Given the evidence that I have seen with my eyes year after year, the pumpkin usually only makes an appearance around Halloween, whereupon it is gutted, turned into a (rubbish) lantern, and then discarded. (Oh, Good Housekeeping will make a cursory effort to put in a recipe or two for pumpkin pie or pumpkin soup; but no-one really cares about pumpkins, not really.)
It is not the same in Canada, from what I can see! It was (Canadian) Thanksgiving Day yesterday, and despite the fact that Halloween is weeks away, already the supermarkets are festooned with amusing Halloween decorations and bags of 'candy' the size of Gibraltar, from which one feeds pesky local kids. (Fruit apparently will be refused, in case razor blades are hidden within its fleshy receiving depths.)
But I digress. As I am non-working (and lovin' it!), I have time to get really involved in local customs, e.g. going on the free local bus to the supermarket, looking at apples, eating maple candy and eyeing up bun tins in the shape of maple leaves in the local 'kitchen store'. It is really great and I am loving it, but in order to really 'get to grips' with a local society (and its customs), I think it is important to 'get your hands dirty'.
Encouraged by up to and including five million pumpkins in the local supermarket, five stalls selling pumpkins on the way to the local supermarket (on the free local bus) and a magazine dedicated to the art of the pumpkin (this is not a joke), I thought I would buy one too.
My idea was simple: I would 'get my hands dirty' by cooking things out of it; things that one sees on the television when watching American TV shows; things that are often included in scenarios in which the people are also eating 'corn bread' and 'English muffins' and 'corn'; stuff like that. (Weird stuff that we do not have in England unless we are American ex-patriates.)
But I digress. Here is a photograph of the pumpkin I chose with my very own eyes and put in the trolley with my own hands:
As you can see it is quite 'sizey', but manageably so, unlike the pumpkin you will see in the following photograph.
Big, isn't it. But not as big as this pumpkin, which is what I think they describe as "very big". (I found it on a web-site called World's Biggest Pumpkins. If you click about on it, you will see all sorts of very good pictures, including ones of people sailing about the place in boats made of pumpkins. (Naturally, it is Canada-based.)
Anyway, I got the pumpkin home (with the help of my 'conjugal partner', who is a pathologist), and looked at it.
"Do you know what you are doing?", he muttered, tossing back his flowing locks. "It's just ... well, there's a way of doing it, that usually involves a sort of stabbing motion, and cooking it a bit so you can get the skin off."
"Yes", I bellowed in reply, tears of mirth pouring down my cheeks, "but enough of your day job; what about the pumpkin?".
Disgusted by my poor attempt at humour, the pathologist retired to an easy-chair in the 'sun-room' to peruse a set of chain-saw instructions, leaving me alone with the pumpkin, a large knife and some recipes.
It went OK. I made some things. Here they are:
These are the roasted seeds of the pumpkin. Getting them out is worse than disembowelling a chicken. Here, they have been roasted with (Maldon) sea salt, coriander and cumin seed. They are fucking boring.
These, par contre are the muffins I made with my own hands. There is a lot of pumpkin in them, some oat bran, not much sugar, some organic hemp dried apricots and a cockload of walnuts. They are great. (If you would like the recipe please apply in writing to the email address you can find in the side bar). As you can see, I have wrapped them (correctly!) in wax paper, in the style of for e.g. Martha Stewart.
This is roast pumpkin and garlic soup. It is OK except it could have been made out of carrots. It just tastes like vegetable soup. (Although obviously an excellent one, a bit like Nigella Lawson would make, but if she was a good cook.)
This is the pumpkin au cheese on top, made by the pathologist. (He cuts things up in a very precise style, FYI.) It was quite nice because he put stuff in it and put cheese on top and then put it in the oven. (On the other hand if you put cheese on top of anything it becomes delicious, almost as delicious as cake.)
But there is a problem! I have made twelve muffins, three litres of soup and an entire old feta tub full of roasted seeds. The pathologist has made four if not five small 'ramekins'* of pumpkin au cheese on top, and yet there remains almost half a pumpkin!
