#chefsteff

Spiced pear pancakes trial! I had just enough ingredients to throw together pancakes this morning…or so I thought. I added just a little too much milk, but had just ran out of dry ingredients, then I went to grab some blueberries…and had also run out of those. So, the batter was a little thin, and I reached for the only other viable fruit we had on hand: Bartlett pears. I chopped one up (skin on) as I would an apple—that more than covered the little half batch of pancakes (8 total).

For a half batch of my regular batter (which was a little light for two), I added:

~1/2 tsp allspice

~1/2 tsp roasted cinnamon

~1/8 tsp ground ginger

~1/8 tsp nutmeg

I then tried three different variations:

Trial 1: add chopped pear to batter on griddle

Trial 2: add chopped pear to batter on griddle, then sprinkle with cinnamon and allspice

Trial 3: rub chopped pear with cinnamon and allspice, then add to batter on griddle

Honey lavender lemonade.* Many years ago, a friend offered me a glass of lavender lemonade, and I've been quietly obsessed with it ever since. Sad thing is, I haven't actually HAD it since then (which was 10+ years ago!) but I've still been desperate for more! Hers was just a powdered mix (bought at a local lavendar farm) but it was SO GOOD.

I've also been wanting to find a really good honey lemonade recipe, too: homemade lemonade is FANTASTIC, and I would love nothing more than to have it on hand all summer long...but that's just a lot of sugar to consciously roll into our diet. Honey lemonade would be a much healthier (yet just as sweet) alternative!

Enter: my quest to find a great recipe for honey lavender lemonade.

Turns out, you have to put way more effort into staging photos of lemonade to look pretty than I typically want to, ha. So this photo represents TWO versions of homemade honey lavender lemonade: one using dried lavender petals (from our own little garden!), and another using lavender syrup (premade--also from dried culinary lavender petals--from a local lavender farm. I do have the recipe to DIY it, but I figured I'd start with a little bottle and see how it goes!).

Unfortunately, neither recipe really blew me away the way my friend's powdered mix did. For one, honey lemonade has a different flavor profile than classic lemonade (it's great, just different). But in both trials, the lavender just didn't come through anywhere near as strongly as I wanted it to.

I think I was also a little disappointed that it wasn't, in any way, even slightly, purple...ha.

I did find one other honey lavender recipe that intrigues me, so I may test that one out in the near future. And maybe also add a few drops of purple food dye, just for kicks (:

Recipe with lavender buds: https://fitfoodiefinds.com/honey-lavender-lemonade/

Recipe with lavender syrup: 4 juiced lemons, 5 tbsp lavender simple syrup, 4 tbsp light honey. Mix with 1 quart warm water (or hot--just has to be enough to dissolve the honey): taste and continue adding water until desired sweetness. Chill until cold then serve.

*Though it's a minor detail, as a beekeeper, I try to stick to saying "honey lavender" lemonade rather than "lavender honey" lemonade. Explanation:

When honey is marketed as "orange blossom honey" or "clover honey," that specifically means it's honey produced by bees that are collecting pollen (essentially) exclusively from orchards of orange blossoms or fields of clover flowers. But there is basically no such thing as genuine "lavender honey," as in honey made from bees pollinating lavender flowers: lavender flowers are tubular and too tiny and long for bees to reach the pollen down at the flower's base.

The honey market is supersaturated with fake and mislabeled honey (it's highly unregulated), so--though I really just use honey we harvest ourselves now--I still look at the ingredients label when I see an unusual variety on a store shelf: more often than not, it will read 'honey' AND '[insert some kind of additive or infusion ingredient here]'--as in, it's not genuine "lavender honey." I do think infused honey can be great, but it's technically wrong (and therefore misleading) to call, e.g., lavender-infused honey just straight "lavender honey."

Stuffed Cinderella pumpkin! This was such a great, satisfying autumn soup. The perfect meal once the weather has turned really into winter and you’re craving something healthy, filling, and deeply warming.

I took a lot of liberties with this recipe, some of which were intentional…most of which were not. The base recipe is at the end, but here’s what I did/would recommend for it (when there’s a range, the lower number is what I accidentally used but the higher number is the original and I think would work great, too):

SERVING: At least 6 as main entree. Could be 8 with crusty bread.

INGREDIENTS

1 Cinderella pumpkin (wait until it’s turned orange), ~10 pounds

2 packages cooked chicken sausage, ~20 oz. (I used roasted pepper+Assaggio and it was great)

2 onions

1/2 - 1 small cabbage, chopped with leaves separated

1 rutabaga (or 1 parsnip), peeled and chopped

2 - 3 carrots, peeled and chopped

1 - 2 celery ribs, chopped

1/2 c fresh parsley, chopped

1 1/2 - 2 c chicken broth

1 package dried French onion soup mix

1 1/2 c frozen corn

1 tbsp Italian seasoning

Hearty dash of red pepper flakes

Hardy dash of garlic powder (because I forgot to add the garlic)

S&P

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a rimmed cookie sheet with foil. [I didn’t do the latter and I totally should have]

2. Cut around the top of the pumpkin to make a lid. Use a large metal spoon to scoop out and discard the inside membrane and seeds. [This was surprisingly easy/quick compared to pie pumpkins]

3. Cover pumpkin with its cut out “lid” on top and bake for 3 hours. [I think 2 would be plenty if you don’t have the time. 3 was sort of an accident, though a happy one! Expect the pumpkin to release a LOT of water inside.]

4. Meanwhile [this can be done anytime in those hours], sauté the sausage in a SS pan over high heat until browned. Remove from pan. Stir in the carrots, celery, onion, and rutabaga; cook and stir until tender, about 5 minutes. Next add the cabbage; cook about 5 minutes. Add the corn and the chicken broth; stir to combine. Stir in the parsley, onion soup mix, and spices. Season to taste with hearty salt and pepper. Add the sausage back in and stir to combine. Test that carrots are tender.

