Deep Dish Chicken Pie

Sometimes, leftovers need more than the microwave.

Deep Dish Chicken Pie 1 5-pound chicken, cooked or 2½-3 pounds boned, skinned, and cooked chicken meat Pastry for a single pie crust (if buying it instead of making it, get frozen puff pastry--- it'll be so much better) ½ cup chicken or vegetable stock 4 tbsp flour Salt and seasonings to taste (black pepper, cayenne, garlic powder, thyme, etc) White or brown gravy (use your own recipe or mix of choice, or see below) Heat oven to 400°. Grease a medium-sized casserole dish. Cut chicken into bite-sized pieces, removing skin and bones. Place in the baking dish. Mix stock, flour, and seasonings to taste. Pour around chicken. It should almost but not quite cover all of the meat-- add more if it doesn't. Cut vent slits in the pastry, then lay it on top of the pie. Bake 20 minutes. Then reduce to 350° and bake 30 minutes more. Let rest at least 10 minutes before serving. After removing the pie from the oven, make the gravy to go with it.        Brown Sauce: 4 tbsp. butter 4 tbsp. flour 1½ cups stock or water Salt and pepper Lemon juice Worcestershire sauce Cook the butter until lightly browned. Add the flour and stir until it is a deep golden color. Gradually add the stock, a little at a time, stirring very hard to prevent any lumps. Bring to a simmer, then add salt, pepper, lemon juice, and Worcestershire sauce to taste. If desired, half the stock can be replaced with tomato puree (fresh or canned). Source: Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive

I have been exhuming long-forgotten leftovers out of the chest freezer and giving myself time away from the stove. As much as I love cooking, I've really enjoyed not having to come up with fresh nightly answers to "What are we having for dinner?" It's also been really amusing to say "I made this three months ago!" And of course, I've headed off any grousing by saying that if we throw out the leftovers, we're sending grocery money to the dump.

With all that said, I was going to serve this grilled chicken from last year until I opened the container and looked at it.

They look leathery and awful, don't they? I knew they were perfectly good. I remembered how much I liked them the first time. But I absolutely did not want to eat them, not even if I microwaved them. So that night, I made myself a sandwich and left everyone else to fend for themselves. 

For reference, the chicken looked like this when we put it away.

Last year's chicken stubbornly remained in the fridge. But even if none of us wanted it, have you seen the price of chicken lately? I nearly ground the meat into unrecognizable sausages, but that was too much work for leftovers.

This brings us to Mrs. Mary Martensen's recipes. I've really come to like this book since I found it on the Internet Archive. Like, really like it. When I saw that whoever scanned it had a copy with a ripped-out page in the middle of the deep-dish chicken pie, I had to have what was missing. And no, I didn't care about Mrs. Mary Martensen's chicken pie until I couldn't have it.

Of course the rip goes right through the baking time.

There was only one thing to do: get the recipe at no expense to myself. 

I poked around online and found a fair number of people selling this cookbook. For a semi-disposable book that was only sold for a few months in 1933 (it was a World's Fair promotion for one of Chicago's newspapers), Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book seems to have had a lot of staying power in its time. These staple-bound handouts usually go in the trash without inspiring too much guilt over throwing out books. So even though there are a lot of short-run pamphlets out there, finding a specific title can be either tricky or impossible. 

However, copies of Mrs. Mary Martensen's book steadily flow onto Ebay and other places. And most of them are heavily splattered, suggesting they were used instead of boxed up with the rest of the World's Fair keepsakes. 

It is also possible the Chicago American had several boxes of them after the fair, which they gave to anyone who accidentally wandered into the office. 

Honestly, I'm not surprised this book is still easy to find. Based on what we've made so far, I wouldn't have thrown it away either.

Back to the pie, I contacted various people selling this book and asked if they could scan the missing page. (They didn't need to know that I don't actually have a copy of the book.) Most of them didn't respond. A couple of people said yes, if you buy the book. But one blessed person sent me scans of both sides of the page, adding a cheery "Hope that helps!"

Even if I wasn't trying to revive leftovers, we couldn't really have made this recipe as written. The directions start with cutting a raw chicken into serving pieces and then simmering for "one to three hours." You need a tough old bird if you want it to be good after cooking it for that long, and you can't get those today without special-ordering (or having a friend who agrees to send you their older hens "cut and wrapped").

