What's on my Plate?

For a long time I never attempted a souffle. I guess I was scared of this tempestuous diva. Eventually I got up the courage to try the dreaded souffle, and now it is a regular part of the repertoire.

A souffle is not hard. It is basically an egg yolk-thickened white sauce lightened up with some whipped egg whites. That's it. No magic.

Some people will say you MUST serve the souffle as soon as it comes out of the oven or all is lost. You know, I wouldn't serve my guests a lot of things unless they are fresh from the oven. What makes a souffle any more magic than a fresh scone or biscuit? So once you get past that particular terror tactic, what's left?

Oh yeah, it might collapse in the oven, and then all is lost. I have vague recollections of '60s sitcoms featuring failed dinner parties on that count. Well I have made a lot of souffles by now. You would not call me a ballerina in the kitchen - the way I blunder about should guarantee that all is lost, but no - it comes out fine every time.

Hot dogs are a strange food. Like anything else, they can be made well or poorly. The nasty things served to kids in school lunches and sold by the super-bulk-pak at big-box markets are, in my consideration, not food. On the other hand, a hot dog is a frankfurter sausage, and the same rules might apply to any sausage that had the mass-market forces of the humble hot dog driving it relentlessly toward the bottom line.

The most important thing about a hot dog as a foodie experience is never the sausage; it's all about who you're with and where you are. There's nothing like a hot dog with a seldom-seen cousin at a backyard cookout, or enjoying a hot dog with a 10-year-old at a Cape Cod League Baseball game!

The Long Island Cheese Pumpkin is decorative, but is is also good for cooking. It has the color of a Butternut Squash, but the flavor is very close to that of a Sugar Pumpkin. Its squat shape makes it a great candidate for Stuffed Pumpkin and Chestnut-Stuffed Pumpkin.

This pumpkin is less common than the Sugar Pumpkin, but you can sometimes find them at garden centers.

I think it is called a Cheese Pumpkin because it is the size and shape of a wheel of cheese, but I have no true etymology for that other than hearsay from New Hampshire pumpkin farmers.

In 2011 I was studying Italian, and as incentive for my studies I prepared four special regional Italian feasts:

• Richmond's Piedmont Birthday Feast
• Lorna's Tuscan Birthday Feast
• Annette's Venetian Birthday Feast
• John's Neapolitan Birthday Feast

This was a fun series. The links go to pages about each feast and its menu, which in turn liinks to recipes, cookbooks, and other resources.

There are a few common varieties of pumpkins that are good for cooking, and another that is not.

As luck might have it, the most common pumpkin grown every summer and fall is the big, rugose Jack-o-Lantern pumpkin, which is great for making scary faces but a bit watery and fibrous for fine dining.

I know of two similar cooking pumpkins: the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin and the Long Pie Pumpkin. Both of these are currently rare in New England. Sometimes you see decorative white pumpkins around Halloween; I have never tried cooking one of those. When I do, you'll read about it here!

The Sugar Pumpkin is commonly available in the fall, and it is your best bet for all sorts of baking and cooking.

It's late September and the streets of Plymouth down near the harbor are full of fog. The air is cool and it feels like we won't see any more hot days and not many more warm days.

That's OK for me. I like the cool weather because I like to cook. I find it hard to get motivated to cook when the kitchen is hot and there's no easy way to cool down. In the cooler months it's easier to cook, and I like to cook!

As usual, our Saturday adventure produced some loot and we have to do something with it. So here's what we did:

• Opened with Mayflower Barleywine and German Beer Radishes

then  

• Salad of mixed greens with figs and toasted walnuts and Great Hill Blue Cheese

before moving on to:

• Chestnut-Stuffed Pumpkin (sugar pumpkin from King Creek Farm)
• Pork Chops with Butter and Sage (pork from Tide Mill Organic Farm, sage from the garden)
• Brandied Sauteed Apples (Red Gravensteins from School House Farm)
• Sauerkraut (from Morse's Sauerkraut)

and then finished with

• the first Apple Pie of the season, with more of the same Red Gravensteins from Maine.