TR: Pumpkin Carving, Artichoke Mac & Cheese Dinner Party

Friday night we had our lovely friend Kathleen over for mini dinner party and to carve up some pumpkins.
Now- let me tell you about this recipe I cooked- Woah doggy! It was CRAY-ZAY. Insane. Tedious. Expensive to make. Gourmet. Challenging. ¡Muy difícil! Laborious.  Should I go on…?

Friday and Sundays are my two days off this fall. In that respect, I was lucky to have ALL DAY on Friday to devote to slaving in the kitchen, because that is what this recipe required. Here it is, in all its arduous glory.  Seems so simple, right?  It’s macaroni and freaking cheese, for Pete’s sake!!  Did the recipe’s creator not get the memo??  Mac and cheese is a COMFORT FOOD!  It’s supposed to be easy, cheesy, simple, yummy goodness.  Stuff yer face, feelin full, no worries, down home chow.  But- no, no- Unassuming Beginner Chef… this is Food Network CHALLENGE mac & cheese.  That means complex.  And challenging.  WINNING effort required!  No room for amateurs here!  Let’s take a look, shall we:

The Recipe that Will Break Your Soul… aka: Goat Cheese Mac & Cheese, stuffed in Artichokes

Step 1: prep, cut and clean 9 artichokes

Having never cleaned artichokes before, I was unaware of what a pain in the butt this would be.

Ta-da!  Several artichoke-leave pricks later (egads, those things are spiky!), these suckers are ready for the pot

Step 2: Simmer artichokes in a mixture of white wine, water, garlic, lemon juice, coriander (yum!- one of my favorite spices, needs to be used more often), bay leaves, peppercorns, and AN ENTIRE FREAKING CUP OF OLIVE OIL.  Really?!  A whole cup of olive oil???  Do you people not realize how pricey olive oil is these days…. also… by this point it is striking me that this is probably not the healthiest recipe in the world.

Step 3:  Realize that, as the recipe called for two and a half cups of wine, you still have a goodly amount of white wine leftover in the bottle.  Rejoice!  Contemplating the daunting afternoon ahead, go ahead and pour yourself a glass.     Note: as you see here, I am *not* a wine snob and in fact have an ice cube in my glass (*sheepish*)… enough to get one automatically evicted from the state of CA?

Step 4: cook artichokes in mixture for about an hour or until soft.  since they keep floating to the top of the solution, use baster to continually soak their insides and smoosh them down to the bottom of the pot

Step 5: while artichokes are cooking, prepare bread crumbs.  this is a major pain in and of itself, involving blending up a loaf of bread, then toasting breadcrumbs in a pan of olive oil.  once these are done being toasted, let them cool and then add zest of three lemons, blended up fresh parsley, ground pink peppercorns, salt and parm cheese

Step 6: meanwhile, you gotta make some mac and cheese to stuff in the artichokes.  get out your goat cheese!  (btw- the midnight moon goat cheese was AWESOME, would totally recommend that for just plain noshing)

Step 7: Also in the meantime, start your dessert.  I was making miniature individual strawberry pies.   Started out by making this all-butter pie crust.  Cool thing about this recipe is that it made enough for two pie crusts, which means I have one left over in the freezer now for Thanksgiving.

Step 8: A-ha!  An hour later your artichokes are done cooking.  Take them out, let them cool, put em in a pan.  Then you have to remove the hearts and saute them SEPARATELY in another pan for another 5-10 minutes while doctoring them up with all kind of spices.  Meanwhile, you’re supposed to take three of the other cooked artichokes and blend them up in a blender and add some different spices.  I didn’t (and still don’t) really get this part, because the recipe at this point stops differentiating between the sauteed hearts and blended ‘chokes and never specifies what you’re supposed to do with each.  I wing’ed it and just sort of stuffed the bottoms of the ‘chokes with both mixtures.  Consult recipe if you seek more specific clarification.

Step 9:  How’s that mac and cheese coming?  I used regular milk instead of three cups of heavy cream as called for in hopes of making this a smidge healthier.  Btw: mac and cheese on its own was CRAZY good.  Might make this again just doing the goat cheese mac & cheese part, completely skipping the ‘chokes.

Step 10: Stuff those artichokes!  You can see next to it, I had enough mac & cheese left over to make a separate dish of plain baked mac and cheese which was AWESOME.

Mac & Cheese filled artichokes

Pie filling, bread crumb topping, mini-pie filling and ‘chokes

Step 11: Line pie crusts in buttered muffin pan and fill with pie filling.  I didn’t use anything special for the pie filling than just a simple strawberry pie filling I made and marinated while artichokes were cooking.  It was sliced strawberries, marinated for about an hour in sugar with their juices, a bit of corn starch, some lavender and a tad of lemon zest.  At this point I left the pie crust TOPS off the mini pies so that we could each carve out our own individual designs for our separate pies.  What did I tell ya, it was a crafty night! 

Step 12: prepare appetizer of Persimmon chips.  These are sliced up persimmons, with a dash of cinnamon, baked per recipe taken from Andrea’s blog.  these were SO SIMPLE and amazingly good- would totally recommend them if you’re looking for an easy, quick and scrumptious appetizer, snack, or dessert.

Step 13: Take artichokes out of oven and plate on simple arugula salad.  Ta-da!!

A few more photos of final result:

Step 14: Most essential step: CHEERS!   We toasted to: Earl’s new job, my passing my midterms, and Kathleen surviving a rough week at work

The persimmon flowers hardly lasted long enough for me to snap a photo

Before dessert we decided to have at our pumpkins and carve away

I set up a bunch of newspapers on the floor.  Kathleen gets first choice of pumpkin seeing as she is the honored guest!

I face down my foe

Lucy came over to be part of the action

She even batted at some pumpkin gunk

One of our pumkins ended up being ROTTED and Earl volunteered to take the rotted one.  So he got to relax while Kathleen and I carved.  Linus came and helped too.

Not only carving pumpkins, we all also carved our own pie-tops.  Not sure how well you can see these, but I carved a C and a heart, Earl carved… a triangle and a blob?  I dunno… he wasn’t feeling all that crafty i guess…  And Kathleen carved a K and a pi symbol.

WHOOO DONE!!! Pumpkin-y goodness!  Mine was the goblin and Kathleen’s was the Trick or Treat.

This was Earls… the big rotted out circle

hurrah!

meanwhile, pies were done!

oh- you know what i forgot to mention before- remember to brush with egg whites before you put the tops on, so the tops don’t pop off after baking.

mini pies are AWESOME, would totally recommend this recipe again.  we ate them a la mode

look at my decorative gourds!!

we went outside to check out our pumpkins “in action” on our windowsill 

ps- I am still over the moon about my new hair color and cut!

All in all, a super fun night. Heck of a lot of work, but worth it for some good times with a great friend. ¡Fin!