Recipe time

[metawidget]

Elizabeth had a birthday potluck happening last night, and I supplied the cheesecake. It was tasty and the potluck was fun!

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Based on CookingNook's recipe but scaled up for a bigger pan (I don't own a 9" springform, and we weren't totally sure how many guests we'd have and how hungry they'd be) and tweaked a bit.

Crust

1/4 cup

unsalted butter

1 1/4 cups

ginger snaps, smashed thoroughly

Melt butter in a saucepan and stir in crumbs. Press into bottom of ungreased 12" springform pan and bake 350°F for 10 minutes.

Filling

3 250g packages

cream cheese, softened

1 cup

sugar

3

eggs

3/4 tin (about 600ml)

canned pumpkin

1/2 teaspoon

cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon

nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon

ginger

1/2 teaspoon

salt

1/8 cup

very finely chopped crystallized ginger

1 tablespoon

brown sugar

Beat cream cheese and sugar together well with a spoon. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Mix in spices, salt and candied ginger. Sprinkle brown sugar on top. Pour into pan over crust. Bake at 350°F for 75 minutes or until it jiggles in an un-liquidy way when shaken. Let cool until handle-able, then stick in fridge for a while. Take off spring-form shortly before serving.

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Lately I've had a few rave reviews of this zucchini spread, which also conveniently uses about two cups of zucchini per recipe (the same quantity as our zucchini loaf recipe requires, so Elizabeth freezes two-cup bags of shredded zucchini, spreading the zucchini joy throughout the winter).

Zucchini toast topping

The basic recipe was passed on to us by Amanda from my high school class. I've written in the tweaks I used last, but the recipe is very flexible.

2 cups

shredded zucchini (2 small or one good-sized zucchini)

1 tsp

salt

1/2 cup

mayonnaise

1/2 cup

sour cream

1/4 cup

grated parmesan cheese

10

capers, squished and minced

2

cloves garlic, squished and minced

1

small onion, chopped finely

3-4 shakes

Worcestershire sauce (Lam and Sons "Super Tom" does a veggie version of this which is more tamarind-y and less fishy &emdash; I think I got it at the Herb and Spice)

1/2 teaspoon

hot pepper sauce

Mix zucchini and salt, let stand an hour or so, pour off any accumulated liquid.

Add everything else. So long as you keep the first five ingredients sort of stable (you can substitute yogurt for the sour cream, and any hard, gratable cheese you like for the parmesan) and don't raise the soupiness of the mix too much, nothing bad should happen. The mix keeps in the fridge for a day or two.

Spoon onto bread (a sliced baguette is nice), put on cookie sheet and broil or toast (a toaster oven works well for a small batch) until it smells good and starts to brown (about 10 minutes or so). Eat while still warm.