Pumpkin Soup with Pumkin Seed-Mint Pesto

It's fall and the weather has turned. It's cold -- actually, let me take that back. I grew up on the East Coast, so it actually doesn't get as cold here in California. But, it's chilly. I've acclimated to the weather here, so I won't be able to stand the frigid temperatures when I go home for the holidays.

Anyway, enough about the weather. Let's get to the soup I made earlier this week. You would think now that I work at home, I would have more time to cook -- not the case. I actually haven't been cooking as much as I used to, but I'd like to change that. Over the weekend, I had time to read my magazines (I had a lot to go through).

On the cover of October's Sunset Magazine was a lovely photo of pumpkin soup and I decided I wanted to make this pumpkin soup. Because I love to cook stuff I've never cooked before. And I did! And you know what? It was pretty darn good. I wanted to serve it in a small pumpkin bowl just like the picture, but...let's just say I didn't read the instructions thoroughly enough and it didn't happen. You can find the recipe here.

• SOUP INGREDIENTS
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh ginger
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 large garlic cloves, chopped
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 4 1/2 cups peeled, 1-in. chunks pumpkin or other orange-fleshed squash (from a 2 1/2-lb. squash)
• 4 1/2 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 
  
• PESTO INGREDIENTS
• 1 small garlic clove
• 1/3 cup fresh mint leaves, plus slivered leaves
• 1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup salted roasted pumpkin seeds

Here are all my ingredients for the soup:

• 1. Sauté onion and ginger in oil in a medium pot over medium-high heat until golden, 5 minutes.  Add garlic and coriander and cook until softened.

2. Add pumpkin, broth, salt, and pepper. Simmer, covered, until pumpkin tender.

3. Puree in batches.

PESTO (so good!)

It's really simple. Just pound the mint leave, salt, garlic and 1 tablespoon of oil together. Then add the remaining oil and pumpkin seeds and pound again. Until you get something like this:

That's it! Pour your soup into the pumpkin bowl that you made correctly, or just a regular old white soup bowl like I did. Either way, it will be delicious. And dollops of pesto and slivers of sliced mint leaves and enjoy!

Roasted Chicken Salad

I traveled to DC and when I got back, I caught some kind of cold. I have been sick all week and have been eating nothing but pho for a whole week. I love pho, but like everything else, too much of it is not good. I finally had some energy to make a meal. I was really craving some produce and this roasted chicken salad was the tastiest, least effort dish I could pull off.  Chopped some lettuce, tomato and avocado tossed in some vinaigrette and topped with a piece of garlic roasted chicken.

An Unconventional Feast

Hey SF Foodies! Interested in an Unconventional Feast, Oct. 22? This underground event brings local chefs and winemakers together. The first 50 people to use the code "MERRY LAMB" gets 25% off the event price. If you're not the first 50, you'll still get priority access! Check it out here http://25sf.info and follow them on Twitter @25sf for updates.

Scallops for lunch

I know it's been a while since I posted. I just haven't had time to cook anything blog-worthy. But, this past Monday, I decided I needed to use up the scallops I had and made myself a really nice scallop dish for lunch. It was REALLY good. And it was a nice treat 1. to have scallops for lunch (with a glass of wine) - in the middle of the day on a MONDAY and 2. to get back in the kitchen and make something nice and well, blog-worthy.

So, here it is! Monday scallops for lunch. I subscribe to Tasting Table and get recipes emailed to me on the daily, or weekly, I don't know. When I saw this one, I was inspired - it was super easy and I had all the ingredients - well, I used a white peach instead of a nectarine, but whatevs... Click here for the recipe.

This year's July 4th Cake

Have you ever had one of those cakes from the Asian pastry shops with the fruits on top? They're similar to a sponge cake, but super moist and not very sweet. In Korean, it's called seeang cream cake, but you can find them in Chinese or Vietnamese bakeries as well.We used to get one of these for every one's birthdays growing up. They're pretty pricey at the bakery these days, and I love to learn new things....so this weekend, I made one! I used strawberries and blueberries to form the American flag. It was pretty close to the ones at the bakery. I used the recipe from Honey and Butter's blog.

I'm not sure why I always take photos of the ingredients, but I do and here are the ingredients for this cake...

 And the whipped cream:

I started running out of time for the BBQ we were going to, so I was in a hurry, plus it got messy once the whipped cream came into play. Here's a photo of the center filling, I added chopped strawberries to the cream:

Oh yeah, one very useful trick I picked up was to line your cake circle with several pieces of seran wrap, place the cake on top, frost your cake. When you're finished frosting the cake, pull the seran wrap off. It catches all the stray frosting so that you don't have to worry about transferring the frosted cake to the cake circle. It also saves time.

Here is both layers of cake frosted and ready for the fruit decoration:

The cake: