Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Commercial crab season opened a couple of weeks ago with the promise that "there will be crabs for Thanksgiving!" Sweet. With that in mind, I put crab on my Thanksgiving menu that is celebrating the bounty of our county. Though the crab I'm serving isn't from my friend Mike, I wanted to share a photo of him with his crustacean loot! The take is ten crabs and each time he's gone out, he and his buddies have all gotten their limit. Amazing. I'm green with envy over here. But I dutifully bought my locally-caught crabs and whipped this up for our kick-off course.... I started with the tart dough that we used to make Eliopitakia , Cypriot Olive Pies , on our tabletop adventure. It's flaky and citrusy, the perfect pairing for a seafood tart. Pastry 3/4 C orange juice 3/4 C olive oil 4 C white whole wheat flour 2 1/2 t baking powder In medium bowl, mix all the pastry ingredients and knead to make a soft dough. Let stand while preparing fillin...

For the Pair of Pumpkins baby shower , I was trying to come up with a way to incorporate pumpkins into the salad. Then I figured it out: make the salad dressing with pumpkin oil and top the whole thing with pumpkin seeds! Salad = artisanal greens, sliced persimmons, pomegranate seeds, capers, pumpkin seeds Dressing = pumpkin oil, fig balsamic vinegar, olive oil, chopped herbs (I used mint, cilantro, and parsley), freshly ground sea salt and pepper Pumpkin oil is a rich, deep green oil. It's heavy, though, so I used it as a flavoring and topped the dressing off with a Persian lime olive oil. If you know nothing else about vinaigrettes, remember this: the magic ratio of oil to vinegar is 3 to 1. As long as you know that, you won't need to consult a vinaigrette recipe ever again. Just remember three parts oil to one part vinegar and you'll be all right. If you get them backwards and do three parts vinegar to one part oil, your puckered mouth will ensure you don...