What’s For Dinner in October/New Book
Posted by in Food
I make Martha’s What’s for Dinner section in Living every month, but I don’t always make it all on the same night. For October, I decided to put it all together. I made Roasted Pumpkin Soup, Cheese Flautas with Cilantro Pesto and Black-Eyed Peas with Baby Greens for dinner. This recipe is also in the new Martha Stewart Dinner at Home book, coming out this month (my thoughts on the book are at the end of the post).
This dinner was not something you can quickly
pumpkin soup
whip up. It took some time. First, I started with the pumpkin. For the life of me, I could not get my pumpkin cut up so I could roast it. Mr. MarthaAndMe stepped in and did the grunt work. This pumpkin was nearly impossible to hack up! He was really sweating. Finally I got in the oven and roasted it with onion, garlic and mushrooms. Once it was roasted and peeled, it’s simple to get it to be soup. You puree it with some vegetable stock and heat it and that’s it. It was horribly bland though, so I added some cumin and also added a little bit of cream. Even so, I didn’t find it particularly flavorful. I have made butternut squash soup in the past and that is much tastier. I’ll stick with that in the future.
black eyed pea salad
The black-eyed pea salad with baby greens was a breeze to put together – peas, chopped tomato, cilantro, garlic, greens and dressing. I liked this and ate the rest of it for lunch the next day.
Now for the flautas. This was something completely new to me, so I was excited to give it a try. You start by cooking pumpkin seeds (green ones you buy at the store – NOT seeds from the pumpkin you roasted – I found mine in the bulk section) with garlic. You pulverize it into a pesto with fresh cilantro, lime and oil. I found this to be new and exciting. I love
spreading the pesto
the taste of cilantro and lime and the pumpkin seeds were a new ingredient for me. You spread the pesto on your tortillas, then add some Monterey Jack cheese and roll them. Then you fry them in some oil.
There wasn’t much to these when we ate them. Mostly, they tasted greasy from the oil. I am not big on deep-fried foods, so this didn’t appeal to my palate. I could barely taste the pesto, even though I slathered it on pretty thickly and
frying
it had a nice flavor when I sampled it before making up the flautas. There wasn’t a lot of cheese in proportion to tortilla. They were just not worth the effort. Now, I can see making this pesto and using it with chicken and adding some tomato or avocado and not frying the tortillas – that would appeal to me then, but this just did not. It would be a fun twist on tacos.
Out of three dishes, one was quite good, one was ok and one was just not
taking a bite
worth it. Pretty disappointing!
Now, as for Martha’s new book, I have an advance copy and it is definitely a gorgeous book. It’s divided into seasons and then within each season are complete meals. Each meal is set up like the “What’s for Dinner” section in Living – 4 items that go together. The book is meant for easy entertaining or at home meals and the ingredients are meant to be accessible. There are certainly a lot of interesting things in this book – things you won’t find elsewhere, so I like it for that. However, although the ingredients are meant to be accessible, these are not meals you can make on nights where you pull out the cookbook and 5 pm and see what you can pull together. For me at least, I would not have most ingredients lying around and would need to plan in advance to make these dishes. There are many things in here I would never make just for us at home for dinner. Who makes truffles as a weeknight family dessert? Not me. I also felt as though many of the meals were not complete enough for me – they needed more vegetables, so more work would be involved in making them into a complete meal. That being said, it is a fun, inspiring book.
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I think the flautas sound excellent, but thanks for the warning. In Mexico, they often use pumpkin seeds in sauces and quesadillas (their quesadillas are usually fried much like the flautas here). But I like your idea of making the pesto, which sounds tasty, to add to grilled chicken or something else instead of hiding it in the flautas.
I’m so amazingly impressed Brett. I don’t think I have the energy to make all this stuff but I love love reading about it! Can you come to my house and cook for us, please? Also, are you still doing all the Martha housework (like cleaning up the spills right away, sweeping the floor three times a day, etc.) that you posted about awhile ago???
Hi Jennifer. I did keep some of Martha’s housekeeping rules since I liked them. There were others that didn’t work for me at all, so they went out the window. I’m glad I tried them all though.
I’m going to try the salad. I have been looking for a good recipe for black-eyed peas. You didn’t say how long to cook the peas …
You don’t – you use canned.
Pumpkin soup is a Kiwi obsession. Some of them are flavourful and lovely, but many are just bland, warm pumpkin goo. Sounds like you got the recipe for one of the latter.
I hope you did roast the seeds from that pumpkin, though — tasty, although the hulled ones are of course needed for this recipe.
and Melanie, I didn’t know that pumpkin soup was so well liked in NZ.
This looks and sounds delicious! That is one of my pet peeves with a lot of cookbooks: the fact they requre more steps and more ingredients than most normal people will probably do on a Tuesday night at 5pm.
I can see putting together one recipe, but in my world that’s about all I can manage. The rest is just going to be veggies that are steamed or cooked (I do roast them sometimes) and a loaf of bread or some rice. Trying to read and cook 4 recipes for one dinner is too much. For weekends/company, ok I can see it. I guess I’m just struggling with the concept of the book. Maybe the idea is instead of eating out, use this book. Even so, it’s a lot of work.
I was very tempted to do this dinner but now that you’ve tried it for me I may veer in another direction. What will I do when your project is over!?!?!?!?
I like the idea of a cookbook using seasons in organizations. I try to rotate my menu some, but having new ideas might help.
I’ve also been wondering about pesto-like substances. For example, do you know of any breakfast pesto-ish spreads?
I don’t – I guess because pesto is generally green-based and you don’t see many green things at breakfast, unless it’s spinach in eggs florentine or in an omelet. Maybe you could make a spinach based pesto though. That would be good on a tortilla with eggs and ham in it.
The salad looks really good! I, too, am impressed with your diligence in regards to preparing all the items. I most enjoy reading the skinny – the reality -you present.
Thanks! I really appreciate that because, let me tell you, sometimes I am ready to toss Martha and her magazines and books out the kitchen window.
Very interesting review! It’s funny how she would have you roast pumpkin, yet use canned black-eyed peas. I’ve made pumpkin soup with coconut milk and a few complimentary spices, and garnished with pepitas (already toasted and shelled pumpkin seeds)which turned out quite good. I found with her recipes she tends to over complicate things, if that makes sense. Then some are quite simple and good.
It sounds like her book is well organized (of course it would be). I think 4 items that go together sounds good, as well as the seasonal division. Thanks for the review!
Thanks for the recommendations on the pesto. The only hulled pumpkin seeds I could find are lightly salted–will that be okay?
If they are green, then it will work, but it might end up too salty. In the past when I was really stuck, I rinsed the salt off some nuts, blotted them and stuck them in the oven on low heat to roast them a bit. You might try that trick.
Thanks–I did end up using them and just didn’t add any salt to the pesto. The problem I did have is that I cut corners and did not moisten the corn tortillas, so my first batch fell apart. So I used flour tortillas for the remainder, and they came out great. I cut them in halves and served them as an appetizer with some sour creamed topped with browned scallions.