And may you have a good All Hallow's Eve, however you care to celebrate!
      My night will include a large feast of autumn treats (you are so not surprised by this, are you?) and some good reading. I finished re-reading "Rebecca" by Daphne de Maurier, and liked it just as much as I did the first time. "Gone Girl" was an excellent book, but it has nothing on "Rebecca" as far as I'm concerned. So wanting to finish the season with something a little more supernatural, I picked up "Something Wicked This Way Comes," by Ray Bradbury. His prose in this short novel is superb, full of eloquent phrasing that flies in the face of grammar, but captures human (and particularly childhood) experience with exquisite accuracy. Here's a quote from the prologue:

"But you take October, now. School's been on a month and you're riding easier in the reins, jogging along. You got time to think of the garbage you'll dump on old man Prickett's porch, or the hairy-ape costume you'll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month. And if it's around October twentieth and everything smokey-smelling and the sky orange and ash grey at twilight, it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft clap of bedsheets around corners.
"But one strange wild dark long year, Halloween came early.
"One year Halloween came on October 24, three hours after midnight."

      And if that doesn't make you want to read the book, then there's something wrong with you.
      So now I have tastes and smells and stories - and of course my decorations have been up for weeks - so that just leaves the sounds--or more specifically, the soundtrack. There are few things in this world as inspiring as music. We use it to set the mood in dozens of ways, from spiritual ritual to casual parties, from the hip restaurant down the street to formal celebrations. A lot of writers will tell you they also use music to set the mood when composing their tales (some famously so, such as Stephanie Meyer's unabashed adoration of the band "Muse"). I have been one of these from my earliest typing days: I remember sitting down at the Macintosh LC in my parent's office, slipping an Enya CD into the stereo, and furiously typing away on my fantasy novel with all the enthusiasm of raw Middle School naïveté. (I'm pretty certain if I went back and read that old manuscript, I would find that that the lulls and action scenes follow the sequence of songs on "Watermark" perfectly.)
      These days I usually find individual songs that set a certain feel for me. I like to play these just as I sit down to write, rather than keeping them on in the background. For my zombie novel, it's been "Come With Me Now" by The Kongos. For my gas-lamp fantasy novel, it was the "Danse Macabre" by Camille Saint-Saëns. And it was also this classical piece that also inspired me to start my Ultimate Halloween Play List.
      On previous Halloweens I've tried Pandora and the albums you can buy in the party supply stores, but there's only so many renditions of "Monster Mash" I can take. There are too many good, eerie songs from too many different genres to be captured in those mass-appeal compilations. So I've started my own playlist and I'm always open to new suggestions! Here's what I've got so far:

"Danse Macabre" by Camille Saint-Saëns
"Possum Kingdom" by The Toadies
"Goodnight Moon" by Shivaree
"Enter Sandman" by Metallica
"Baby's Got An Atom Bomb" by Fluke
"Night on Bald Mountain" by Modest Mussorgsky (oh, go on and click on the link--you know you want to watch that bit from Disney's "Fantasia!")
"The Real Man" by Yoko Kanno, from the soundtrack to "Cowboy Bebop"

      And I will be adding Robert Schumann's Violin Concerto, not because it sounds particularly scary, but because apparently it was lost, and then found again due to a ghostly message sent from beyond the grave! I heard about it yesterday on NPR, and if nobody's written a novel based on this story, someone should, and fast! It's one of those real-life situations that puts fiction to shame: a tortured artist is banished to an insane asylum, his unfaithful wife buries his last work, and then a descendent is prompted to find and perform the piece in a seance...wow.

Every day is Hallowe'en with my Fuzzy Princess around, but the Jack-O-Lantern adds to her spooky qualities!

      For our final week of Halloween preparations, we have one more grisly gourmet salute to the season. A pair of particularly distinct guts...specifically:

These kidneys came from three little lambs.