Of course, since I hadn't boiled my own chicken, I didn't have any stock for the recipe. I put the butt end of a celery bunch (remember the winter salad?) into the pressure cooker, added an onion because everything needs onions, and let it go for twenty minutes. I didn't even peel the onion because why bother?

A few minutes, we had some surprisingly well-colored vegetable stock. I hadn't expected this to work so well.

The chicken looked better just for cutting it up. This recipe was already doing wonders for our leftovers, and we hadn't even put them in the oven yet. 

The directions say to pour "stock which has been thickened with four tablespoons flour" over the chicken. I was going to heat the floury stock until it gelled, but I don't have a pot small enough for something like this. I then decided that people back in 1933 probably wouldn't have perched a teacup-sized pot over a burner anyway.

To my surprise, we were already more or less done. Even after reading the recipe multiple times, I didn't realize that we only have to put chopped chicken into a pan, pour some stock around it, and then lay a crust on top. I did that and muttered "Well that's the recipe, I guess."

Mrs. Mary Martensen says to roll the pastry out a half-inch thick, but we already know that heavy slabs of pie crust are bad. Perhaps she meant to say biscuit dough instead of pie crust. However, I didn't think of that until I had already made the pastry.

I didn't set out to make puff pastry, but it looks like I did anyway. Our crust rose up to a truly stupendous height. I don't know how I ever made a pie before finding my great-grandmother's Perfect Pie article.

After the pie was baked, I figured it needed to rest a bit before cutting (at least long enough to stop bubbling). So I decided that it would be ready to serve by the time the gravy was. I was going to make what the book calls a "Standard White Sauce," but the one below it looked a lot better: 

The recipe starts with browned butter, which is an unexpectedly fancy touch. We are next directed to add the flour and "stir until well browned." I didn't know what "well browned" should look like. Really, I haven't made brown gravy since the liver paste. I decided our flour was "well browned" enough when it reached this color:

We're supposed to season this with lemon juice, salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce. I can't pronounce that last one, and have long given up. I asked someone else in the kitchen "Where's the bibbleblat sauce?" (Answer: "Top shelf, next to the pancake mix.") 

The lemon juice tasted out-of-place. On top of that, the gravy needed a lot more help from the spice cabinet. I added a heavy-handed shake of cayenne, a bit more black pepper, and then a pinch and a half of nutmeg. That last one was exactly what we needed.

Flavor aside, gravy has always been hit-or-miss for me. I either make it far too runny, or it comes out like butter-flavored paste. But I followed Mrs. Martensen's measurements exactly and got perfection.

Now that our pie was ready, let's see what we have got: meaty chunks in gravy under a flaky crust. Some of the flour in the pie settled to the bottom of the pan before it got hot enough to gel, but we still had a really nice sauce on the meat.

This recipe didn't magically transform our leftovers, but it did make them a lot better than they were. And to my surprise, the lemon juice in the brown sauce made sense after pouring onto dinner. It added just a bit of pep to the pie. Some sauces taste fine on their own, but this one is incomplete without dinner under it. 

I was thinking this might be a nice way to revive leftover pot roast, which also never seems to be nearly as good when you reheat it. Or I might cut in some raw potatoes next time, which I am halfway sure would be cooked by the time the pie is done.

In closing, this was a nice, simple recipe for a very filling dinner. I'm glad some random antique seller scanned the page for me.

Second-Stab Saturday: Cabbage au Gratin-- better the second time, but not as good as I wished

We have a lot of surplus cabbage in the fridge. (We've been cooking a lot of it ever since we learned it's delicious when you don't boil it gray.)

Cabbage au Gratin 1-2 pounds shredded cabbage (one small or medium head) ¼ cup butter or cooking oil 1 pint white sauce 5 ounces (about 1½ cups) shredded cheese 1 egg ¾ cup bread crumbs About ½ cup shredded cheese for the top Heat oven to 350°. Grease a medium-sized casserole dish. Saute the cabbage the butter or oil until tender. Be careful not to overcook it since you'll also bake it. While the cabbage is cooking, make the white sauce (or heat it to simmering if you got it pre-made). Add the shredded cheese, turn off the heat, and then stir until the cheese is melted. This should cool it enough to beat in the egg without curdling it. If not, place the pot on a cold surface or in a larger pan full of cold water and stir it for a minute or so. Then beat in the egg. Place about half the cabbage in the pan. Sprinkle with half the breadcrumbs, then pour about half the cheese sauce over them. Repeat with remaining ingredients. Sprinkle with cheese. Bake until the cheese is browned, about 45-60 minutes. Adapted from Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive

Every time I've made a cabbage recipe recently, I've shredded whatever part of the head I didn't use and then put it in a container. But this cannot go on. For one thing, I've got so many containers of partial vegetables that I can't put away any leftovers! For another, we're running out of refrigerator space. Our sour cream and eggs are hidden under various chopped quarter-onions and eighth-cabbages.

