Pumpkins (merged threads)

Ticklemouse

Pumpkins - and they are large ones - are currently £1.99 in Aldi's

(Didn't buy one myself tho')

molesworth

The wonderful thing about pumpkin is that once it's ripened you can take slices out and leave it on a kitchen surface and it will stay usable for a couple of weeks. You might like to try this pumpkin curry which comes from a 1970s Indian recipe book:

You will need:

cubes of pumpkin flesh (about one and a half pounds)
About a pound of raw potato cubed
2 onions
1 teasp cumin seed
2 bay leaves
1 teasp turmeric
1 teasp fresh ginger (or ginger powder)
green chilli to taste (or chilli powder)

Cut onion in slices and fry until soft. Add potato cubes. Fry turning for three or four minutes. Add cumin. Fry for a minute. Add salt, bay leaves, turmeric and ginger. Fry gently and stir for five minutes. Add a little water, cover and cook very slowly until potatoes are soft. Very thinly slice green chilli pieces, scatter over and serve.

From my much-loved Indian Cookery by Spira Das Gupta (1973). Can't believe it's 30 years since I bought it ...

cath-w

Ticklemouse wrote:

Pumpkins - and they are large ones - are currently £1.99 in Aldi's

(Didn't buy one myself tho')

I am currently selling them for between 50p and £1.50 for very large. The packet of seeds only cost me £1.09 for 10 seeds too so I am making quite a return. I bascially grew too many for us to eat even after freezing, bottling and storing.

scuzz

I had pumpkin and cumin soup the other night which was very nice

neets

I've just made this:

Simple Pumpkin Soup

1 clove of garlic
3 cups pumpkin
3 stems of celery
1 onion
2 carrot
1L stock
300ml milk

Spray a pan with cooking spray and add crushed garlic and finely sliced onion. Saute until clear.
Add chopped and peeled pumpkin, chopped and peeled carrots and sliced celery. Brown in pan.
Add stock to pan and allow to simmer slowly for 30 minutes. Allow to cool and mash.
Process in a food processor until all lumps are gone. Return to pan and stir in milk. Do not allow to boil.
Season and garnish.

Fleur_2

this is what I did with the scraped out pumpkin from the carving I did for my friends at the weekend.

Scooped out pumpkin flesh, drizzled with a little homemade chili and garlic olive oil and roasted until juices flowing and top bits started to colour.

2 red onions sweated off with 4 cloves of garlic and 3 diced parsnips that I had knocking about.
Chucked in the pumpkin and juices, added herbs de provence (cos I had some handy), celery salt, worcester sauce (couple of dashes), half litre of veg stock, salt and pepper and let it come up to simmer for about 10 mins.
Blitzed with a hand blender and then popped in 3 fresh bayleafs and left to stand over night (it was 11pm by this point)
Next day roasted 6 tomatoes, cut in half and drizzled with a tiny bit of oil.
Left to cool, removed bay leaves, scooped out tomato flesh and added to soup mix.
Then I added about a half pint of milk, blitzed with the hand blender and then re-heated very gently, up to a gentle simmer for about 10 mins or so.
This made the MOST fantastic tasting soup.
I served it for saturday lunch with 2 rashers of bacon criply fried and stirred into the soup bowls with a dollop of creme fraiche and a hunk of french bread.
I have frozen down a couple of pints and am giving a few pints to the girl who bought the pumpkin.

I used a HUGE pasta pan to make this in )

ashmit

The soup I made last night was similar to Liney's. I roasted half a pumpkin (in quarters), two carrots and some sweet potatoes in oil with finely chopped lemongrass, garlic and ginger. When they were cooked I scraped the pumpkin away from the skin and put it in a pan with the rest of the veg and as much oil as I could scrape in. Put in water to cover all the veg and a little more, bring to a simmer, then added some chilli powder and a carton of coconut cream. Whizz it up to make it smooth but it should be quite thick. if you like you could add some lime juice or finely chopped red pepper for a garnish but I think it's fine as it is

Abser-bloody-lutely gorgeous especially for a recipe I pretty much made up! (Well - I did use a spicy butternut squash recipe for the basics but this was tons better!)

Strepsy

I thought you might like to see some of the pumpkins that I'm growing before I ask a question.

The 4 unusual ones are from a mixed packet, 29p from Lidl. I only planted 4 and they all came up different. How lucky's that! One problem though is that there was very little information on the packet so I don't know what sort they or if any are edible.

The big yellow ones I do know are edible, they're Cucurbita Maxima, also a 29p packet from Aldi.






Now for the question. There's a harvest lunch at church and I was asked to make a dessert but a little naively put 'surprise dessert'. Well word got round pretty quick and people are sounding all excited about the surprise dessert. lol. So, my plan is to hollow out a pumpkin, use the flesh for some delightful muffin or similar and then serve the muffins from the pumpkin.

That was a very long story, I could have made it short. lol. Does anyone know any good recipes for pumpkin muffins or cakes ? Or cookies, anything?

Grumpysally

Can you supstitute butter nut squash for these reciepes? My dads grown loads and I don't know what to do with them.

liz.._4

I have just made a halloween pumpkin lantern with the kids and saved the flesh for Sunday lunch (of course!) and was proud of my daughter when she prompted me to save the seeds so we can dry them and eat them. It never crossed my mind (must be getting old...)

So, question for everyone, do you just leave them to dry on some kitchen paper or is there some special way to do it?


BTW I got chatting to the shop assistant while I was buying it and she said she throws away the flesh! I gave her a quickie soup recipe which she was really grateful for but it made me wonder how many dustbins up and down the country will be (sadly) full of pumpkin flesh this season?