A few weeks back, on a chilly Saturday afternoon, I packed up big bags of food, table settings, and wine, and brought everything to my parents’ house for a little harvest dinner party. The theme of the dinner was Pumpkin + Chardonnay, and I worked with the people over at La Crema Wines to pick out the best chardonnay pairings for each of the three recipes we created. There was no particular reason for hosting this dinner other than a desire to create something lovely to look at, an excuse to drink too much wine, and a way to use up the squash from the garden that have been lingering on our windowsill.

The first course was a simple Grilled Pumpkin and Raw Kale Salad, dressed with lemon and olive oil and served with a big slice of creamy camembert. To pair with the salad, we served the La Crema Monterey Chardonnay, which is rich and buttery and played beautifully with the funkiness of the cheese and the bitterness of the greens. While grilled squash and chardonnay might sound like a summery pairing, everything about this course was pungent, savory, and rich, setting just the right tone for kicking off our harvest dinner.

Next, we moved on to the main course – Mini-Stuffed Pumpkins with Middle-Eastern Spiced Beef and Israeli Couscous, paired with La Crema’s Sonoma Coast Chardonnay, which is a bit brighter and fruitier than the Monterey. Rather than the more traditional cheese/sausage/bread filling used in many stuffed pumpkin recipes, I opted for stuffing them with a tagine-like mixture of sweetly spiced, stewed beef, dried fruit, nuts, and Israeli couscous. The beef itself is hands down the best beef I’ve ever made. After numerous almost-but-not-quite-delicious preparations of short ribs and other fatty cuts and roasts, I finally had the fall-apart-tender, deeply savory, saucy, non-greasy beef of my dreams. And now I want to make it over and over again, in different flavors and served over different starches until I’m tired of it.

We wrapped things up with individual servings of Pumpkin-Vanilla Pot de Creme, creamy, gently spiced little puddings served with a generous dollop of maple whipped cream. The last bottle to be opened was the La Crema Russian River Valley, a honeyed chardonnay with slight echos of the baking spices used in the pot de cremes. At this point we were all full and happy and a little bit tipsy, lingering over the last creamy spoonfuls of pudding and sips of wine.

I perhaps went overboard in styling the table, but it was so much fun to shoot. There’s inspiration to be found in making something beautiful just for the sake of beauty. I wanted to capture the lovely colors of the last burst of foliage as the backdrop, enhancing them with oranges and reds and creamy colors on the table. Truth be told, it was a little cold for sitting outside for long, so we quickly moved the set-up inside by the fire, but the atmosphere was just as lovely indoors. In New England the foliage is mostly past, now, but I hope to make this sort of outdoor harvest dinner a tradition to look forward to at the peak of each fall season.

To see more pictures and notes from this dinner, check out the three companion posts and recipes over on the La Crema Blog!

Course #1: Grilled Pumpkin and Raw Kale Salad
Course #2: Mini-Stuffed Pumpkins with Middle-Eastern Spiced Beef and Israeli Couscous
Course #3: Pumpkin-Vanilla Pot de Cremes

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of La Crema. The opinions and text are all mine.

The post Harvest Pumpkin Dinner with La Crema appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

Saturday was our first harvest, the first of many moments that I’ve been longing for since burying our seeds in tiny pop-up pots in the depths of February. The moment I daydreamed about while stabbing at still-frozen ground with my turning fork in March. The moment I finally believed might happen this year when the first tender sprouts poked their heads out of the ground at the end of April. Summer is really coming.

This week’s haul was modest – a few handfuls of the sweetest green peas, a world away from the starchy peas that even the best grocery stores carry; the twisty turny garlic scapes that shot up in a matter of a few days; and 3 pounds of the most beautiful bright red strawberries, the result of two years of patience as the plants developed their roots and spread across the ground. This week we came home with a few snacks, but from here it only gets better, until it’s the end of August and we’re hauling home more tomatoes than we can even imagine eating, begging friends to take our extra cucumbers and squash, and sweating over the stove as we can jar after jar of tomato paste and pickles, trying to save it all to brighten our winter shelves.

I’m saving the strawberries for next week (hint hint), so this week we’re talking scapes. For those of you who have never seen one, they look like curly, flexible scallions that come out of the middle of garlic plants. If you let them grow, they eventually flower, but most farmers and gardeners clip them to send the energy that would otherwise be used to create flowers into creating bigger bulbs. Since the scapes themselves are edible, trimming them off seems like a win-win. The most common thing to do with them is make pesto, although pickling them, grilling them, and using them in soup come in as close seconds. Since there are already tons of recipes for those things out there, I decided to try something less common – giving the scapes a quick dip in a seltzer batter and frying them to make garlic scape tempura. Even a little bit of heat mellows out the garlicky bite in these, so don’t worry that munching on them whole will be too intense. There are two tricky parts to making tempura – one, getting the consistency of the batter just right, and two, keeping the oil at a temperature that is not so hot as to burn your tempura, but hot enough to cook it quickly and keep the coating airy. After a little trial and error, I got the hang of it, and you will too. I served these with a goat cheese and sour cream dip flecked with chives – it was intense and delicious, but it overwhelmed the delicate flavor of the tempura a little bit. Go light with the dip, or try something thinner or less salty if you’re looking to change it up.

Like what you just read? Subscribe to Katie at the Kitchen Door on Feedly or Bloglovin‘, or follow along on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, or Google+. Thanks for reading!

Garlic Scape Tempura

Serves 3-4 as an appetizer.

• 8-10 garlic scapes
• vegetable oil, for frying
• 2/3 c. flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 2/3 c. + 2 TBS seltzer
• sea salt, to taste

1. Wash your scapes and cut into 3-4 inch pieces. Some people choose not to eat the flower bulb end, but if your scapes are young and tender and the bulb is small, it won’t make much difference.
2. Pour vegetable oil into a wide heavy-bottomed pan, filling to a depth of about 1 1/2 inches. Heat over medium heat, to a temperature of 375°F.
3. Whisk together the flour and baking soda. Immediately before you begin frying (i.e. when your oil is hot enough), whisk the seltzer into the flour until a light smooth batter forms. Dip your scapes into the batter to fully coat, then carefully place in the hot oil. Only put as many scapes as can fit with plenty of room between them in each batch – you don’t want to crowd them. Fry for 1-2 minutes, until just beginning to color, then remove from the oil with a skimmer and let drain on a paper towel. Immediately shake sea salt over the hot tempura. Repeat until you have used all the scapes. Serve immediately.

Goat Cheese and Sour Cream Dip

Makes about 1/2 cup.

• 2 oz. goat cheese
• 1/4 c. sour cream
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp minced fresh chives
• salt, to taste

1. Put the goat cheese in a medium bowl and beat with a fork until mostly smooth. Add the sour cream and mix together until evenly combined. Stir in the black pepper and chives. Taste, and season to your liking.

The post The First Harvest // Garlic Scape Tempura with Goat Cheese Dip appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.