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Fresh Ginger It's the ginger season. Everyone has their ideas about what makes a house feel welocming and warm in the dark days. In my opinion, this is the time of year when a house should smell like spices. Cinnamon is fine and cloves are great, but the one that lifts my spirits above all is the fragrance of fresh ginger. Ginger lends intself to so many uses, both sweet and savory, that it is a staple in the kitchen. I've used it in cookies, pies, stir-fry dishes, soups, gingerbread (of course), and in a very gingered-up version of pumpkin butter, my favorite home-made Christmas gift. And fresh ginger is so easily available that I've begun using it almost exclusively. When buying ginger, look for roots that are plump and feel firm. Wrinkled, dry or withered looking pieces of gingerroot are too old. Keep ginger in the refrigerator, and peel peel it just before using it. To prepare ginger for cooking, I usually cut it up into small dice with a very sharp knife, then put it into the food processor to be more finely minced. You can also mince it by hand or grate it, but be sure to discard any thick, fibrous mass that might be left behind when grating. My recent fresh ginger craze started with the pumpkins that my friend Larry brought me from a farm in Santa Paula - big, strange specimens, some orange and some gray, with odd shapes and many ridges and warts. He wasn't sure of their names, but I started cooking with them at Thanksgiving and haven't stopped. I made pumpkin pies, using fresh roasted pumpkin and fresh ginger. The fresh ginger woke up those pies and took them to a whole new level of pumpkin pie-ness. People fought over the last pieces that weekend. Soon after that, I decided to make the pumpkin butter. I hadn't done it for a few years, but it used to be a favorite Christmas ritual. I adapted my recipe from The New Vegetarian Epicure, using honey and lots of fresh ginger. The result was pure gold. I got a pumpkin butter that was richly flavored, dark and silky in texture. It's so good spooned on the morning toast, and is much appreciated as a little Christmas gift because it's not something that is available commercially. The procedure for making pumpkin butter is quite simple, and this time I worked out a method that is even easier than what I formerly did. I over-roast the pumpkins in halves, which saves difficult peeling. It also allows me to taste the cooked pumpkin and get an idea of how much sugar it will need, as pumpkins and squashes vary tremendously. Next I scoop out the flesh and puree it in a food processor with minced ginger, honey, spices and sugar. I do it in batches and at the end stir everything together in a big bowl and taste again. I adjust the sugar and lemon or vinegar, and then simply ladle the smooth puree into large baking dishes and put it in the oven again, at about 325°, for an hour or so. It slowly thickens down to the right texture, without the endless stirring and spattering that you get with a stove-top method. Why didn't I do this years ago? No matter. The end product was lovely - thick, glossy, and addictively gingery. This pumpkin butter can be packed in pretty jam jars and processed the same way as any jam or preserve. You can seal canning jars in a boiling water bath or in a pressure canner. However, if you want to make a batch of pumpkin butter for more immediate consumption, you just need to put it into clean jars and keep it in the refrigerator. Or, you can freeze it for up to 6 months. Another very successful dish was an Apple and Persimmon Pie. In Ojai, where I live, persimmons are the zucchini of December. They all ripen during the same brief season, and people sneak around leaving bags full of them on kitchen doorsteps because there is such a surplus. This encourages experimentation, and I decided to make an apple and Fuyu persimmon pie. Fuyu persimmons are the ones that you eat while they are still hard, but they are very sweet. I thought they'd make a nice combination with sour apples. I added raisins, walnuts and dried cranberries to the mix, and a heaping tablespoon of freshly minced ginger. The flavor was fresh and bright, and the deep dish pie looked like a mosaic, with chunks of pale apple next to bright orange persimmon, and dark spots of raisin and cranberry. Naturally, my ginger mania took me to the ground zero of baking with this fabulous root: gingerbread. I experimented with various old-fashioned recipes, replacing ground dried ginger with fresh, then doubling and tripling the amounts, until I came up with the great one. Everyone agreed, it was the world's finest old-fashioned gingerbread. We served it warm, with some whipped cream and ripe chocolate persimmons. In this month's New Recipes, you'll find Pumpkin Butter with Fresh Ginger, and Fresh Ginger Gingerbread. I hope you enjoy them over the holidays. Merry Christmas, everyone - and a happy and peaceful New Year!
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