With that in mind, our recent cold weather took me out of the mood for anything too healthy. As Freezy sometimes says it's in the comments, sometimes it's to cold for vitamins. When I realized I had run out of egg noodles and therefore couldn't make haluski, this seemed like a good time to revisit the failed cabbage au gratin. For those who don't recall, the recipe tasted amazing but was a sad, drippy mess.

I decided to use a cheesy white sauce instead of attempting the sorta-quiche that the original recipe tries and fails to be. In a further attempt to clean out the fridge, I added the leftover gravy from a meatball-mushroom pie. I only note this because when I added the cheese, the sauce tasted an awful lot like a cheeseburger.

From here, the way forward seemed simple: layer of cabbage, layer of crumbs, layer of cheese, repeat until everything is used up. 

We want to make sure the cabbage is properly buried under hot cheese.

I was reasonably confident this would go right. It looked like nearly every other casserole I've ever made. (Don't things always look reassuring with cheese on top?)

Just like the original recipe, I beat an egg into this to theoretically set it-- which it didn't. I wasn't too mad, though. Everything tasted good, and (unlike the first time) it wasn't a weepy, drippy mess. It was still a mess, though.

The breadcrumbs in the middle all but vanished, which tells me they absorbed the water that would have otherwise turned our casserole into a big drip. But the crumbs on top became extra-dry. They also turned the top cheese into a separate, crispy cracker that wanted nothing to do with our vegetables. I guess if you want to get multiple dishes out of a single pan (you know, when putting five things in same oven isn't efficient enough), you could make cheese tuiles and a casserole at the same time.

In case you think I am exaggerating, the cheese slid off of the casserole as soon as I tried to cut into it. 

I guess this could be perfect for those couples where one person discreetly picks the toppings off of the casserole in the name of weight control, and the other slides their plate over to receive. (Of course, the weight-watching person in this couple would have to ignore all the cheese and gravy that lurks beneath the cheese they just lifted off.)

In closing, cabbage and cheese are great together. However, this is not a good way to unite them. I'm not mad I made it, and I didn't throw out the leftovers, but the method needs further redrafting. 

 

Delia Smith's Brownies: Deliciously squidgy

Today, we at a Book of Cookrye are trying British brownies!

Brownies 2 eggs 2 oz unsweetened chocolate* (50g) 4 oz butter (110g, ½ cup) 8 oz sugar (225g, 1 cup) 2 oz flour (50g, ½ cup) 1 tsp baking powder ¼ tsp salt 4 oz chopped nuts, if desired (110g): pecans, almonds, hazelnuts, or brazilnuts ---or walnuts if you really have to Heat oven to 350° (gas mark 4, or 180°C). Cut a piece of parchment paper to fit a 7 x 11 pan. Then grease the pan, and then press the paper into place. Lightly beat the eggs in a cup or small bowl, set aside. Melt the butter and broken up chocolate together a double boiler. Or, melt them in a large bowl in the microwave, stopping and stirring every 20 seconds. Then stir in all the remaining ingredients. Spread in the pan. Bake for 30 minutes (18 hectoseconds), or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for about ten minutes before cutting. Then remove to a wire rack to finish cooling (or just serve them out of the pan). *If substituting cocoa powder, use six tablespoons of it. Add two tablespoons of butter to the amount already in the recipe. To get the most flavor out of the cocoa powder: melt the butter, getting it really hot instead of just warm enough to go runny. Then whisk in the cocoa powder and let stand until lukewarm. Note: To make these in a 9"x13" pan, multiply the recipe by one-and-a-half. Note 2: As with all recipes, use the same measurement system for all of the ingredients. Either go all-metric or all-customary. Don't measure some things in ounces and other things in grams. Source: Delia Smith's Book of Cakes, 1978 via the Internet Archive

I wanted to try this for three reasons. First, Delia Smith's recipes never fail unless you irreparably alter them. Second, I always love a good excuse for brownies. And third, I love seeing other countries' takes on American food. We in the US often see heavily altered versions of the food of other countries (I don't think anyone from Italy would recognize Little Caesar's), so I'm always interested to see what it's like on the receiving end.