5. Keeping the pumpkin on the baking sheet, spoon out two large ladles of the pumpkin liquid into a separate bowl and set aside. Then add the vegetable-sausage mixture into the pumpkin, and replace the lid.* (You may need an extra hand to scoop the filling into the sides of the pumpkin if it’s collapsing… I was surprised at how much I was able to fill this way!) THEN, add as much of the reserved pumpkin liquid back in as you can once filled.

*I actually didn’t replace the lid because mine was looking a little saggy, so I just kept it on the countertop while everything else was in for the final bake. Turned out great this way!

6. Reduce oven temperature to 325. Cook the filled pumpkin 30 - 60 minutes. (I did 60 out of personal convenience, and it worked out great but probably was not necessary!)

7. Remove from oven and place pumpkin, cookie sheet and all, on a flat surface. If you can, scoop some of the pumpkin flesh out from the sides and combine with the brothy vegetable mixture.

8. To serve, scrape the pumpkin flesh from the bottom of the lid and put at least half a cup at the bottom of individual soup bowls. Then proceeded to ladle in as much as you’d like from the pumpkin! I found it easiest to ladle first then scoop and add the flesh from the sides straight into the bowls; then loosely stir to combine.

The more you ladle out for the pumpkin, the more you’ll realize how much pumpkin flush there is to be distributed!

I’d already deliberately modified close to half the recipe’s ingredients before I even started cooking. But then on top of that, putting this post together made me realize how much I was not paying attention to the recipe while making it, haha. Somehow, this recipe was way more intuition than instruction following. But it worked out…for example, the original calls for baking the pumpkin only an hour to start, then multiple hours once the veggies are added. I don’t think this was necessary, as everything really got off to a great start on the stove and didn’t require hours more to be cooked enough.

I used a typically-sized Cinderella pumpkin, which is to say, it took up a full cookie sheet and about half of my oven height. When I bought the pumpkin in early October, it was a ghostly green and I honestly didn’t realize it would ripen to a bright, classic pumpkin orange, but it did!

I’ve tried a few whole-roasted-pumpkin recipes before, but I wasn’t really taken by any of them until this one. This was definitely a winner, at least the way I did it! The variety of fillings that I put inside were really great, but I could also see throwing in sage, different kinds of sausage, garlic (which I was supposed to but completely forgot), or really anything that feels like a good mix in the moment. Beyond the basics of making sure you cook the pumpkin long enough, this recipe is really much more art than science. :)

Avocado toast! I've had avocado toast a few times and, frankly, don't really understand what all the fuss is about. The last time I had it, it was from an airport restaurant, and I turned to the stranger next to me to ask their opinion on avocado toast and if they could explain to me what I obviously must be missing about it. (Turned out, that guy was a professional chef. He also didn't get the big deal about it, ha!)

But here I was, halfway through making guacamole, when I realized I didn't actually have not just one, but two (the recipe's other half!) of needed ingredients. Defeated, I gave up, and just mashed what I had and threw it on a piece of whole wheat toast. There you have it: messed up guacamole turned "avocado toast" (aka, A Food Trend's Origin Story).

But this was actually great! I think the problem is there's never enough avocado when I've ordered it out, whereas each piece of my toast was topped with a whopping full avocado, haha. And that was it! One avocado, mashed and mixed with a generous tablespoon of fresh chopped tomato, and salt to taste on top of a slice of whole wheat toast.

My only mods would be to omit the salt and instead top with Everything Bagel seasoning (or at least top with flaky salt, instead of mixing it in). Also, be sure your toast is EXTRA crispy, as it will soften quickly under the moisture of the topping!

Stuffed zucchini boats! Years ago, I took a cooking class where I swear we made these…but I never got the recipe for them, and I’ve never found one that even sounded familiar to it: a vegetarian recipe that didn’t have a marinara sauce and wasn’t heavily cheesy.

Tonight I wanted this kind of recipe—something healthy that would be filling but not weigh us down in this heat—but I just couldn’t find a recipe that fit the bill. So after having perused a whole bunch, I took elements that were appealing and made my own recipe up! :)

This was outright delicious. I thought ground turkey would add a little substance without being too heavy, but after mixing, I was worried a pound of it would be too much…it wasn’t, it was great!

The flavors all worked well (though I definitely under salted), the broil char at the end added the perfect amount of texture, and it was just the right amount for dinner for two (zero leftovers, though). The moisture from the zucchini worked really well with the (typical) dryness of the turkey. The only mod I think might be nice to try next time is deglazing the sauté pan with some white wine next time, maybe!

INGREDIENTS:

3 zucchini (small or medium)

1# ground Turkey

1 onion

1 large garlic clove

Handful of finely chopped fresh parsley

Shredded cheese (ie mozz)

Grated cheese (ie parm)

1 scant cup Panko breadcrumbs

GENEROUS S&P

DIRECTIONS:

Slice zucchini in half (long ways) and scoop out the insides, leaving thin walls. Sauté zucchini flesh, chopped onion, minced garlic in light oil (veg or grapeseed). (Deglaze with white wine??) Season HEAVILY with s&p (it needs more than you think). Add turkey, stir just to break turkey entirely up.

Turn off heat. Mix in 1/4 c of shredded mozz, 1/2 c grated parm, 1 rough cup panko. Mix in parsley.

Line cookie sheet with foil all the way and spray with Pam. Rub XVoo on skin side of zucchini boats. Season int with s&p. Fill entirely with mix (loose fill on first run, then mound up on second filling pass).