This is a guest post from Gen at North Coast Gardening This year for Halloween I tried something a little different. Instead of carving a cheap, fibrous jack-o-lantern pumpkin, I opted for a medium size sugar pumpkin instead so I could re-use it after carving for pumpkin curry! This required that I carve my pumpkin on Halloween itself, and that I only leave it outside for the duration of trick-or-treating. Once the raiding marauders went home to eat candy, I brought my pumpkin inside and made curry. This is one of the simplest dishes to make, and could totally be done in a slow-cooker if you prefer. The hardest part is carving the hard outer skin or shell off your pumpkin, the rest is just checking and tasting every so often. You need: a six-pound sugar pumpkin 2 cans coconut milk Yellow curry (powder, paste, or fresh, to taste. If you want to make one from scratch, use the freshest (preferably whole) ingredients you can find. It goes something like this: 9 part turmeric 3 parts cumin 3 parts ginger 6 parts coriander 3 parts black pepper 1 part Cardamon 1 part nutmeg 1 part cinnamon (cassia) habanero to taste Optional ingredients: (I love the simplicity of pumpkin curry with just pumpkins, but if you like a more chunky curry, go for it) potatoes, carrots, ...

Salsa has too long been a bastion for the onion, but it's totally unnecessary. Unless you want your salsa to taste like armpit, toss out the onion and go back to the core elements that make a salsa great. If you're really not into the DIY thing, there is one commercially available salsa with no onions, and it's excellent. I've posted a review here: Salsa With No Onions What does salsa absolutely have to have for it to be valid? Chili peppers. You need other stuff too, but that is the only ingredient I'm calling non-negotiable. One of the things to think about before you begin is appearance. If you mix red ingredients and green, you end up with brown salsa; not that there's anything wrong with that, but if you are big on appearances, either pick one or the other, or keep the chunks big. I'll put up a list of things I've found to be good salsa ingredients. Pick and choose what you like or have on hand. I'd recommend at least one item from each section: Chilies (mandatory): Habanero. Great flavor, but deadly hot (orange). Fresno peppers: Excellent and quite hot (red). Jalepeno: Boring, but easily available, hot (green). Poblano and Anaheim: Mild, and ...

There is a story behind this chili. The first time I made chili, it was for a chili cookoff. I'm not a big fan of beans, so I decided to make a chili without beans, and of course, like everything on this site, this is a chili without onions. I decided that what I really needed was to replace the missing ingredients with something fitting that wouldn't seem like filler. I wanted it to be very meaty, which more than makes up for the lack of beans. I wanted the flavor to be fruity and smoky, like pipe tobacco, but fiery enough to make you think you had just dropped the coals on your tongue. Going to our local Co-op, I found my answers. Dried cherries (nothing added) and Fresh, rather green mangoes. They also had a fresh shipment of beautiful red, fiery Fresno peppers. As I picked one up, I noticed the produce sticker with its SKU#: 666. Chili of the beast was conceived. I picked up quite a few other ingredients while I was out. If you plan to make this, you should read the full process first so you know what you are getting into. Lets start with the meat: Turn ...

This one is in honor of Stanza over at CookingOnSundays, who couldn't make it today, but the people must be fed! True to Stanza fashion, this one is a soup made from stuff I had sitting in the freezer in the garage (I don't have a closet) for too long, and that is the way it should be made, but with no onions! Any time you are looking for something in one of your many food storage options and you find there is just too much stuff you have to move out of the way, it is time to make some variant of what I erroneously call Jambalaya. Every year, we plant a garden in the back yard, and impatiently wait for all the little sprouts to sprout, and then spend a portion of each day urging the cats to keep the gophers out, and yelling at the cats that the garden is not a litter box. Then we complain that there are snails and we need to get the chickens to eat them, which ends with us flapping our arms as we chase the chickens out because they are kicking up the sprouts and eating our lettuce. Somehow, a couple months ...

Fresno peppers are my favorite fresh pepper. They are fire engine red, and they earn the color. Fresno peppers look a lot like a red jalapeño, but a bit more triangular and less dense. Their flavor is not that different than a red bell, although a bit smokier, and they hold up well to cooking. The heat varies quite a bit, from something you could eat raw if you have a moderate heat tolerance, to something that gives a habanero a run for its money. To prepare them, cut the top, just above the widest point, without cutting into the seed cluster within, and pull on the stem. Toss the cap and pry out the seed clump if it remained in the pepper. Stick  your knife tip down into the open end of the pepper and rotate it a full turn to knock off any additional seeds and shake the seeds out. Slice the pepper intoyour desired shape. If you get the hang of this you can cut them without ever touching anything spicy. You will learn the importance of this quickly if you rub your eyes. There is something special about the heat in this pepper. To see what I mean, try ...

These are one of my favorite sources of heat, and single handedly provide the fiery bite of my Five Pillars of Greatness blend. They are tiny dried red peppers with a smoky, short lived, but potent heat. They are small enough that you can often use them whole in soups and sauces which makes them much more convenient than most peppers, which often require de-stemming, de-seeding, baking, peeling, chopping, etc. I've tried just about every pepper out there, and this is one of only a few I keep on hand at all times. If you don't have pequins and have to substitute, I'd use De Arbol, which are available in most stores. You can buy Pequin peppers here on amazon in a the quantity of your choice.