Delia Smith's Book of Cakes, 1978

In her book, Delia describes brownies as "moist, chewy chocolate nut squares," which I found interesting. Even though a lot of people put nuts in brownies (or poison them with walnuts), I didn't think the nuts got equal billing.

Another sign this isn't an American recipe: I don't know anyone who makes brownies in a 7"x11" pan. Fortunately for those who want to use a standard-issue 9"x13", you can multiply the recipe by one-and-a-half and it will fit perfectly. 

 

I made these at a friend's house. He wanted to bake something together. I've noticed that some friends love to make an elaborate oven-based project, but others simply want something to do with our hands while chatting. With that in mind, I picked a recipe where the instructions are simply "stir it together." When I sent over the shopping list, I didn't mention that we were testing a totally new (to me) recipe from over the Atlantic.

Delia says that Brazilnuts are the best nuts for brownies. Since I've never seen anyone on this side of the Atlantic put Brazilnuts in brownies, I'm going to say this is yet another one of those delightful times when you see recipes change upon crossing national lines.

Having never bought them before, I didn't even know what a Brazilnut looks like. When I saw them on the counter, I quietly groaned to myself and thought "Oh great, they're the ones I pick out of mixed nuts." But I couldn't say anything out loud because I'm the one who sent the shopping list.

Moving down the ingredient list, we're doing something a bit unusual here at A Book of Cookrye: using baking chocolate instead of cocoa powder! I've been using cocoa powder ever since the price of baking chocolate shot up. I simultaneously did and didn't hope I'd notice the $4 difference. It'd be nice to get the extra money's worth out of the expense, but I also didn't want to find out that cocoa powder will never be as good.

After melting the butter and chocolate, we only needed to beat the eggs in a small bowl and then pile everything together. When I asked where was the sugar, he blinked at me and said "Uh, we have Sugar in the Raw for coffee. Will that work?" And that is how these became the most expensive brownies I've ever made.

After getting all our ingredients into place, we only have to stir them together. This low-effort "just put it all in the bowl" method really makes the recipe seem authentic. It also reminded me of Fanny Cradock throwing everything "absolutely pell-mell" into a bowl of fruitcake.

Behold the Brazilnuts!

They baked up beautifully, with a shiny layer on top and a lot of fudgy bliss underneath.

They had that perfect brownie texture-- just a bit crispy on top, and ever-so-soft ("squidgy" in Britspeak) in the middle. Even the Brazilnuts were good after they got toasted in the oven. The brownies were a bit gritty from the raw sugar, but that's our fault and not the recipe. We're keeping this one on file. 

 

Red Onion Tarte Tatin: Even when it doesn't work, it is wonderful

Onions are things of beauty.

