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"Cooking, in effect, took part of the work of chewing and digestion and performed it for us outside of the body, using outside sources of energy. Also, since cooking detoxifies many potential sources of food, the new technology cracked open a treasure trove of calories unavailable to other animals. Freed from the necessity of spending our days gathering large quantities of raw food and then chewing (and chewing) it, humans could now devote their time, and their metabolic resources, to other purposes, like creating a culture."

Michael Pollan

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Entries in pumpkin (3)

Wednesday
Oct212015

Andrew's Roasted Delica pumpkin with garlic, herbs and chilli

DateWednesday, October 21, 2015 at 7:12PM

Pumpkin is not something I often choose to cook. I generally prefer something more savoury. But the Delica pumpkin from Natoora really is exceptional. They are grown in Mantova, Lombardy following traditional methods that involve a final curing process in heated warehouses that maximises the sugar contents and reduces the amount of water in the flesh.

My colleague, Andrew, made this recipe for the Natoora autumn seasonal meeting and it was a hit. Gone in seconds. It's a simple recipe which makes the most of the Delica's sweet and tender flesh. Roasted with garlic, herbs and chilli, it caramelises beautifully in the oven.

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AuthorVix | Comment7 Comments |
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Tuesday
Aug062013

Tomyumpkin soup

DateTuesday, August 6, 2013 at 9:31PM

“Daa-aa-aad. What’s for dinner?”

I remember pumpkin soup being one of the most disappointing answers to this daily question when I was a kid. It wasn’t that I didn't like it. It's just that my Dad's a chef and in a house full of delicious things pumpkin soup was, well...

"Boring!"

Until recently, I never cooked it for myself. Then my friend, Alex, made me pumpkin soup with tom yum paste in it. It was a revelation.

Adding tom yum paste to pumpkin soup turns it into something special. I now look forward to it and make it often, and I have converted others along the way.

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AuthorVix | Comment2 Comments |
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Saturday
Oct232010

Stephanie Alexander's Moroccan-inspired chicken

DateSaturday, October 23, 2010 at 2:48PM

About halfway through making this dish I thought I might have another Dalmatian disaster on my hands. Part of me was thinking what a waste of good ingredients, while the other half of me was eagerly imagining the comic potential of another culinary catastrophe. In the end I was left disappointed on both fronts; I was able to save the dish from disaster but not from the dull and the ordinary, the result being that I still felt I had squandered good ingredients on a dish that turned out to be perfectly pleasant, but rather plain and where is the comic value in that?

So why, you may ask, am I sharing it with you? Faith. And a lack of it. 

Faith: This is the first time I have ever been disappointed with a recipe from Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion. It seems so unlikely that a recipe with so many sumptuous spices could fall flat. Caroline Dewe of the Mostly Undaunted Cook certainly rates it (“Love this dish”) calling her post ‘Thank you Stephanie: Morrocan inspired chicken’.

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AuthorVix | Comment4 Comments |
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