      Funny thing about kidneys: they really do look like kidney beans. They're the same shape, the same ruddy shade, and they have a white spot in their crook, just like the bean. Weird coincidence, that. I can guarantee you, however, that they TASTE absolutely nothing alike.
      Kidneys have an exterior that resemble liver in both taste and texture, only slightly less fragile. The very center has a tubule that cooks down to a texture like tender calamari, and a flavor like light fat. If you're squeamish, this can be off-putting, but if you can get past the unusual nature of your entrée I think you will find it meaty, savory, and very satisfying.
       Need more persuasion? Then let me reassure you thusly: we're using Julia Child's own recipe for Lamb Kidneys In Mustard Sauce.
       A few notes on preparing kidneys. Sometimes when you buy them, they may still have a thin film of membrane of them (and sometimes a layer of fat over the membrane). Carefully peel these away, but do not rinse or soak the kidneys in water! Remember, this organ is a filtration system inside a living body, so it will act like a sponge if you subject it to moisture. Otherwise, snip away most of the button of fat in the crook of the kidney using a pair of kitchen shears--most, not all, fat has flavor.
      If you're using veal kidneys, you really only need about one per person. Lamb kidneys are smaller, so allow two or even three per person. Once you've cleaned them, set them aside while you prep your other ingredients. This is a hands-on recipe, and it doesn't take long. Since this isn't my recipe, I won't write it out (copyright and all that), but I will tell you what I did.
      First, I got out a large non-stick skillet (I probably could have used a smaller one, but this is my favorite) and melted a few Tablespoons of unsalted butter over medium-low heat.

Have everything prepped and on hand--the French call this mis en place!

      I wanted the butter to melt, and the foam to subside, but not burn. While I waited for the slow melt I mashed three Tablespoons of room-temperature salted butter with about half that amount of dijon mustard. I also minced a shallot, and about five sprigs of parsley from my herb patch.

Not as delicate as liver, but they still started splitting and falling apart a bit.

      Once my butter was hot, I put in my kidneys and immediately turned them a few times to coat them. They started cooking immediately. To prevent the outer-most layer from over-cooking and getting tough, I turned the kidneys every couple minutes until they just got brown on either side (this took me about eight minutes).

They do exude some juice at the last, which I let stay in the pan to flavor the sauce.

      At this point I removed the kidneys to a warm covered dish. Then I added the minced shallot to the remaining butter in the pan, and let them cook for a few minutes. I wanted them to become translucent, but not brown. At that point I tossed in a half a cup of dry white wine and the juice of half a lemon. I upped the heat so that this mixture boiled, reducing it to a little under half its original volume (aim for about a quarter Cup of liquid in the pan).

It's Julia Child--of course it uses butter!

      Then I killed the heat, and began stirring in the mustard butter. This was done only a spoonful at a time, melting everything together before each addition. Mustard makes a wonderful emulsifier, and if done correctly this should make a smooth sauce. This is a good point to add a few pinches of kosher salt and a couple grinds of fresh black pepper.

My sauce wound up with a slightly curdled look, but it still tasted great.

      Once the sauce comes together, it was time to tend the kidneys. Quickly, using my sharpest knife, I sliced them into rings about 1/8th of an inch thick. I knew they should still be pink in the center, and they left quite a bit of juice in their warm dish.


    Once sliced, I added the kidneys and their juices back in the pan, placed over medium-low heat, and gently tossed until coated in sauce and warmed through. Sprinkled with parsley, they went immediately onto warm plates, and then my dinner table.

      I chose to take Julia's advice and serve this with braised pearl onions and potatoes (I chose Yukon Golds roasted in the oven), and to cut the richness a bit I took my brother's advice and also made crispy kale cooked with garlic. In my glass was a reasonable Cab Sav--I would not serve any kind of sweet beverage with this meal. The sauce was rich and tangy, and went with the savory kidney very well. Over-all, I was impressed with this organ. Next I might try steak and kidney pie. After all, it is still the Year of the Pie...and nothing says Halloween Tricks like serving up a hot slice of goodness and not telling people what they're eating until they're half done! MWAH-HA-HA-HAAAA!


*I really wanted to close out this recipe run with brains (hey, they're a delicacy!), but alas, it is illegal to harvest, sell, or serve calves brains in the U.S.A. This is due to concerns about Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, also known as Mad Cow Disease. It's a rare, but rapidly fatal illness, and frighteningly hard to kill--so I guess it's better safe than sorry.

