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Cooking Pumpkins is really quite easy, though if they are large enough, butchering them can be quite a chore. To cook a pumpkin, first wash it off to remove any dirt. Next, cut the pumpkin at least in half, and remove the seeds. If the pumpkin is large, it may need to be quartered in order to fit in the oven.

The seeds can be separately spread out on a baking sheet, where they can be seasoned with your choice of salt, or brown sugar, or chile powder, and then baked to make a delicious snack.

Cook the pumpkin by putting it face down (rind up) on a cookie sheet or in a dish that has been filled with half an inch or so with water. This keeps the pumpkin moist, and from burning and smoking too much while in the oven. Bake the pumpkin at 350 Fahrenheit until it is soft when prodded with a fork or knife. This could take a relatively short amount of time for a small pumpkin, and could take an hour or two for a larger squash.

Once the pumpkin is soft, remove it from the oven and allow it to cool. After it is cool to touch, you can separate the flesh from the rind. It is easiest to do this using your hands. The remaining flesh can either be frozen in tupperware for later use (in the dish at right, for example, a pint of frozen pumpkin–the Jack O Lantern kind–can be substituted for the cubed pumpkins) or it can be used in a soup or dish right away. If you have bought too many pumpkins, butchering and freezing them all at once can take away the anxiety of dealing with them all separately. Afterwards, you will have a good larder of pumpkin to feed off of all through the winter.

All of the fancy new pumpkins available at the market these days (the white ones, the ones with weird skin rashes, etc.) are edible. Most are less sweet, and have a higher water content than sugar pumpkins, but they work very well in dishes that don’t call for oversweet additions.

Enjoy!

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If, like me, you were completely boggled this year by the astounding variety of squahes and pumpkins now for sale at your local market, you probably bought more than you are now planning to eat. It can be a big waste to throw out all those pumpkins, though, so to avoid that fate you can try this delicious recipe that comes from Mary Webb of Belmont, MA. You can make it using any sort of pumpkin, and it is a consistently delicious and filling fall dish. Thanks to Mary Webb for the recipe, and Betsey M. Mayer for relaying it to me (and saving me from eating pure pumpkin gruel for breakfast, lunch and dinner).

Colombo de Giraumon
(Martinique)

2 Tbls. olive oil
1 Oz. unsalted butter
1/4 Lb. bacon chopped
1 medium onion chopped
1 green pepper chopped
1 tspn. curry powder
1/4 tspn. ground clove
2 medium tomatoes chopped
1 small sugar pumpkin peeled and cubed
1 or 2 cloves of garlic
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil and butter, add bacon, onion, pepper and cook about five
minutes.
Add curry powder and cook 1 or 2 minutes more. Add cloves, tomatoes,
pumpkin, salt and pepper and simmer, stirring occasionally until the pumpkin is very tender. Add garlic to taste at the last. This could be a side dish with ham or turkey. Or with some brown rice it makes a good meal on its own.

The next recipe was also relayed through Betsey Mayer. After eating a delicious salsa made with roasted pumpkin seeds at the Mexican Restaurant Ole in Cambridge, MA, she set off to re-create the dish (with some help from her friend Judy and “A Cooks Tour of Mexico by Nancy Zaslavsky.”) The following is her summary of the pumpkin seed`salsa recipes she found in the book:

Pipian Salsa Cocida:

There are three regional recipes for sauces made with pumpkin seeds - this is quite a subject.

What they had in common was that you could roast the pumpkin seeds in a slow oven, 300 degrees, for about 1/2 an hour or more, then grind them, with some water and a little salt in either a blendor or a processor or with a primitive Mexican grinding pestle. The recipe closest to the sauce I had at Ole, with the tomatillos and tomatoes, was one that said you could make this Pipian (pumpkin seed puree) first,and then make a Salsa cocida from:

6 tomatoes

2 T oil

one white onion

two garlic cloves

some chiles,

and a herb called epazote

and some cumin.

To do this let the onions and garlic saute until golden brown, then add 6 tomatoes, cubed, and cook it for a little while. Remove the garlic cloves. Then add the ground up pumpkin seed sauce and use this as a base. The recipe they used it on was for a dish of tortillas and hard cooked eggs, that seems a bit strange to me, I’d suggest just adding some veggies to the tomato sauce and eating it on rice. I don’t like hot food so if I do this I will cut out the chiles (heresy, I’m sure).