Red Onion Tarte Tatin 2½ pounds red onions 2 tbsp butter 1 tsp sugar Dried thyme (or fresh thyme sprigs if you can get them) 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar Salt and pepper to taste Parmesan cheese for serving        Cheddar-Thyme Pastry: 3 oz (¾ cup) all-purpose flour 2 oz (½ cup) whole-wheat flour 1 tsp thyme (chopped fresh thyme if you can get it, dried if not) Salt to taste 2 tbsp butter 1 oz (about ¼ cup) shredded Cheddar cheese 2 to 3 tablespoons ice-cold water Heat oven to 350° with a heavy baking sheet on the center shelf. Peel the onions and cut them lengthwise in half. If they're very large (say, if you only needed two or three to get 2½ pounds of them), cut them into smaller wedges. Don't cut them into small pieces-- you want big onion chunks. Heat a large ovenproof skillet over medium heat. Then add the butter and sugar, shaking and swirling the pan to thoroughly coat the bottom. When the butter starts to bubble and sizzle, add the thyme sprigs (or a sprinkling of dried thyme). Arrange the onions on top, getting them as close and crowded as possible while keeping them all in contact with the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Reduce heat to low and let cook without stirring for around 10 minutes. Then cover the pan with foil and place on the baking sheet in the oven. Bake for 50-60 minutes. While the onions are cooking, make the pastry: Mix the flours, thyme, and salt. Rub in the butter, then mix in the cheese. Add enough water to make a ball dough that doesn't leave any crumbly bits behind in the bowl. Or, place everything but the water in a food processor. Pulse until it's thoroughly mixed and mealy. Then, with the processor running on low speed, gradually pour in a slow stream of water until a dough ball forms. Place your pastry (whether hand-mixed or food-processed) in a bag or food container and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. When the timer goes off for the onions, test them with a skewer. They should be tender but not mushy. Remove them from the onion, but leave the baking sheet in there. Place the skillet on a burner and set heat oven to medium. Raise the oven temperature to 400°. Move the baking sheet to a higher shelf. Cook the onions without stirring on the stovetop (over medium heat) until the juices are thick and syrupy. While the onions are cooking, roll the pastry out to a 10-inch circle. When the syrup in the pan is reduced, give each onion piece a gentle nudge (without really moving it) to ensure it hasn't gotten stuck into place. Drape the pastry over the onions, tucking the edges down and under everything. Set the pan in the oven on the baking sheet that you left in there. Bake 25-30 minutes, or until the crust is golden on top. After baking, let rest 20 minutes. Have a flat platter or tray ready, one that's bigger than the skillet. After the time has elapsed, put the platter upside-down over the skillet. Holding the two tightly together (don't forget the hot pads!), give the tart a very good shake. Then flip the whole thing over and lift the pan off. It should leave the crust on the platter with all the onions nicely embedded in place. If any onions stick to the pan, just put them back into their places on the crust. If they all stick, just get them out with a spatula and arrange them as best as you can on the crust. Lay them caramelized-side up. It won't look as nice, but it'll still taste really good. Delia Smith's Winter Collection, 1995

Today, we are making Delia Smith's red onion tarte tatin! If you've never heard of a tarte tatin, it's kind of like a cross between an upside-down cake and an apple pie (or in our case, an onion pie). The special part is that you cook the fruit (or onions) on the stove so it caramelizes on the bottom, which becomes the top when you flip it out of the pan and onto a plate.

Before we could get to the onion excitement, we had to make the crust. I know the recipe says to do this during the one-hour downtime while our onions bake, but I've never attempted a tarte tatin before. Therefore, I wanted everything finished so I could put it out of mind. This also let me clear the countertop of all mixing bowls and dirty measuring cups before getting to the real fun. When I'm trying a totally new-to-me recipe, clear countertops help keep my mind straight.

Delia uses whole-wheat/thyme/cheese crust on top. I thought this sounded amazing, and was already planning to make it in the future without bothering with the rest of the tarte tatin. 

The recipe calls for 1 ounce of cheese, which seemed like a lot less than I would use. But Delia Smith's recipes always work, so I didn't mess with it. And sure enough, our "small" allotment of cheese nearly smothered everything else.

Our instructions say we can use a food processor, but I didn't feel like cleaning all of its parts. Even when you put everything in the dishwasher instead of cleaning every plastic piece by hand, the food processor demands a lot of rack space. You usually end up leaving a big stinky pile of dishes in the sink until next time, and I didn't want to deal with last night's plates tomorrow.

Now that we had the crust out of the way, we could truly enjoy our time with the onions. Delia has us cut the onions in half, which seemed far too big until I saw how small the onions were on her show. I decided to cut mine until they were about the same size as hers.

Source: Youtube

I refrigerated the onions the night before because that often cuts back on their tear-gassing ability. But red onions really love attacking your eyes. I had to bring a special friend out of the living room to help with my eyes.

I've seen a lot onion "hacks" that claim they'll prevent crying. They never work. But if you simply aim a fan at the onions, it will blow their fumes away before your eyes feel a thing. Even if the fan is pointed right at your face, it disperses the onion gas before it can do anything to you. Incidentally, this particular fan has a special feature: you can't stick your whole hand into the blades. (Though you can easily imperil a finger if you want to.)

As I laid my onion wedges into a rosette, I got really excited about how beautiful this would be. Delia crowded the onions into the pan, which makes sense because onions are the whole point of the recipe. So, I filled all the gaps with onion chunks and slivers until I could cram in no more.

Some of the onions started to gently fall apart as they cooked, but I didn't worry about losing my rosette at all. After all, I didn't need to move the onions again until serving time. In our serene state, I thought the center onion wedge turned into something geometrically interesting as it let go of itself.