      With fall comes holidays and other various gatherings. And with holidays and various gatherings comes food! And that typically means one thing: potlucks.
      I have attended copious potlucks in my day. There've been school potlucks, work potlucks, family potlucks, neighborhood potlucks, house-warming potlucks, bridal shower potlucks, charity potlucks, etc. etc. From these experiences, I have gathered important hosting and culinary data, which may be summarized in these Laws of Potlucks (sort of like the Laws of Physics, only more helpful):

#1 - There will always be too much chips and dip.
#2 - There is never enough tasty/healthy fruits and/or vegetables.
#3 - There is never be enough tasty protein.
#4 - There will be too many desserts.
#5 - Most of these desserts will be mediocre at best.
#6 - Any of the really good dishes will be brought in tiny quantities.

      How is this helpful, you may be asking? Because it can help you plan. At the very least, you can plan to grab a sack before hand, of either the high-protein or high-vegetable variety, depending on your dietary needs. Better yet, you can plan what to bring based around the usual gaps, and be rewarded with lavish praise from grateful guests. For example: don't bring a cheap tray of deli meats--they only seem popular because of the lack of protein! Instead, bring a generous amount of chicken satay. Yummy, different, on a stick and therefore potluck friendly! (And a lot of quality grocery stores carry it in their deli section if you're too lazy to make it yourself.)
      But best of all, if you have any kind of culinary ego (like me--I admit it) you can really shine if you make something from scratch that is a true people pleaser. Which is why I suggest the Tart Trio, which allows you to bring something tasty, plentiful, home-made, and - best of all - pretty darn easy. In fact, I'd say easier than making a single pie.
      The trick is in the timing. To start, you need a batch of my pie dough, in three rounds--because you're going to make three free-form tarts. Now this dough can be made the day of if you give yourself time to let it chill. Or it can be made a few days in advance, since the dough keeps in the fridge the better part of a week. Or it can be made up to three months in advance, and kept in the freezer--just make sure you move it to the fridge a couple days ahead to let it thaw.
      Next, you need a simple filling that can be given three easy, but distinctive twists. You could made a whipped cream cheese filling to spread over cooled crust, and then cover with three types of berries. Or you could spread with a chocolate ganache and apply three different chopped cookies/candy (for a Halloween potluck, try topping one with crumbled Oreos, one with chopped peanut butter cups, and one with chopped toffee)! For the potluck I attended last weekend, however, I chose apples. They're tasty, they're in season, and when you consider the Second Law of Potlucks, it makes you feel slightly better about eating extra dessert.

Can't go wrong with fresh fruit!

Z.D.'s Easy Apple Tart Trio

Ingredients:
One batch of pie dough, in three rounds
About 8 large pie apples
1/3 Cups white sugar
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

Topping #1:
1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
1/4 heaping teaspoon nutmeg
2 generous pinches ground cloves
1/4 Cup crystalized ginger
2 Tablespoons butter

Topping #2:
1/4 Cup caramel sauce (I like home made)
1 teaspoon good flaked sea salt

Topping #3:
2 Tablespoons apricot jam
1/3 Cup chopped pistachios (I like roasted and salted)

 - Preheat your oven to 385º F, with two racks positioned to separate your oven space into even thirds. While your oven is pre-heating, wash, peel, and slice your apples. For this batch, I used Northern Spy apples, a varietal I'd never heard of before but which my farmer's market source assured me would have good shape, good flavor, and be a good balance of tart and sweet. And he was right! As always, wht really matters most about apples in pie is that your pieces be roughly uniform, so that they cook evenly.

It took me years, but I finally mastered peeling apples in one long strip! Not with that knife, though.

 - Place you apple slices in a large bowl and toss with the sugar and salt. Set them aside, and prepare a floured work surface for your dough. Working one round at a time, roll out your pie dough into a rough rectangular shape. Mine was approximately 16 inches long, and ten inches wide.
- Now gently fold the edges over a couple times, until you've created a nice edge around your smooth rectangle. And voilá! You now have a free-form tart. Transfer this to a regular old baking sheet, and repeat with your remaining rounds of pie dough. Depending on the size of your baking sheets and oven, you may be able to fit all your dough onto one sheet. More likely, however, you'll have two on one sheet, and one on another, and that's Ok.

Ta-daaa! Don't that look professional?

