The artists' guidelines for "The Art of the Pumpkin" — create a work of art inspired by but not made from pumpkins — were straightforward.
Like the Westchester event, Rise of the Jack o'Lanterns is a nighttime spectacle in which 5,000 carved jack-o'-lanterns, some made from pumpkins and some from foam, illuminate a path around the historic premises.
The flavors are plain — in De Smet, S.D., you didn't find vadouvan in the general store — but many of the dishes made me hungry: parsnips sliced the long way, dipped in flour and fried in butter; bird's-nest pudding, which is whole apples baked in a fluffy egg batter; green pumpkin pie, made from green pumpkins, of course.
Chef Meyer, travelling once in Michoacán, asked for hot sauce, and this is what he got: a dark-brown salsa made from peanuts, pumpkin seeds, and chili oil.
The pumpkin pies at Youngs are made from cheese pumpkins grown within sight of the counter where they are sold, and peach pies are filled with fruit from trees on the hill behind the farm stand.
We also have fall cooking days at home, whipping up fall classics like chili, dishes made from squash, pumpkins and other fall harvest, and of course yummy pies.
Consider making pumpkin soup, pumpkin pie, pumpkin pudding, pumpkin bread, cookies, pumpkin seeds.
The sole dessert is a pumpkin pancake: a fried cookie-shaped confection made from rice flour, pumpkin purée and red bean paste that is studded with sesame seeds.
Sixteen home cooks and I plowed through recipes for pumpkin pie (made from fresh roasted sugar pumpkin, mind you), cinnamon-raisin bread pudding with bourbon sauce, comice pear-cranberry crisp and honeycrisp apple clafoutis.
