@ForkReporter- Technique Of The Week- Halloween Snacks

Neil is getting into all things spooky snacks for this Technique of the Week. We are covering roasting pumpkin seeds and fossil cookies. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's Neil Savedra. You're listening to KFI EM six
forty the fore Purport on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Do you want a joke? Yeah? Uh, what is a
skeleton's favorite food? What is it? Ribs?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
I like that?

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Not that funny? Yeah it was. Okay, start the show, Mario. No,
we can't hear it, Mario. This is where you start
the music, Mario. Let me teach you how this song was.

(00:43):
I see the song. I can start this on my
own KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Hey, everybody,
Happy Saturday to you. It's the fore Report all Things Food,
beverage and beyond.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
All.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Poor Mario his first day fully running the board, and
I threw him a curveball, the poor bastard. Thanks for
tuning in today. We have another Halloween program for you.
We're doing things a little different over the holiday season,
of course, focusing on food per uge, but we also
want to make sure that we are I don't know,

(01:18):
tipping our hat to stuff going on in the Southland,
people decorating their homes. How to decorate your homes in
addition to food goods and beyond. That's because I love
all that stuff. Quite honestly, I think it makes the
holidays extra fun. And when it comes to Halloween and
Christmas and the like, I'm very big on all that.

(01:41):
So the curveball that I threw poor Mario today was,
I got my car. I've got dinner tonight at with
the folks from Zelman's and some winners and Bill Handle
out there at Anaheim, the White House in Anaheim, and
so I've got all these things that I'm putting together,
grabbing the I'm sure I have my car because I

(02:01):
have to go right after the show. I get in
the car, I'm driving into the station and it says,
you're not going to make it. I had to actually
turn around and run home, so poor Mario had to
pop me up here. We had to make some changes
thanks to our guests. That's going on, But thank god
I've saved you from hearing the first segment of Kayla.

(02:26):
That could have been rough.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
That could have been I don't know how I got
into this. I think that we were a team effort.
You throw us a curveball. I told you I was
looking forward to seeing you today, and now you, oh.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
You said you were looking forward to dumping on me today.
I was there's a different you dumping on you.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
Potato, Patato, What do you want? What do you want? Man?

Speaker 1 (02:47):
You're going to tell me what makes you happy and
what's not making you happy right now? Exactly? Yes, my
therapy session. Well, I'm sorry I missed it. I'll start
billing you. But I do have some fun stuff to
talk about. It. As a matter of fact, to say,
we are in the season for carving pumpkins. I wanted
to talk about pumpkin seeds in particular, because although not

(03:08):
every pumpkin is edible as far as flavor wise, and
the ones you carve really and we talked about this
in earlier programs. The jack lantern pumpkins that you get
your local grosser and the like those are you know,
crap pumpkins. They're good for carving, you know, your regular

(03:31):
jack o' lantern, but they're not like a sugar pie
pumpkin or a pumpkin that is specifically made or grown
to eat. They're delicious, they're sweeter, they're certain structure to
the pumpkin that's different that makes them wonderful unto themselves
and makes them good for cooking. But every pumpkin has

(03:52):
pumpkin seeds that are delicious and that can be put
together and utilized to eat. The thing you want to
do is you want to roast them. Now, I get
asked all the time. I remember as a kid there
was kind of the same old, same old pattern of
putting them on a cookie sheet and all that. But
I wanted to give you some insights and some tips

(04:13):
as to how you can roast those pumpkin seeds on
your own. First things first, when it comes to pumpkin seeds,
you obviously want to clean them, and this is a
matter of removing them from the pumpkin. The thing is
that vainy, slimy stuff that's all over the pumpkin seeds
is the first thing you have to remove. So you

(04:35):
got all these pumpkin seeds from your pumpkin carving, and
this is the right time to get them, scoop them
out and roast them. So good. Pumpkin's going to feel
hard and smooth, no soft spots, no discoloration. You know,
it's a good strong pumpkin. Stems also going to be firm,

(04:56):
It's going to be attached, no signs of rotting near
the base. This is going to let you know that
it's going to be good to go for your pumpkin seeds.
Clean the seeds, place them in a large bowl of water.
This is going to loosen those seeds from that pulp
stuff that they're going to separate, and some of it's

(05:17):
going to fall, some of it's going to sink in
the water. So when it comes to how you're going
to prepare them, that's really going to be up to you.
As far as flavors, some people put like a hot
cocoa mix on them, but yeah, right, cinnamon, maybe brown sugar,

(05:38):
make it a little sweet. Some people use some cayenne pepper,
make it spicly. I like to add some cheese, maybe
some finely grated parmesan orgiano or something like that. It's
really going to be whatever your flavor profile is and
how you like to eat thinks. So you scoop out
all those seeds on a medium pumpkin. You're kind of

(06:01):
looking at about two cups. You transfer those seeds to
the bowl of water, scoop out the loose seeds. They're
gonna float, they're gonna separate from the pulp. The pulp's
gonna sink, and you discard the pulp. You're not gonna
eat that, you're not gonna use it. You put the
seeds in a colander. Of course, you rinse them. You
want to drain them. You want to pat them dry

(06:22):
with paper towels there and get up all that liquid.
That's gonna help them roast nicely too. You don't want
them steaming per se. You spread the clean seeds out
on a baking sheet. This again is so that they
all get the same amount of heat when they're roasting,
and that's going to give you the best that's going
to get you the best texture out of them. Put

(06:43):
them on that baking sheet. You want to bake at
two hundred and fifty degrees until they're dry. It's gonna
take about an hour. Then you take them. You can
toss them with some olive oil you see them with salt,
and then you roast them three hundred and fifty degrees
tossing a caationally until golden brown and crisp. That's about
another twenty minutes at that three hundred and fifty degrees fahrenheit.