 - Lay out 2/3rds of your apple slices onto two of the dough rectangles - keeping within the border you've created - in a pretty pattern. As you go, you will get a feel for how many apple slices you have, and you can squeeze on more or spread out less depending on your volume of fruit.

I had apples left over, too, because mine were big! They went into my oatmeal the next morning.

 - Now sprinkle the sugar and spices of your Topping #1 into the remaining apple sliced, and toss together. Lay these apples out on your dough, and dot with small pieces of butter. Pop all three tarts into the oven. Bake for about 20 minutes, then swap the baking sheets, moving the top to the bottom and vice versa.

 - Your tarts are done when the apples are tender, the crust lightly browned, and the lovely smell of apple pie is suffusing your home. Remove to a rack and allow to cool (these can be made the day before, but I would not recommend making them more than 24 hours in advance).

 - Once cool, complete your remaining toppings. Strew the crystalized ginger over your spiced apple tart. For the second, warm the caramel slightly, drizzle over one tart, and sprinkle with sea salt. For the final tart, melt the apricot jam in a microwave and brush over the apples. Sprinkle the chopped pistachios over, and there you have it! Three distinct tarts, and they only took you the time for one regular apple pie.

Note the bowl of chips from the potluck and snuck into the picture. See the First Law of Potlucks.

      From left to right, I call these Autumn Spice Apple Tart, Turkish Apple Tart, and Caramel Apple Tart. Other ideas for apple variations include a syrup made of melted Red Hot Cinnamon candies, for a Candied Apple Tart. Or brush one with maple syrup (the real stuff) and sprinkle with sweetened dried cranberries for a Maple Cran-Apple Tart. Or toss with cardamom and brush with brown butter for a Chai Scented Apple Tart. Or sprinkle with crumbled bleu cheese and minced sage for a Savory Apple Tart! The list goes on and on!
       But the final step is always the same: impress. Once people see that you broke all the Laws of Potlucks by bringing something a) homemade, b) plentiful, and c) tasty, they will begin to admire you with a sincerity bordering on reverence. And you will receive many, many potluck invitations in the future.

      A hundred and fifty years ago, if someone was bored or suffering from malaise, they said "her liver needs stirring up."
      Well, if you take that literally...at least you won't be bored...MWAH-HA-HA-HA-HAAAA!!!

Slimy...squishy...yum.....

      For this dish, we return to the humble chicken. Which doesn't seem very scary until you remember that yes, if you sever its head quickly and cleanly, it will run around for several seconds before falling over dead. In other words: Decapitated Demon Chicken! Now THAT's Halloween-ish.
     Chicken livers are cheap, and if you can get them fresh from full-pastured chicken, they can be a marvelous, quick-cooking food. It's different than regular chicken meat in that it's like duck or beef: it's Ok to serve it slightly rare. (Only slightly--this is still chicken we're talking about.) The veins and membranes should be removed, however, which is not a simple task. I usually use my fingers to gingerly pinch the stringy bits out. This tears the livers into pieces, but that's Ok; most recipes call for chopping cooked chicken liver into varying degrees of coarseness, ranging from rough chunks to a fine, silky purée. But chopped liver is so New York Deli, we're just not going to go there. Instead, I give mine a light breading and fry it crisply--it's so easy it doesn't even call for a recipe! Just plan on about 3 oz. of chicken livers per person & eyeball the rest.

      Our approach isn't too different from regular pan-fried chicken. Start with a milk bath to draw out some of the metallic taste and build up some viscosity (unlike regular chicken, I suggest regular milk instead of buttermilk, since we don't need that acidity).



Then toss the severed organs with some flour and salt. Note: ONLY salt. This is too thin a coating for pepper or other spices, which will burn in the hot oil. You probably don't think about because we're told to "add salt and pepper" so often, but if it's being cooked over high heat, odds are those spices burn and get bitter. Which is how you get that, "Well, it's good, but not as good as I remember" phenomenon.

They look scary...but they taste good!

Liver has a rich flavor, and a creamy texture. Breaded this way, you can cook it in olive oil over med-high heat - turning once, after a couple minutes - and they exterior gets a nice bit of crunch to it. To further compliment the texture, liver is usually served on crusty bread, toast, or crackers (which is actually how I like mine).

Simple and tasty. Makes a good nibble with wine, or add a zesty tossed salad and call it a light meal.

