Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Chefs Turning Pumpkin Into Everything But Pie


This season's feared shortage of canned pumpkin caught my eye, but not "Because of the time of year - when I cook Thanksgiving dinner, pumpkin is never involved - nor" Because the word itself - Pumpkin! - Was once a favored term of endearment. It caught my eye Because ever since news hit that home cooks may face difficulties making pumpkin pie, pumpkin is the one ingredient I have not been Able Thurs shake.

Not that I would have wanted to. A story in the San Francisco Chronicle last month urged cooks Thurs Embrace the seasonal bumper crop - "some of them heirlooms with rich flavors, velvety flesh and wondrous colors" - and put pumpkin on my brain. But that was before reports that Nestlé, Whose brand is Libby, according to The New York Times, "Far and away the nation's most popular canned pumpkin," was a warning of canned pumpkin shortage. A Nestle spokesman told the Wall Street Journal last week, "Our calculations indicate that we may deplete our inventory of Libby's canned pumpkin as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday."
It's Safe to assume restaurant chefs Looking to showcase pumpkin's nuanced, nutty flavor profile Are not poking around the same patches as the folks at Libby. Multiple news sources cite heavy rains as a primary culprit behind a poor pumpkin harvest in the Midwest, particularly in pumpkin-rich Illinois.
Yet earlier this month, when I pulled a chair up to the bar at avec in Chicago, one of my favorite restaurants anywhere, the kitchen was slathering smashed pumpkin is a wood-fired flatbread. The flesh was spread generously with embedded with crumbles of house made pheasant sausage and loosely covered by a pumpkin seed salad, and both its sweetness and texture brought to mind the late breakfast and I'd enjoyed earlier in the day at Toast Two in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood: downy a stack of pumpkin pancakes.

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