(07:06):
You want to cool them completely, storm in an airtight
container and you're good to go. Now if you want
to mix it up before you roast them. At three
point fifty, you want to add your flavors. So the
fall mocha one I talked about is one tablespoon of

(07:27):
hot cocoa mix one teaspoon ground cinnamon, and you toss
that in there, and then you put them on that
baking sheet at three point fifty and you toast them
for twenty minutes. You want to toss them a little bit,
kind of stir them up. In between that sweet heat,

(07:48):
you put about a quarter cup of the brown sugar,
eighth teaspoon caim peppa and do that and you're good.
If you want to just a little bit of pecorino
romano cheese on there, you want to do a little
parmesano reggiano, do about a half cup finally, finally grated

(08:10):
two tea spurns cracked pepper on there. And you do
that during that roasting period and you are golden. Oh
does not sound good. And then you've got your your
tasty treats and your pumpkin seeds and everybody's going to
be happy for fall. All right, stick around, much more
to come, so go nowhere.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
You're listening to the Fork Report with nil Savedra on
demand from KFI AM six forty.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
It is your friendly neighborhood Fork Report of Nil Savedra
and it is the Fork Report program. We'll be here
until we hand it over to Tiffany Hobbs at five
o'clock and then Michael Monks at seven, So go know where.
It's a beautiful day today, but we are in fall,

(08:57):
and I am fully into Hallowen mode, working on animatronics
and props and all kinds of things for my son
Max's school and their Halloween haunted house and stuff. And
I'll be decorating our house this year and having some
family and friends over as well. We usually do an
open house. People can kind of cruise by, have some food, sit,

(09:20):
pass out candy, do whatever. But I wanted, and we're
gonna have some great guests for you to meet today
and some places to find out about if you like
spooky things, you like haunted things, someplace that you can
check out. Right now, we're talking about technique of the
Week and I choosing some fun holiday to reads. I
see a lot of this stuff. I've been doing this for,

(09:41):
you know, well over fifteen years or so, and I
see just about every type of cookie or thing you
can do. I have never seen this one before. I
saw this in Good Housekeeping and I love this. They're
called fossil cookies. So think I'm not going to go
break down the recipe for the actual cookies because there

(10:03):
are two basic cookies that most people know how to make.
The first is a sugar cookie. You know, it's the
basic sugar cookie you're going to be doing for any holiday.
And then there's one called the black coca or cocoa
rather cookie, which is basically just a dark chocolate cookie.
Basic basic cookie. But the thing that I loved about

(10:27):
this is the preparation and how you make them fun.
So you prepare the cookie dough as directed. You can
even buy you know, the cookie dough over the counter
and get it at your local grocery store. The key
on this is a couple of things. You want to
roll it out, and you want to make kind of

(10:48):
broken shapes, think kind of like a large broken glass pieces.
So you want to cut the dough if you roll
it out, you want to cut the dough in kind
of you know, broken pieces. Don't make them uniform, don't
do any of that. You want to make them look

(11:08):
kind of like shards big enough to do this. This
is going to be the key. You want to chill
the dough. Once you've broken it up in those pieces
to make it look like you bust it up ground
or what have you. You want to chill them. Then you
bring them out. You want to find and you can
go to Michael's. You can go to a toy store.
You may even have some of these things laying around.

(11:30):
You want plastic little skulls, You want plastic little bones,
You want plastic spiders, you want plastic bugs. Clean them
with soap and water, make sure they're clean, and you
press them into the cookie dough so kind of, you know,
face down. Either get the impression of the bug or

(11:50):
whatever in there. Right, you press that down and you
put that back in the refrigerator because you want them
to chill again. Then you bring them out and you
put them in and you make them normal. The reason
why you want them so chilled is that'll keep them
from puffing up. You don't want them to puff up
and blow out the detail that you put in there

(12:11):
by pressing these little fun little creatures in there. Now,
then what you're gonna want to do that's gonna make
this soup. A deep of fun is you're gonna make
an icing, and you prepare the icing. Uh you know,
your simple icing is is a glaze. It's simple sugar water,

(12:32):
heavy cream. I prefer to use the not granulated sugar.
I want to use the powdered sugar, confection or sugar.
And you make a nice, wonderful glaze and you pour
them in there, and then you use the back of
the spoon to kind of pour them over the ends,

(12:53):
and they'll pull up while you're looking at Mi Kayla.

Speaker 3 (12:56):
No, it sounds amazing, Svidra, it sounds amazing. I'm really excited.
I had to have these fossil cookies and the chocolate
and the glass broken Yeah, broken glass shapes.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
I'm really following, all right. And so then they pull
up in the fossil part and then they kind of
ooze over the edges and we let them cool. It'll
get crunchy and crispy because the sugar will firm up
in there, and it's a thing of wonderfulness. But I
thought they were dorbs balls. Yeah that's a grown man

(13:27):
saying that. So enjoy them, and if you do them,
please put them on social media and hit me up
at Fork Reporter at fork Reporter on Instagram so I
can see them because it soundsbulous. All right, we'll be
back with more, so go know where. It's The Fork
Report on Neil Savader KFI six forty.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
You're listening to The Fork Report with Nil Savadra on
demand from KFI AM six forty