Feeling a bit more adventurous? Add some minced garlic to the pan, then use as a taco filling with some julienned carrots & jicama, cilantro sprigs, avocado slices, peppers (your level of hear), and a spray of lime. Really, REALLY tasty!

      Some people say liver is bad for you because it's high in cholesterol and a bit fatty. This is true, but if you have free-range, full-pastured chicken liver that cholesterol will be lower and of the healthier variety. Also, liver from any animal is high in iron, which is nice if you're anemic...or the survivor of a recent vampire attack. Finally, liver has such a rich taste that it's satisfying in small amounts, meaning you'll probably eat a smaller portion than you would of actual meat. So don't be shy, go ahead: rip out that organ and devour it.

      Confession: I haven't written on any of my manuscripts for over a week. Since just about every published author I know strongly recommends writing every day, I am, essentially, negligent.
      I thought I had writer's block. The Muse wasn't prompting me. I had no lines of prose running through my head, begging to be recorded, as is typically the case. Granted, I had little free time to write anyway: I had family staying over at my rather tiny apartment and we had plenty of other fun things to do. That being said, my mother-in-law is a wonderfully supportive woman who would more than likely have lauded my attempts to smuggle in a little story time here and there. But I didn't even feel a prompt to write.
      Today I finally had time: a glorious few hours in the afternoon with no chores, no errands, and no work, and I made myself a cup of tea and a couple pieces of toast (rosemary bread topped with butter and blackberry jam, yum!) and sat down at my laptop. That was when I noticed the discomfort. More than discomfort, I was actually feeling aversion.
      Don't be silly, I told myself firmly. You only need to read a couple pages prior to where you left off, and then you'll be back in the groove, full steam ahead!
      So I opened my Word document, found the page where I'd left off, and read this:

"The servant who answered the VanGelden's front door was a middle-aged man with a face like starched linen."

      And then I realized the source of my aversion. I don't have writer's block at all--I'm paralyzed by indecision.
      It all comes back to that post I wrote a few weeks ago about style. Yes, I have several - probably too many - long patches of unbroken dialogue in some of my stories. The reason was because I wanted readers to sift through, looking for clues (there are mysteries in these stories, after all). But these patches are lengthy, and need to be broken up. But other than that...other than that....
      Take my sample sentence. My zombie novel has a lot of observations like this, where I, the writer, say something is like this. I don't say my character thought something is like this, I just say it is. If the character makes the observation, this gives the reader insight into the character. But at this juncture, I want my main character to be a bit of a mystery, I want the reader to be invested in her story, but fully feel how little they know about her. However, if I'm over-doing it, nobody with empathize with her, the story will come across as stand-offish. How much exposition will make this too long? This is supposed to be an action story, I don't want to bore anyone...GAH!!!
      Sometimes I think I liked writing better before I was interested in publishing--I didn't worry so much about what other people thought, I could just enjoy telling a tale.

      It's the most spookiest time of the year!

            It's time for big bats,
            and the blackest of cats,
            time for pumpkins and spiders and rats
            to come give us a fright
            and then slink out of sight
            'til we're scared of each shadow that's cast!

       Yeah, it's not Shakespeare...heck, it's not even "Hallmark"...but it's not bad for off-the-top-of-my-head at 1pm on a Sunday afternoon. But if that doesn't give you that wonderful little creepy thrill that marks a good Halloween moment, maybe the following food entry will help. In keeping with our ghoulish, zombie-inspired October theme, I present an opportunity to devour the most symbolic of organs:

A Still-Beating Heart!

      Beef heart, to be precise. And no, it's not actually beating. But you could find one of those spooky-Halloween sound tracks that has a beating heart and play it in the background for effect, if you want.
      Unless you either a) don't buy your own groceries, or b) don't ever bother to check the price of anything at the grocery store, you've probably noticed the price of beef is going up. Cheaper cuts like the tough roasts and boney-bits are looking more and more appealing. But the cheapest cut I've found is the heart. Which makes sense: this is a hunk of muscle that require a fair amount of work before you can cook it, and the idea of eating heart probably sounds unappealing to lots of people. But that's the whole point of our Halloween theme, after all! So I went ahead and purchased this 4 lb. blood-pumping wonder and got out my best knives to get it prepped.