In despair, I have roasted it, but there is this much left and I do not know what to do with it!
And it is here that I ask for help. What would you do with half a pumpkin? I do not like sloppy things (exc. soup) and pumpkin pie is not very good for me, so I am looking for something firm and toothsome, packed full of autumnal goodness (and cheese), that I could make in under an hour.
(MonkeyMother, my mother, would say "oh, throw it away, but don't tell your father", and I suspect this is good advice, particularly in view of the fact that the entire pumpkin cost $2.99, making it a very good food for poor people.)
While I am waiting for your replies, I am going to go and play with this on-line pumpkin game and eat some muffins. I look forward to hearing from you all!
(Pumpkin) pip pip
NWM
* ghastly word
17 comments:
pumpkin cheese cake is great
also you can just eatit tha same as neother squash
I was in Vermont this weekend, along with half of Quebec. (The other half apparently went to the state of New York.) While fondling the merchandise at Williams-Sonoma, I was handed a tasty morsel of their pumpkin quick-bread.
I only use pumpkins for carving, but I'm betting there are plenty of recipes out there.
If you hadn't already roasted it, I would have suggested pickles.
I made pumpkin wine once. Quite possibly the most tedious and messy preparation for any of the homemade wines I tried, and most definitely the vilest drop of hooch I've ever sampled. I would suggest catapulting the balance of your bounty over the hedge and go buy a nice pre-made pumpkin pie.
wait, did you make all of those things in one day??? yu're not a non-working monkey, you're a hard-workng monkey.
i want the muffins, the soup, and the roasted pumpkin, onto which you must put lots of melted butter and brown sugar.
just mail them to me. i live in minnesota. it's right next to canada! they'll still all be fresh when they get here.
that's a good monkey.
Or you might care to follow this example of surplus-pumpkin-disposal practised in the California?
And biscuits. They're always going on about frying biscuits and eating them with gravy. I cannot begin to imagine what this is all about.
Two things.
1. Mash the remains of your roasty pumpkin with cheese and serve with anything you like in place of mashed spuds. Marvellous.
2. I was unaware of this ghastly word 'ramekin' thinking always that due to their unwieldy shape and tiddly size that they were, in fact, known as 'ram-it-in' dishes. I live and learn.
Can I just tell you that you've brought the Pumpkin game back into my consciousness and now I will get no work done whatsoever! I found this game a few weeks ago and couldn't stop playing coz of the pumpkins shouting things in high pitched voices like 'we're gonna die!! Kill 'em with your mouse!!' Thankyou. I wasn't in a worky mood anyway :o)
Why not visit your near neighbour with the surplus produce.
You might get an exotic vegetable in return
Surely pumpkin is good for the skin? why not use it as a sweet smelling edible face pack and really scare the little monsters when they come calling on Halloween?
I like the look of the muffins, but the soup looks a bit gloopy.
It had a good innings and half of it brought joy to many many people. But now is the time to harden your heart, and set your jaw, and throw the other half of the pumpkin away.
Do it, man. You know it makes sense.
Compost. Lovely, orange squashy compost.
Did you enjoy the disemboweling bit? That was the part we liked as kids what with the oozy stringy slimy pumpkin guts and everything. Oh, and I agree about the stupid pumpkin seeds.
If you really and for truly want to cook something with the rest of the corpse you could head over to epicurious which has very nice recipes and a search engine and friendly people who put stars on things.
I will take the muffins. I love pumpkin bread and so does my daughter. She will beg to eat the whole loaf the minute it comes out of the oven. Okay, I am hungry again.
Pumpkin is the food of the devil. A waste of time and space in the garden, in the supermarket and in your kitchen. FOR GOD'S SAKE THROW IT AWAY, preferably on the compost heap.
P.S. You could scoop out the flesh, dry the shell, add some leaves and thus make a comfy bed for a squirrel.
Stuff it with feta.
I do not know if this will work, but I saw Hugh Fernly- Thing do it once and it looked nice. Although he had an AGA. Do you have an AGA? I don't have an AGA.
And neither do I work for them. Although you would not guess it from this comment.
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