude, on dirt mixed with a good dose of the neighboring farmer’s cow dung. These are happy pumpkins!

They are always lovely, lasting about three to four months, but the best is always the first one we cut and use in pumpkin pie. I made one for Scottish friends David and Evelyn from Geneva last weekend, and promised that rather than just sharing the instructions/recipe, I would post them here.

My recipe is an adaptation of my old recipes from the US, for Thanksgiving, but with Swiss ingredients and fresh pumpkin, something I never had access to when I lived in the States.

One small or half of a medium-sized pumpkin like those in the photo is needed for a pie. I use a cleaver to cut them into quarters and cook them in the pressure cooker, usually a couple hours before I need them. If you’re buying at the supermarket, you”ll need a couple good slices. Better: buy whole or slice pumpkin from a farmers market.

One of the secrets of a great pie is a perfect crust, which takes practice. This is why I try to bake pies regularly, to stay in practice. And because they are so delicious!

Pumpkin pie, using fresh or stored pumpkin

pie shell

1 cup white flour (farine fleur)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup shortening with some butter, Astra 10 is good as it is 10% butter
(note: this hardens in the refrigerator, where it should be stored once opened, so take it out 15 minutes before you need it. The Migros equivalent stays soft)
4-6 tablespoons cold water

If you’re already a dough pro, just read the words in bold. If  you’re a novice, the details should help.

Stir salt into flour. Use a fork or pastry cutter to cut in the shortening until half the dough is the size of peas and the rest is larger balls.

Using a fork to toss the dough from underneath, sprinkle the water one tablespoon at a time to dampen the dough. It should be sticky enough to hold together without crumbling, but if you add too much water it becomes gooey.

Using  your hands, form into a ball.

Sprinkle 1/4 cup of flour on the working surface, flatten the ball using the palm of your hands, not your fingers, until it is 1/2 inch or a couple centimetres thick. Roll out with a rolling pin, from the center, until the dough is about an inch or 2-3 cm larger than your pie pan. I run a large plastic spatula under the dough once or twice while rolling it out, to make sure it’s not sticking to the surface. Sprinkle flour on the work surface as needed to keep the dough from sticking.

Pick up the dough by draping half of it over the rolling pin, which makes it easier to transfer into the pie pan: place the rolling pin over the middle of the pan and your dough will be in the right place.

Filling

Mix, in order given:

• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• 110 grams sugar, preferably light brown sugar but Muscado from Swiss supermarkets works
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon powdered ginger, or very finely slivered fresh ginger
• 340 grams freshly cooked pumpkin: 20 minutes in a pressure cooker or 30 minutes boiled in small amount of water
• 1-2/3 cups condensed milk: 2 tubes, available in Swiss supermarkets

Pour into pastry shell. Bake 15 minutes at 210C/425F. Reduce heat to 190C/350F and bake 25-30 minutes more. If the top or crust brown too quickly, lay a sheet of cooking foil loosely over the top.

Check for doneness by inserting a sharp knife into the center. It should come out clean.

Cool on a rack. Best served cold, accompanied by a light drizzle of cream or a spoonful of good quality plain yogurt.

Enjoy!

The P’tit Bonheur in Chambésy will be serving Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, 26 November 2009.

The menu includes pumpkin soup with pumpkin seed oil, apple and walnut salad with cranberry vinaigrette, roast turkey and giblet sauce with fig stuffing, mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream and vanilla ice cream for CHF 55, not including drinks.

The Thanksgiving meal will be served from 12:00 to 14:30 and from 19:00 to 21:30 on Thursday only.

Reservations are recommended.

Even though stuffed turkey, cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes are pretty standard fare, most families have their own version of the feast, including grandma’s recipes as well as traditional ones.

Photo courtesy of Steve Lupton/Corbis.

I’ve gathered some ideas that allow you to plan your own personalized Thanksgiving, right here in the Lake Geneva region, without having to have someone send you the ingredients from back home.