Don't be scared, just start cutting!

       As you can see from the picture, beef heart has a lot of fat on it. If you're really feeling thrifty, you can render this into tallow, but I'm not going into that here (schmaltz is the only extra animal fat I'm working with right now...except duck fat...but that's another post). Otherwise, you just cut that stuff off and toss it out..and you will loose about a third of the weight of your purchase. So is it really a bargain? You decide.

Slice and dice and SHRED and BITE AND TEAR...MUAH-HA-HAAA!!

      Once you've cut off the fat, you also get to trim away any membrane and tubules. You'll notice that beef heart, although it is a muscle, has a different texture than typical cuts of beef; the muscle fibers are shorter, and the grain a bit tighter. That means it could cook up tough if you let it. So between the texture and the trimming, I suggest cutting this into chunks for stewing. When it comes to stewing I like to use my slow-cooker, and let that long, low heat tenderize the meat and bring out the flavors. So here's my easy, all-purpose beef stew slow-cooker recipe. It's not my BEST stew recipe, but it is the easiest, and it works well with beef heart.

Z.D.'s Go-To Beef Stew

Ingredients:
3 Tablespoons olive oil
1/3 Cup all-purpose flour
Kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper
2.5 to 3 lb.s chunked beef heart
1 large yellow onion, cut into very thin wedges
1 large green bell pepper, cut into 1 to 1.5 inch chunks
1.5 Cups dry red wine
4 garlic cloves
14.5 oz crushed tomatoes
3 Tablespoons Hoisin sauce
1 teaspoon dried thyme
pinch of nutmeg


 - Pour the oil into a large, heavy frying pan over medium heat. As it heats, whisk together the flour, salt and pepper in a large tupperware container with a tightly fitting lid. Toss in the beef, seal tightly and shake until the beef chunks are thoroughly coated. Cook the floured beef in the hot oil until browned on all sided, then remove the beef to a large slow-cooker.

  - Toss the onion and the pepper into the hot frying pan and cook until starting to darken in places. Add the vegetables to the slow-cooker. Pour the wine into the pan and scrape up any browned bits on the bottom, letting the wine reduce to about 1 Cup. Pour into the slow cooker.

 - Using a garlic press, press the garlic directly into the slow-cooker (you get the juices that way). Add all remaining ingredients, and cook on low heat for 7-8 hours. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve with good crusty bread to sop up tasty juices.

Behold the tasty tenderness that is severed, sliced and sauced heart!

      Beef heart has a slightly metallic taste to it - similar to liver - because it's high in iron. I enjoyed eating beef heart, but I admit it felt weird thinking of it as...well...beef. I think I would have liked it even better if someone had lied and told me it was another animal, because I wouldn't've had this preconception of how it should taste and feel in my mouth. So go ahead and serve it under a different name, like Werewolf, or Hellhound, or Kraken! After all, it's Halloween, and this dish is both a trick, and a treat.

      Ok, here's the scenario: you just got back from vacation, and there's almost no food in the house. You've only had time to get the basics - eggs, milk, fruit, etc - and thaw one of your pie dough rounds. You have visions of how to use it--October is walnut season, and a chocolate-walnut pie is sounding pretty damn tasty. Or maybe you'll do a twist and make a quiche. Or maybe...
      ...maybe you'll get sick. WHAM, your sinuses feel like somebody hit you in the face with a cast iron frying pan. No WAY you're going to cook anything when you're this germy, anybody who ate it would become diseased! So you're out of commission (and out of the kitchen) for about four days.
      Then, as you start to get better, you spouse gets sick. But you have to work. And your mother-in-law is coming to stay in just a couple days. And you HAVE to use that pie crust! So you look around your still scantily stocked kitchen and you see...you see...!

Wouldn't that make a lovely carriage? I just need a Fairy Godmother and some mice!

      That's right: a pumpkin. Specifically, a lovely organic yellow pumpkin that a friend gave you. Most people make pumpkin pies with canned pumpkin because the process of cutting open a pumpkin, scraping out the seeds...

      ...cutting the flesh into chunks...

