Samuel Adams Harvest Pumpkin Ale

Julia got me a pair of acrylic skull mugs, which I have used here for the purpose of pouring a Halloween themed beer. Some would say that the Scandinavian version of cheers (Skål!) is derived from the word for skull and thus represents drinking from the hollowed out bones of your enemy. The words are related but not that closely...

For a party this weekend I was told to bring regular Sam Adams lager. I did that, but also brought along a sixer of their Pumpkin Ale, looking for something seasonal and also an opportunity to celebrate the rich history of pumpkin beers. Our founding fathers often had to use strange ingredients in order to fill up the beer barrels.

Samuel Adams Harvest Pumpkin Ale
5.7% abv
14 IBUs (not a bitter beer at all)

Sam Adams does a great job of documenting the production details online, which is how I know that the hops used in this beer are East Kent Goldings and English Fuggles, which sound like two rival primary school soccer teams. This one has a pronounced pumpkin aroma and flavor, with that little sour tang of cooked squash flesh.

The dominant flavors come from the cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice, which in addition to a pumpkin pie profile also provide a nice little bite to the beer. This is delicious and well worth checking out if you've never had a pumpkin ale before. We had it on a cold and rainy night with four or five different pizzas, and everyone enjoyed it.

Stuffed Pie Pumpkin

I've made a couple of these recently and have mentioned them as an afterthought here on the blog and on Facebook. And people have been fascinated by them, so I feel obligated to put all the answers in one place.

Before I go any further, everything here involves the small pie pumpkins, smaller than a volleyball. Do not use big pumpkins for this. Buy a couple of pumpkins, because some will have thick walls (good, but holds less custard) and some will have thin walls (bad, easier to collapse), and it's hard to tell from the outside.

Back when I was a wee lad, Jeff Smith (The Frugal Gourmet) wrote about baking a whole pumpkin with custard, and that it was one of George Washington's favorite dishes. Of course, the only reference for that factoid is Jeff Smith, so take that as you will. Smith's recipe involves cooking the custard and the pumpkin together at the same time. I think this is a bad idea, because you've got a shell that will eventually fall apart and a custard that might not set in time. I prefer to bake the shell until just tender enough, and then pour the cooked custard inside. You'll get a little additional cooking as the gourd cools, but you don't have to worry about it all collapsing in an orange mess. Always bake in a pie tin and keep it in there until serving, just to be safe. It can be squishy by the end, and the bottom tends to get soft.

For the regular pumpkin I made a few weeks ago, I just used a little salt inside the cavity. Last weekend, I decided to use a spice blend I had on hand. The Wines of Chile folks sent along eight bottles of Carménère along with two curry blends. The one marked Tandoori had a hint of cinnamon and clove, and I thought it would be fun with the pumpkin, and I wanted a nice aromatic custard. I made one for the tasting and did a second attempt a few days later for the gathering of the wine bloggers.

Neither of the curry ones worked out perfectly, and most people reacted with "interesting, but no". For one, the spice had more of a hot chili kick than I expected, and it only showed up on the aftertaste. Also, you really have to like the flavor of cooked, unsweetened pumpkin, and not have adverse reactions from opening baby food jars in the middle of the night.

I dusted the interior of the pumpkin with the spice and roasted it. Meanwhile, I incorporated it and a bit of buttermilk into my custard, just enough to tinge it yellow and make it flavorful. My earlier, purely sweet custard was scented with Chinese five spice powder, which was incredible but would have been a jarring contrast with the curried pumpkin walls.

Even though none of these were huge successes, I love experimenting with flavor combinations, and you can't deny that these are a lot of fun to make and look really adorable on the table. And if you just make a plain vanilla custard, anybody who doesn't like the pumpkin can just spoon from the center. Which is what happened to pumpkin #1 that got mysteriously drained of all custard one night. I blame Wolfie.

P.S. Also check out my 2007 post on carbonada criolla, an Argentine stew that involves meat, fruit, and vegetables baked in a pumpkin.

Naked Lion Copper Flask

The Naked Lion Brewing Company is based out of Memphis but for now, their products are actually brewed in La Crosse, Wisconsin. There's been a lot of local coverage on this beer. I grabbed a sixer of the Copper Flask at the grocery store and decided to give it a try. Despite the dark color, it is a lager and should be enjoyed cold and in a glass roughly similar to mine in the photo (or directly from the bottle--there's more variety in beer glasses than wine glasses, but at the end of a long day, it's not that important). Amazing flavors of molasses, cloves, and oranges. Savory and not bitter. More alcohol than you're used to in a draft of Bud Light, but you don't really taste it. I'm going to go ahead and call this early in the season: BEST BEER FOR THANKSGIVING. It's available at a few local haunts like the Flying Saucer and the Young Avenue Deli. I picked it up at the Schnuck's in Cordova. Go on, give it a try and support your local entrepreneurs!

Since I'm begging for fall weather and the attendant cuisine of the season, I decided to make a variation of an Argentine stew called carbonada criolla. One way of serving is to stew all the meat, fruits, and vegetables together and then serve it in a hollowed out pumpkin. I had a small pumpkin, and decided to braise a pork loin and use the vegetarian stew as a topping for the sliced meat. This mix combines flesh scraped from the inside of the pumpkin, fire roasted tomatoes, corn, caramelized shallots, and chopped nectarines. The pumpkin was roasted in a cake tin for thirty minutes by itself (with some salt and pepper inside), then filled, covered with the pumpkin lid, and roasted for another twenty minutes or so.

The pork loin was cooked in a blend of the Copper Flask beer and some chicken stock along with a few sprigs of rosemary and lavender from the kitchen garden. While I really loved this dish and found the mix of fruits and vegetables to be quite charming, my dinner companions were going back for seconds and thirds. It's amazing that the pork chop--so often miscooked into a dry and bland shingle--can seem like a special treat when cooked whole in loin form. Plus it's like a buck-fifty a pound. You don't have to break the bank to enjoy juicy, flavorful pork.