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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).
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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. |
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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: |
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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 espato (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). |
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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 spred 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 farenheight 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 wierd 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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