Delia tells us to put a very heavy baking sheet in the oven before turning it on, so I did. You don't see unnecessary steps in a Delia Smith recipe, so I figured it must be for a good reason. And to prevent any sudden pan-warping (which she strenuously warns us about should we use cheap or flimsy pans), I dug out the roasting pan that came with the oven.

I love when a near-perfect spotlight shines on the things I do right.

If your kitchen has a good vent, you really want to use it for this recipe. I found myself blinking a lot from itchy eyes. Someone else came in for a snack, and I noticed their eyes also got a little pink after a minute or two of chatting.

Tears aside, we now had nothing to do but wait. I didn't think about this when I first measured out the ingredients, but fifty minutes is a long time to wait on a recipe. I can see why Delia said to do the crust now instead of at the beginning. But this was a great time to tidy the countertops, transfer the dirty dishes from the sink to the dishwasher, wipe the errant splats, and make a cup of tea. I also measured out the ingredients for the muffins I had planned to help all the non-onion-lovers feel better about the smell.

After the first baking, we had only to reduce the pan juices to a syrup and then bake the onions again. My stove did this in about half the time given in the recipe, which hopefully didn't mean that I ruined it by setting the burner too high. But how can a recipe go awry and look so beautiful?

After another thirty minutes of baking, our crust looked at least a little golden on top. I decided that I could wait no more. The onions had tantalized me long enough.

Our onion wedges had loosened up and fanned out while baking. I lifted one up to peep underneath, and it was the most beautiful shade of caramelized I've seen outside of a crock pot.

Now, Delia says we must have an absolutely flat platter to turn our tatin onto. And after our local adventure getting a platter from a dead microwave, I have one! I was really excited to use my special cake plate for something besides cake.

When I lifted the skillet off the platter, I could see that we had a tatin failure on our hands. This is what it looked like after shaking the pan a lot, cutting around the edges to loosen things, and everything else I could think of. 

I can only guess that I overdid the part where you reduce the pan fluids to a syrup. I may have accidentally candied the onions and welded them to the iron. 

On the TV show, Delia cheerfully says that if any onions stick to the pan, you can just gently lift them out and lay them into place. Which is all well and good unless all of them stick. Even if I wanted to match each onion wedge to its dent in the crust, they fell apart on contact with the spatula. I ended up laying them browned-side-up and deciding it looked good enough.

De-panning issues aside, this was a little hard to serve. Eventually I figured out that our tarte tatin was easier to cut with scissors like a pizza. (Yes, I cut pizza with scissors.) And fittingly enough, it was easier eat this like a slice of pizza. The onions fell apart on contact with a knife and fork.

Aside from our aesthetic failure at the end, this was far easier than I thought. It took a while to make, but most of that time was spent letting it mind its own business. I didn't have to stay in the kitchen and fuss over it the whole time.

This was so, so good. You would have thought I spent a long time carefully balancing ingredients and seasonings instead of waiting on the oven. The onions were almost as sweet as a fruit pie. It almost tasted like I had put a lot of brown sugar under there. The balsamic vinegar had boiled off all its acid, leaving behind balsamic without the vinegar. 

The whole thing seemed like it contained far more expensive ingredients than it actually does. Even though it turned into a tatin mess, I'm very glad I made it.

Roast Pumpkin Soup: or, Carrots can't be everything

Today, we are making more Delia recipes!

Roasted Pumpkin Soup with Melted Cheese 1 3-3½ pound whole pumpkin 1 tablespoon peanut oil 1 large onion, finely chopped 3 cups vegetable or chicken stock 2 cups minus 2 tablespoons whole milk 2 tbsp butter Nutmeg to taste 4 oz Swiss cheese (Gruyere or Fontina), cut into ¼-inch cubes (or any other cheese that melts well) 6 tbsp cream or creme fraiche Fresh parsley (dried will do in a pinch) Croutons Salt and pepper to taste Before beginning, take the cheese out of the refrigerator so it'll be at room temperature by the time you serve it. Heat oven to 475° (gas mark 9, 240°C). Cut the pumpkin in half from top to bottom (ie, from the stem to the blossom end). Quarter each section lengthwise (so you have eight pumpkin slices). Scoop out the seeds and string. Brush with oil, shake on salt and pepper to taste, place on a heavy baking sheet (thin ones will warp), and bake until fork-tender, 25-30 minutes. While the pumpkin bakes, melt the butter in a large pot over high heat. Cook the onion until it just begins to turn color. Reduce heat to low and cook, stirring occasionally, for around 20 minutes. When the pumpkin is done, remove from the oven and let cool. Then scoop the "meat" off the rind and add it to the pot. Add the milk and stock, then salt pepper and nutmeg to taste. Simmer for 15-20 minutes. Then blenderize the soup. (Unless you have a large blender, you'll want to do this in batches.) Leave the center cap of your blender lid open (or whatever sort of opening the blender has at the top to allow you to pour in things while it's running). For reasons I don't understand, when you turn a blender full of very hot liquid, it suddenly pressurizes enough to pop off the lid and splatter everywhere. Leaving the lid a little open prevents that, just like loosening the lid on a container of leftovers before putting it in the microwave. Pour the soup through a strainer to catch any stringy bits that the blender missed. At serving time, heat the soup to a very low barely-simmer. Stir in the cheese cubes until they's warmed through and barely starting to melt. You don't want to melt the cheese. This soup is so much better with the soft cheese floating through it. Ladle the soup into bowls (preferably warmed). Spoon a little cream into each one. Sprinkle with croutons and parsley. Delia Smith's Winter Collection, 1995