      ...and cooking it down takes a long time. But hey, it's starting to get chilly, so why not roast that beauty low and slow in the oven until it starts to caramelize? Typically pies are made from Sugar Pumpkins, because they're sweeter (as the name might subtly hint), but all pumpkins can be cooked. Yellow pumpkins and the carving varieties have less flavor and more water in their flesh, making them easier to cut and longer-lasting, but much less flavorful. The answer? Cook that baby low and slow, let all the water cook out until you get sweet golden bits that fall apart at the touch.

Check out that decrease in volume!. That's concentrated flavor.

       So now it's time to turn this into a pie. And you're feeling lazy. So to heck with digging out a pie pan, we're just making a galette (I swear "galette" is French for "lazy-ass pie"). A galette is a kind of free-form pie, where you just roll out the dough...

      ...and pile in the filling...

      ...and then wrap the dough back up around the filling in pleats. Then, because you want to impress your mother-in-law, you grab an egg white that's been sitting in the fridge for a few days, wash the edges, and sprinkle on some pepitas and sugar.

      You bake it, let it cool, and then hang out with your mother-in-law. The galette gets served for breakfast. You have no idea how it's going to taste...fortunately, it ends up tasting fabulous!
     That was my last week. It's been hectic, and exasperating. Frankly, the galette was all the more successful for the circumstanced under which it was created. If you happen to have an eating pumpkin sitting around this autumn and you're looking for a twist on a classic, here's the recipe for what I made, and you are welcome to use it.

Z.D.'s What-Do-We-Do-With-This-Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients:
one medium edible pumpkin
pinch of kosher salt
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
one disk of raw pie dough
1 ripe D'anjou pear
1/3 Cup sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 egg white, beaten
1/4 Cup raw pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds)

 - Preheat your oven to 300º F. Dice the butter and put it in a large roasting pan, place it in the oven to melt. Meanwhile, seed, peel, and chop the pumpkin into cubes (the size doesn't matter so much as long as it's uniform). Toss the cubes into the butter with the pinch of kosher salt. Roast until very tender, stirring every 15-20 minutes, about two hours total. Remove the roasted pumpkin from the pan into a large bowl, set aside to cool.

 - Up the oven temperature to 375º F. Roll out the pie dough into a large, roughly circular shape. Carefully lay the rolled out dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or silicone baking mat.

 - Peel and seed the pear, then cut into one inch dice. Toss in with the pumpkin, and add sugar and cinnamon. Spoon the filling into the middle of your dough, then lift the edges of the dough over the top, pleating to create a rounder shape.

 - Brush the top and sides of your galette dough with the egg white, then sprinkle the pepitas evenly around the edges. Sprinkle with a little sugar. Pop the galette into the oven and bake until the crust is golden brown and the filling is bubbling, 40-50 minutes. Cool before slicing.

     This beauty would be a particularly nice dessert topped with cinnamon whipped cream. Although alongside a nice place of eggs and bacon, this makes a nice breakfast, too.

      Welcome to October...which, in the world of Z.D. Gladstone, is essentially one long countdown to Halloween!
      I love Halloween. Always have. Which - I fully recognize - is utterly ironic considering I am a wimp who can't even watch the trailers for scary movies. I'm even scared by some horror movie spoofs, that's how much of a wimp I am! But for me, Halloween has a dark, creepy, macabre romance to it--just like an old Victorian-era ghost story. It's about restless spirits wailing in the distance, empty houses with lights flickering in the windows, mists clinging low to the ground under skeleton trees and glowing moons, and every supernatural thing daring to peek out of the shadows. I love carving pumpkins. I love sharing candy. I love wearing costumes. And I love decorating my home. Basically, Halloween is my favorite holiday.
      So to get the mood going, I've decided that in addition to my usual pie updates (and yes, there will be one later this week) I will also post a weekly recipe with a creepy twist throughout October. After all, my current literary project is about zombies...so why not take this opportunity to explore some of the less common body parts available for consumption?

