So, whilst it might be normal in the US to have pumpkin at this time of year, here in the UK and Ireland they tend to get bought to be carved for Halloween, but not eaten. As it's been a year of new food and new experiences for me, I bought one to play with, and came up with a few dishes. All looking as awesome as this!
Wanna see how I made this and 3 other dishes? Find out after the jump!
From one medium pumpkin, I got:
Some delicious roasted and salted pumpkin seeds:
Some Pumpkin Bread:
Some nommy roasted pumpkin:
And finally, a modification on last week's recipe, some Lentil, Apricot and pumpkin soup!
So, first thing I'm gonna go through for all you British and Irish peeps out there, is how to actually prepare a pumpkin for eating, and I suppose I should quickly go over what sort of vegetable it is. Effectively for nutritional purposes, treat is as a squash.
To prepare a pumpkin, top and tail it with a sharp knife (so that it'll sit on a bench without rolling. Then, cut it in half like you would a melon. Now you need to scoop out the guts and seeds but save them. I recommend using a desert soon or ice-cream scoop, and don't be afraid to get aggressive to get all of them out of there :) You can then peel the vegetable itself using a normal peeler, a word of advice, all you're doing is trying to get through the orange layer, you really don't need to peel too deeply at all, it's a waste of good pumpkin!
Now, we're gonna do the dishes in order here, so first of all!
Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
Ok, so first we need to seperate out the guts and the seeds.
There's actually a really simple method of doing that, pumpkin guts sink, pumpkin seeds float, put the whole mess into a bowl of water and lift the seeds off the top.
After you've got just the seeds, place them in a pan with some boiling water, add some sea salt and boil them for about 20 mins. Then take them out of the pan and dry them thoroughly, leave them out to dry if you have the time.
Now, put some olive oil (lighter the better) onto an oven tray so it covers the bottom with a thin layer. Add the seeds and move them around so they get coated in the oil. Then roast them at a moderate heat. They could actually do with being a *little* lighter than they are in my picture, I overdid them a tad :)
Onto the second recipe!
Pumpkin Bread
So, far warning, I stole this recipe pretty directly from an awesome website, www.againstallgran.com. I'm not gonna reprint their content here, if you'd like the recipe go to: http://www.againstallgrain.com/2013/10/01/gluten-free-pumpkin-bread/
What I would say with this one is it's not a *great* bread recipe, but add a little extra pumpkin puree to it, and it'll make an excellent muffin recipe. It's not often you get a GF/DF baking recipe that's just too moist whilst also holding stuff together.
Oh, and *fair warning* with this one, this is a *really* calorific recipe, so save it for a treat, and share with friends :)
Onto the third recipe!
Roasted Pumpkin!
So, I recommend using about 1/3 of a pumpkin to make puree for the bread, and for the soup later. This leaves you with 2/3 of delicious pumpkin! This is actually really simple, just chop it into peices, add some thyme, a little oil, and slow roast till soft in an oven.
Honestly, this one tastes kinda like parsnip to me, which is awesome cause I LOVE parsnip, and it takes far less oil too!
And finally!
Pumpkin, Lentil and Apricot soup!
So, I'm totally gonna plug my blog *in* my blog! It's all gotten very Inception round here!
Yeah, this is basically the same recipe as last week, which you can find here:
http://heroddpyoga.blogspot.ie/2013/10/in-which-our-hero-proves-you-dont-need.html
Essentially, all you're doing is added pumpkin during the first cooking phase, just after the onion. This gives the soup a sweeter taste, so maybe add a little extra salt. I'd also count the soup as a carb at this point.
So there we go, 4 fun recipes with your pumpkin! I'm gonna grab one cheap once Halloween is over here and I might try something else with it. Next week however, we're gonna be playing with an interesting cut of meat, the tongue! Until then peace folks!
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