Few things are more fun to snack on than crunchy breadsticks, and is quite simple to make. I ran across a recipe to make these and had so much fun making (and eating) these fun snacks.
For an outdoor performance by the San Francisco Opera in my neighborhood park, I packed these breadsticks and served it with white bean dip (one of my favorite things to make, I'll do a posting about this some day) and it was the perfect easy-to-take-along snack in the park.
You do have to do some advance planning for this recipe, as the dough sits in the refrigerator overnight.
Dough is prepared and chilled overnight.
When you are ready to bake, the dough is rolled and stretched on 'n lightly floured surface to form a large rectangle. It is brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with freshly chopped rosemary, and freshly ground sea salt & black pepper.
Using a pastry wheel (or pizza wheel in my case) little strips of dough is cut and placed on a baking sheet.
The dough strips are stretched to the full length of the pan.
Then the dough is given some time to rest and rise in a warm place. It will not rise very much, but the strips will appear fuller and rounder. Then into the hot oven and do keep a close eye on these guys as they will brown up pretty quickly when they are baked and will burn if not taken out of the oven in time!
Let it cool on a wire rack and.... breadsticks ready to be served with a dip or hummus or even just plain. With the chopped rosemary, they are flavorful snacks by themselves too.
My package of breadsticks-to-go for the park picnic was a brown paper bag and it worked really well for these extra-long, almost 2 feet in length, sticks.
Now that pumpkins are back in season, I'm having a lot of fun experimenting with different squashes. Made pumpkin pie this weekend for the first time. I found a pretty little Sugar Pie Squash on the sidewalk produce shelves at Bi-Rite market. This is one of the best varieties for pie as it has a smooth consistency.
The pie turned out quite delicious. Here's what I did.
Making pumpkin puree from scratch can be time consuming but definitely worth it and very easy. The pumpkin has to be cooked first by either boiling, roasting, steaming, etc. I did not want to heat up the kitchen and decided go for steaming it.
Cut the pumpkin in half and scoop out the seeds and stringy flesh with a spoon. Then cut the pumpkin in 2-3" chunks.
Steam over 1" water in a pot with a steamer insert until the squash is tender when pierced with a fork. Mine took about 25 minutes.
After the pumpkin has cooled, scoop out the flesh from the skin. A spoon worked well to get this done. Puree in a food processor until smooth. Measure out the amount needed.
TIP: Most pumpkin pie recipes call for 2 cups of pumpkin puree. My pumpkin provided about 3 cups, so I refrigerated the leftover cup to make a quick soup for lunch. (Reheat the puree, add some reduced fat milk and seasoning).
Then used it to bake a simple pumpkin pie. For this pie, I took a shortcut and just poured the batter into a frozen pie crust (shhh!). The result was just great!
TIP: Here's another hint: Some chopped candied ginger pieces makes a perfect garnish.