I've said this before, but I really love watching Delia Smith videos. She manages to give very precise directions, but somehow comes off as calming instead of nitpicky. It is a rare skill, which I think is a big part of why her career has lasted so long. 

A lot of her ingredient lists involve things that are special-order items on this side of the Atlantic (even when there isn't an ill-advised trade war on), but this one looked easy to shop for. However, I didn't want to use a pumpkin. For one thing, you can't get a fresh pumpkin in midwinter without nicking someone's leftover porch decorations. Also, I didn't want to dull my knife by hacking through a raw squash. So instead, we're using... these!

To my surprise, our carrots actually took a little longer than a pumpkin would have. But they smelled unexpectedly good toward the end of their roasting time. To emphasize: Delia Smith is so good that she can make carrots enticing, and she didn't even use carrots in this recipe.

Moving away from carrots and onto happier ingredients, I doubled the onion in the recipe. It doesn't look like a lot because we halved the soup. But you can take my word that we are being wonderfully generous with the onions.

Here we get to the first reason to use an actual pumpkin instead of carrots. Had we used pumpkin, the rind would have been charred but the edible part would have been fine. Since we didn't follow the recipe, we had to cut the blackened underside off of each carrot before putting it in the pot. (The second reason to use pumpkin is that carrot soup just isn't as nice.)  

Now that the pot was fully loaded, we could get to the toppings. I had cut up some French bread to make our own croutons, and slid them in the oven under the carrots. You shouldn't make croutons at nearly 500 degrees, but I thought it preposterous to get out the toaster when the oven was already fiendishly hot. 

I'd love to say they came out perfect, and they were indeed just the right shade of golden on top. But when we flipped one over, they were a little well done. Fortunately, they weren't completely burnt. If you like dark toast, they'd be fine.

At this point, we only needed to simmer and wait. Unfortunately, I forgot to make extra croutons to snack on while the soup cooked. I've said this before, but I really like croutons. When I let myself buy them, I eat them right out of the box the way other people go through potato chips.

The carrots plumped up a bit, but they didn't look great.

The blender made things look worse. Had this soup got any more unsightly, I could have passed it off as a diet recipe.

I forgot that carrots tend to cook to a brighter color than pumpkins. Our "pumpkin" soup looked like a safety warning sign. Maybe that's another reason to follow the recipe and use pumpkin: no one wants their soup to look like melted crayons.

This reminds me: a lot of the bigger Crayola boxes have a color called "macaroni and cheese."

All right, so our soup is kind of ugly. But let's dress it up with everything the recipe calls for:

That looks so much nicer, doesn't it? I know sprinkling on dried parsley lacks the panache of garnishing with fresh, but it still adds a nice flavor.

This soup was sweeter than I thought it'd be. But then again, it had roasted carrots and half-caramelized onions, so should I be surprised? The nutmeg added a bit of a sausage-y overtone which I thought was really nice. And of course, the half-melted cheese interspersed throughout was amazing. I would have liked provolone better, but that's just because I really, really like provolone.

For the record, carrots make a perfect counterfeit pumpkin pie, but they do not make a similarly magical pumpkin soup. This was good enough to save the leftovers, but I won't use carrots for this again. If I can get my hands on an actual cooking pumpkin (and perhaps a Sawzall with food-grade blades) I will revisit this recipe.