Fall Dinner Party

I recently catered a six course dinner party; for which I devised the menu, composed the dishes, and did all of the cooking and plating myself. In the following days I will share the dishes and recipes. The menu, featuring a fall theme, is as follows:

MENU

Cranberry & Baked Brie Tartlets

Roasted Baby Potatoes with Mustard Aioli & Onion Jam

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Crescent Biscuits, Maitre d’Hôtel Butter

Irish Soda Bread, Ginger Butter

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Butternut Squash Ravioli, Spiced Roasted Chickpeas, Sage Brown Butter Sauce, Herb Foam

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Seared Fillet of Beef cooked to your preference, Pommes Duchesse, Carrot Puree, Brussels Sprouts, Roasted Cherry Tomatoes, Beurre Rouge, Balsamic Pearls

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Dark Chocolate ‘Fondue’, Caramel, Spiced Poached Pear, Citrus Cake, Salted Almond Crumb, Vanilla Cream

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White Chocolate Pistachio Ganache, Blueberry Madeleine Cakes, Chocolate Espresso Brownie

Leaf Cake

This is a fall-themed leaf cake I decorated recently. It is a pretty quick and simple design, but I think it's quite nice and a really great way to celebrate fall (not that I'm happy about summer ending). This is a rectangular cake iced with white buttercream. I began with a simple red shell-type border on top, and an orange ruffle-style border on bottom. Then in opposite corners, I placed four leaves using a leaf tip in each of the following colors: red, orange, yellow, and green. A few fall plastic cake decorations in the other two corners complete the cake.

The Warmths of Fall

Last night I came home to the delicious aroma of apple crisp baking in the oven. My mother had decided to make apple crisp, a heavenly fall dessert. The smells of apples, brown sugar, and cinnamon filled the house, and the crisp itself, piping hot from the oven, certainly warmed me up. Apple crisp is one of those special Fall dishes that just speaks of home. I really appreciated the apple crisp yesterday, as I know it can be quite tedious. All of the apples have to be washed, peeled, cored, and sliced, which is a monotonous task. The rest of the assembly is quite quick and easy. The problem is, in this family, one apple crisp really only lasts two days at most, and a whole dish of it only yields about six moderate servings. I know I have featured mom's apple crisp on here before, but it deserves another mention. I don't know if it was because we hadn't had it in a while or what, but it seemed to be extra tasty last night. This post wasn't only to boast about the apple crisp though, but really about Fall delights like this in general. Fall will be coming to an end soon, and then winter dishes will take its place. For now however, we will enjoy warm, fruit desserts, using apples and pears and cranberries rather than summer fruits and berries. Warm puddings and pies and bread puddings are also welcome. Roasted Fall squash and pork tenderloin and turkey dinners also pop into mind. As much as summer is my favorite season of the year, the dishes of Fall tend to be my favorite, as they are often warm, rich, and hearty.

Roasted Fall Squash

The other night we roasted our first squash of the season. In past years, I went on a mission to try every different type of squash I could find. I tried acorn, spaghetti, butternut, buttercup, and pumpkin. I liked them all for different reasons. I bought all of these squashes at the local farmer's market. Squash is a good winter food, as they can keep for a few months in a cool, dark place. There are such things as summer squash as well, such as zucchini, but I usually don't think of those as squash. I have only really tried two methods of preparation for squash: roasting it in the oven and microwaving it. Both work well, but you need to make sure it is roasted for a long enough time to become tender. Usually I eat squash either plain, or with brown sugar, honey, maple syrup, and/or cinnamon. Squash is one of those foods that can be prepared with sweeter ingredients  just like sweet potatoes. You can even make candied squash. Squash is fairly easy to prepare and serve, as it does not require much preparation work. It also goes well with many meals, we ate ours with a roast chicken dinner. It can be added to many different dishes as well, including soups, casseroles, pastas, pizzas, breads, and muffins. This is a picture of a small piece of squash we recently enjoyed sprinkled with brown sugar. Doesn't look like much, but it sure was tasty!

Cranberry Crumble Bars

I had half a bag of fresh cranberries sitting in the bottom of my fridge just waiting to be used, so I decided to try this recipe. Cranberries are a very convenient fruit, as they will keep in a plastic bag in the fridge for up to one month, and they freeze well too. We had already had some cranberry muffins, and whole-berry cranberry sauce is not very popular in this household, so I decided to try some cranberry bars for something different - cranberry crumble bars. 

