Pre-post Thanksgiving leftovers

What, you ask, are pre-post Thanksgiving leftovers? Having decided that we didn't get quite enough turkey and cranberries while in the States for real Thanksgiving, and being of the general opinion that non-Americans should experience the tastiness that is Thanksgiving, we decided to invite some friends over for a post-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner when we got back to Italy. And as often happens when one goes to the market, we ended up with a bit too much food--including a rather large piece of zucca (unspecified form of winter squash).

The plan for this lovely piece of squash was pumpkin pie, so I stuck it in the oven to roast. But when I pulled it out and mashed it up, I had way more than the required 2 cups of pumpkin. What to do with the extra? The obvious solution was clearly to make zucca ravioli, and so after removing the amount for the pie, I mixed in spices and a pinch of salt to create the ravioli filling and went back to making the pie.

The pie pan we had available for use wasn't all that big though, and so not surprisingly, when I went to pour the "pumpkin" custard into the crust there was a not-insignificant bit that wouldn't fit. Being short on pie tins, we decided the best use for this bit of extra squash was to turn it into a sort of pumpkin creme brule.

For the ravioli, I didn't bother to follow any sort of

precise recipe. Really, they can be a fairly flexible sort of thing, so here's a gist that can be used as a point of departure:

Roast or steam a piece of winter squash. When soft, remove the skin (if you didn't peal it before cooking) and pureè until smooth. To the squash mixture add salt and spices to taste (pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, a bit of ground cloves, or whatever else suits your fancy). Roll out pasta dough (which I made using my usual eggless recipe), fill and form ravioli accordingly. Cook and serve with brown butter and sage sauce.

The pumpkin pie I made using a combination of two recipes from Gourmet magazine. The first, for a carmel pumpkin pie, was what I used to make the filling. The second, for pumpkin tart with anise seed crust was what I used for the crust (irrelevant for the creme brule

but tasty nonetheless). To turn the extra filling into creme brule, I buttered a baking dish (well, in this case, pot with metal handles) and filled with with the custard. I then placed the dish in a water bath and baked it until it was firm. Once firm, we pulled it out of the oven, sprinkled it with brown sugar, and put it back in the oven on broil to crisp up the top. The end result wasn't quite like creme brule done the proper way (with a blow torch), but it was quite good anyway and certainly an acceptable jury-rigging method for when flame throwers are unavailable.