(Insert evil cackle here)

      Most Americans likely go their entire lives only eating the most common meats, which are typically skeletal muscles (like chicken breast) or slices thereof (like a porter house steak).* Which is interesting, when you think about it, because a much larger percentage of animals is edible. A hasty internet search as to the causes behind these trends yielded a number of historical and economic factors that essentially boil down to this: in America, meat is cheaper, and has been since the old days. That means poorer people were able to buy more expensive animal parts. In the past, only the wealthy could afford meat, leaving the lower classes to munch on tendon, offal, etc. Americans got the in the habit of just cooking up the cuts of muscle, and the ranching and meat packing industries accommodated. They also encouraged us, and they were successful. To this day, Americans consume more meat than anywhere else in the world, and most of us eat anywhere from two- to five-times as much as the recommended daily allowance.
      But health risks like cancer and cholesterol are a different kind of scary, so we'll save that for another day. For now, let's focus on this week's recipe:
Sliced and boiled skin!**

     Chicken skin, to be exact. And the best known name for the result is schmaltz.

      If you've not Jewish, you've probably never had schmaltz, and you are missing out. It became a regular star in my kitchen mainly for economic reasons; oils and butters add up after awhile when you do as much cooking as I. Rendered chicken fat is a tasty grease that can be substituted for oil in a lot of savory dishes. It has a nice flavor, freezes well, and you'd be amazed how much money it can save you over the course of a year. Like all fats, of course, you want to use it sparingly, but a little bit is no worse for you than a little butter or olive oil--especially if you're using skin from free range, organic chickens.
      Here's how it works: you buy chicken parts and trim off the skin. The chicken gets cooked into a stir-fry or a curry or braised in spicy tomato sauce, however you want. The raw skin gets chopped into roughly one-square-inch pieces (the exact size doesn't matter so much, you just want all the pieces to be close to the same) and stuck in a big tupperware container in your freezer. When you've got at least three cups worth of skin (any less and you're really go to a lot of trouble for very little schmaltz) you thaw it out, dump it in a big, heavy pot, and add cool water just to cover.

Mmmm...looks frighteningly slimy!

      Now you bring the pot to a boil over medium-high heat. Once the water is at a full boil, decrease the heat to a strong simmer, and just let it go. Stir every five to ten minutes, just to make sure nothing burns on the bottom. What's happening here is that the fat is melting out of the skin into the water, and the water is boiling away. Eventually, there will be no more water, and instead you'll have bits of cooked chicken skin sizzling in chicken fat.

Double, double toil and trouble, stove-top burn and cauldron bubble!

      Once your bits of skin are golden brown, turn off the stove, and let things sit for about ten minutes to cool down (remember: fats and oils hold heat much more effectively than water, so this will be scalding temperature for awhile). Stick a fine-mesh sieve over a bowl, and pour in the contents of your pot. The liquid schmaltz will drain away, but it takes some time, so just let it do it's thing for about thirty minutes.

The skin does start to stick to the bottom about halfway through cooking: just scrape and stir, scrape and stir!

      What to do with the leftover crispies? Some people like to eat them--traditional Jewish schmaltz is made with onions in with the chicken skin, and the flavor is gloriously savory. I prefer my schmaltz unflavored, so the crispies aren't nearly as num. To me, at least: my cat thinks they're the best treats in the entire universe, and if I let her she'd probably jump on the counter and devour the entire thing. So I give her a few, and toss the rest in the trash (so the stray cats can find them and make a mess).

Best pet treat ever!

      As for the honey-colored schmaltz, I pour it into small jars, label it with the date, and stick 'em in the freezer. I use it for cooking eggs in the morning (yum), sautéing vegetables (especially mushrooms, yum), and greasing the pan for just about any chicken dish. When I'm roasting a whole chicken, I mix in spices or herbs and salt, then rub it under the skin of said chicken for extra basting juices. This is also a brilliant technique for your Thanksgiving turkey: slather that breast with herb-laden schmaltz and there will be way less risk of dry white meat.

Liquid Love, Baby!

      And just in case you need more prompting, there is an entire cookbook of schmaltz recipes (including a more traditional recipe for making schmaltz) by Michael Ruhlman entitled - appropriately - The Book of Schmaltz: Love Song to a Forgotten Fat. Yes, I have made some of the recipes, and I highly recommend the Roasted Red Pepper Schmaltz Scones.



*At least, to the best of their knowledge: anybody who consumes hotdogs, sausages, or fast-food burgers might be surprised to learn just how many "exotic" animal bits they've consumed.

**Don't think skin is all that scary? You're clearly unfamiliar with The Silence of the Lambs.