They turned out to be quite yummy and made a nice fall dessert. The crust was crisp like an apple crisp topping, and the cranberry filling had just the right balance of sweet and tart, with a hint of orange flavor. These bars are good warm or cold; fresh from the oven with a little vanilla ice cream or cooled to room temperature with a dollop of vanilla icing (or whipped cream).

I found the recipe while surfing online, here it is:

Cranberry Crumble Bars
FILLING
2 cups fresh cranberries
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice* 
1 Tbsp. finely grated orange zest
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
*One large orange should do for both juice and zest. Use two if you want extra orange flavor. If you are a liitle short on juice, add enough water to compensate.

CRUST
1/2 cup butter or hard margarine, softened
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 cups oats (quick-cooking or old-fashioned)
1 cup flour (all-purpose or whole wheat)
1/4 tsp. salt

FILLING Bring all filling ingredients to a boil in a 1 1/2 quart saucepan, cook 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until thickened. Cool.

CRUST Beat butter and sugar. Stir in remaining crust ingredients until crumbly. Press half of mixture into foil-lined 9x13 inch pan, spread with filling, and top with remaining mixture. Bake at 400◦F for 20 minutes until light brown.


These bars are quite flat, you could easily use a 9x9 inch pan for higher bars. This recipe could also be halved for a 9x9 inch pan.

 "Cranberry Crumble Bars.” https://www.lifemadedelicious.ca/Recipes/C/Cranberry-Crumble-Bars.aspx. Life Made Delicious, n.d. Tuesday, October 25, 2011. 

Pumpkin "Curry"

This is what I made for dinner last night. I call it Pumpkin "Curry", because I left out most of the spices that would normally categorize a dish as curry in order to adapt the recipe to suit my family's taste preferences. Nevertheless, it was very good! I came along the recipe in a cooking magazine, and it sounded very intriguing. Although pumpkins are most commonly associated with carving, followed by baked goods, they also work very well in main dishes as they are very similar to any other squash. Obviously fresh pumpkin must be used in this recipe, because it is kept in pieces and not pureed. I used a fresh pie pumpkin (or sugar pumpkin). When choosing pumpkins to eat, the smaller the better in terms of taste and texture. The recipe called for stir-frying the pumpkin with onion, and then adding some spice, tomato paste, and chicken broth and simmering into a sauce. Since the pumpkin was only cooked for a total of less than 20 minutes, I decided to wrap it up in foil and bake it for an hour beforehand at 350F, and then dice it. Without this step, I don't think the pumpkin would have been tender enough, as even now it was not the least bit mushy. The recipe did not call for chicken at all, but I decided to add some for extra protein. I prebaked the chicken breasts with the pumpkin, but instead of dicing and adding directly to the sauce, I just served it on the side with a drizzle of the sauce. It was much easier and less time consuming. Serve the curry over rice, and you've got yourself a delicious, hearty fall meal! 

P.S. Don't forget to save the pumpkin seeds for roasting. I did mine with a little olive oil, salt, and paprika for 25 minutes at 350F along with the pumpkin. Makes a great appetizer!

Pumpkin Carrot Cake

I came across this recipe recently and both my mother and I were delighted to give it a try! It sounded like such a heavenly fall delight. Delicious, moist spice cake with soft pumpkin flavour and the added benefit of grated carrot for taste and moistness. Add a simple cream cheese frosting, and you're all set! Baking in a bundt pan makes for an attractive-looking cake. After tasting this creation, you may never use a boxed cake mix again! The combination of pumpkin, carrot, spice, and cream cheese is utterly divine, and the cake is so tender, sweet, and moist. Delicious!

Because this is a bundt cake, it really doesn't require much decoration. Just spread the frosting on as best you can, and make a little swirl pattern with the back of a spoon, if desired. However, the recipe also gives a suggestion for feeding a large Halloween crowd. Make two of these cakes, tint the frosting orange, stack the two cakes together and frost to resemble a pumpkin. For the finishing touch, coat a flat-bottomed ice cream goblet with green frosting for the pumpkin stem. It makes a very cute-looking cake.