5 Autumn Vegetables with Goat Ricotta and Pumpkinseed Oil

Happy new year! 

I'm back from my brief hiatus away from the blog and ready to dive in feet first. I hope all of you in blog-land had a great holiday season and are enjoying the new year. I certainly had a great Christmas with my wife and pet rabbit, and even scored some sweet gifts that'll make completing this blog all the more easier. My wife gets me so well that I even found a pair of these under the Christmas tree:

This time of year tends to be very busy for me at work. Add to that, my February cold came early this year, but regardless I'm excited to be continuing on with this project. We are rapidly approaching the 1-year anniversary of Babbo-at-home, and are nearly 50 recipes into the book. Not including my text books from culinary school, this is the most that I have ever cooked out of any one cookbook before. 

I'm starting to reach a point to where I am showing up to Whole Foods with book in hand and am checking out what's fresh and available and proceeding from there as opposed to picking my recipe ahead of time and hoping that my ingredients are on the shelf, which is kind of the main point of the book. Shopping as Italians would, with an open mind, a good eye, and no preconceived notions about what's going to be for dinner is Mario's main mantra. 

I also find that I am going to have to factor more time into the pre-planning of cooking these recipes as there are more and more specialty products popping up that need to be sourced out. If Whole Foods doesn't have it, shockingly so, then I have to hit up Google and go from there. So between allowing for sourcing, shipping times, and longer preparation of more complex recipes, my pace may slow a little, but this is where the real learning will kick in. With the exception of the drinks, many of the preparations from now on will be more complex. 

This inaugural 2015 post wasn't complex per se, but it did have quite a few ingredients that I was shocked to find available all in one convenient location. It's a beautiful looking appetizer that's vegetarian friendly. I let my wife pick this one out for me to make so let's see how it scored. 

I start by preheating my oven to 475°. Sharpen you knife because we're in for some chopping. I peel some butternut squash and cut it into 1/2 inch cubes. It gets tossed with some extra-virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, and some finely chopped sage, then put in the oven. 

While that's going, I take some scrubbed Jerusalem artichokes and slice them into 1/8 inch disks. I take the butternut out of the oven, which has now been in for a few minutes, and put the artichokes on the same sheet tray as the squash. The two should now cook at the same time. When done, they are set aside. 

Next I peel some parsnips, slice them into 1/4 inch disks, toss with olive oil, cumin, and seasoning, and roast them for about 7 minutes until they are cooked. The parsnips are set aside when fully cooked. 

I then bring some water up to a boil and set myself up with a water bath to blanch some julienned leeks. The leeks need only a few minutes in the boiling water before being shocked into the ice water. 

Sage oil is needed for the plating, so I took out my food processor and puréed sage leaves with olive oil, then strained it out. 

My last real prep work for this recipe is to julienne some celery root. It stays raw for this preparation. 

Okay now it's assembly time. The squash, artichokes, parsnips, leeks, and celery root get added to a mixing bowl with mizuna. Whole Foods didn't have any fresh mizuna for me, but luckily in the recipe notes Mario suggests frisée as a substitute, so I used that. The salad gets tossed with olive oil, sherry vinegar, and salt and pepper. 

The finished salad gets plated with a goat cheese smeared baguette slice, and drizzled with homemade sage oil (recipe on page 51) and pumpkin seed oil which Whole Foods had in their flavored oil aisle. 

My wife found this dish to be boring and uneventful. I thought that it was a nice salad. If we ate it in October our opinions might be better, but it served its purpose as a light, fresh, veggie starter. I'm not a fan of the goat cheese and probably never will be. But the rest of the dish is a keeper and something I may revisit next year when poking through a farmers market. 

Next up is a dish with a main ingredient close to my heart. Some that my Portuguese great-grandmother used often in her cooking. Until next time...