Thanksgiving planner

Epicurious has devised quite a clever Thanksgiving menu planner that should help everyone have a successful, stress-free Thanksgiving. You fill in a form, answering questions about what why type of dinner you want, and they propose a customized menu.

A gourmet Thanksgiving

I filled it in, with no holes barred, and this was what they suggested:

Read more…

MarketView is published every week or so so you can take a look at our list before you go to the market.  It should serve as a tool to help you make your grocery list and menus for the week before you go off to the market.

Amazingly, we are still blessed with a few summer vegetables in the Lake Geneva region, so we still have an interesting mix of spring, summer, and fall fruit and vegetables. As I keep saying, it is surprising what a variety of local fruit and vegetables are still available this late in the growing season.

Spring and summer fruit and vegetables

Aubergine/eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgette/zucchini, green beans, radishes, bell peppers of all colors.

Extra-sweet strawberries, last of the corn, raspberries, blackberries (rarer than the other berries).

Rosemary, many varieties of basil, some mint (end of season), dill, coriander, parsley, laurel, scallions.

Fall fruit and vegetables

Local parsnips from just over the border in France.

Baby carrots, baby turnips, radishes of all types.

New potatoes of all varieties, Swiss chard (blettes), Jerusalem artichokes (topinambur), parsnips (panais).

Local Comice pears.

Grapes (try the hard-to-find framboisé variety, absolutely delicious):

Apples, pears, plums, red peaches (pêches de vigne).

Wild greens of all types, mesclun (mixed wild salad greens).

Cabbage, beets, wild arugula rocket salad.

Herbs of all types, but seeing the last of the mint.

In Switzerland, each producer makes her own mixture of seasonal vegetables for soup.

Most producers make their own mixture of seasonal soup greens and vegetables, which you can just add to a chicken broth.

Cepe mushrooms (bolets).

Black truffles, and a wide variety of other wild mushrooms.

Leeks, pumpkin, squash of all types, cauliflower, broccoli.

Flowers

For classic cake and dessert recipes: Joy of Baking

Stephanie Jaworski is a master baker.

Her recipes are designed for use in North America, so the measurements may have to be adapted to your taste and the raw ingredients to what is available in the Lake Geneva region. For one thing, North Americans tend to put more sugar in their recipes. My rule of thumb is to cut the amount of sugar in half, but I have every kind of tooth but a sweet one, so three-quarters the amount would probably work for those who do.

I’m dying to try her pumpkin cheesecake recipe, but the graham crackers would have to be substituted by some other sort of whole-grain, slightly sweet biscuit or cookie. I think spelt and sesame Wasa or whole-wheat Krisprolls mixed with a spoon of brown sugar/cassonade could also give somewhat the same texture.

Cookbooks: Mathilde’s Cuisine

Photo courtesy of Mathilde's Cuisine blog.

Mathilde Delville’s food blog is great for foodies like myself who have lived in a French-speaking country long enough to not know whether we’re more French, Swiss or Anglo. She rambles about all sorts of food-related topics, in both French and English.

I particularly like her post about cookbooks.

Gourmet recipes you can do at home: Citron et Vanille

Silvia is of Italian origin, grew up in Nancy, France, and has lived in the US for thirteen years now. She is a personal chef, and adds contemporary, gourmet recipes to her site almost daily.

Photo courtesy of Citron et Vanille.

She has the right origins (Italian and French) to know about good food and she is living in San Francisco, certainly one of the food capitals of the US, thanks to all the high-quality ingredients available year round.

Fusion, sugar-free and low-carb recipes: Café Nilson

Photo courtesy of Café Nilson.

The Virtual Chef, whose real name we don’t know, runs an on-line “café” consisting of recipes that people donate, to which she adds her own highly creative recipes. She leans toward light, healthy fusion cuisine, and offers two interesting categories we don’t often see: sugar-free and low-carb.

We still have strawberries in the Lake Geneva region, and they are extra-sweet right now, so I am strongly tempted by her Sugar-free Strawberry Soufflé recipe.