Ending Autumn Tastily
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Food on Monday, November 30, 2009 10:33 PM
While Rachel’s been sadly taking down her autumn decorations, I’ve been dealing with the edible remains of the fall season. This weekend I made stock out of our turkey carcass, and being kitchen-frugal like that always inspires me to do more.
Back in October when we carved big pumpkins, I bought two pie pumpkins for Camilla and her cousin to decorate with washable markers. I’d intended to use them for Thanksgiving’s pumpkin pies, but got overwhelmed with all my other cooking and ended up using canned stuff. The small pumpkins were still sitting on the kitchen windowsill.
I also had half a refrigerator drawer full of hand-picked apples that were getting soft and unappetizing. While I hacked and scraped the pumpkins to make pumpkin puree, I pondered the problem and came up with a solution: pumpkin-apple butter! I’ve made apple butter before with great success, and I’ve been hearing wonderful things about pumpkin butter recently, so I figured I couldn’t go wrong.
It was a little time-intensive, but it turned out wonderfully! All day today I’ve been opening the container in my fridge to scoop out spoonfuls of the butter and pop them in my mouth. Delicious!
Pumpkin-Apple Butter
makes about a quart, freezes well
3 cups pumpkin puree* (this is how much I got from two small-ish pie pumpkins)
6 cups applesauce** (from about ten apples)
1 cup packed brown sugar (use less if your apples are sweet or if you like things tart - you can always add more sugar later)
1½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
small pinch ground cloves
Combine all ingredients in a pot (at least a 4-quart, to avoid a mess) and cook over low heat, stirring regularly, until reduced by about half. Enjoy as a condiment or right off the spoon!
*Instructions for making pumpkin puree are here.
**To make applesauce, I cored and quartered the apples, cooked them to mush in a pot, then ran them through a food mill to remove the skins. If you don’t have a food mill, just peel the apples before you put them in the pot. With some vigorous stirring, you can still get perfectly beautiful applesauce.
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