I got a small-ish pumpkin for £1 in Tesco. To give you some sense of the amount you'll need, my little pumpkin weighed 1750g when it was intact, and yielded around 1350g flesh and a lot of seeds! Don't buy a massive pumpkin unless you have a small army to feed!
This is the first time I've bought a pumpkin and NOT carved it, so I drew a little face on it to make up for it!
OK, on to the recipes:
Pumpkin Soup
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| OH NO! |
The Boyfriend thinks I'm obsessed with soup, but that's ok because he's gone on a Uni trip to Holland (alright for some!). That also means I was free to play with the Big Boy Knife!
I've adapted this recipe from The Soup Bible by Debra Mayhew.
To make four large portions of pumpkin soup you will need:
- One onion, chopped
- 675g pumpkin flesh, peeled, cut into chunks
- 450g potatoes, sliced
- 600ml vegatable stock (I actually used a litre then tipped out 400ml at the end)
- 1 teaspoon nutmeg
- 250ml milk (you could leave this out for a vegan recipe)
- black pepper
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| Soup-splattered wall... |
- Fry the onion until soft in a little oil or butter.
- Add the pumpkin and potatoes. Sweat them on a low heat for ten minutes, stirring frequently.
- Stir in the stock, nutmeg and black pepper. Bring to the boil and simmer for around 20 minutes until the vegetables are very soft.
- (Pour out excess stock if you used 1 litre). Tip into a large bowl and blend the ingredients together. Try not to get it on the walls like I did.
- Pour the soup back into the saucepan, mix in the milk then heat gently.
Very tasty and very good for you. :)
Pumpkin Pie
I had never tried pumpkin pie before, but I followed the recipe on the BBC's Good Food website. Although I halved the recipe quantities because I had a small cake tin rather than a tart tin.
I also made my sweet shortcrust pastry from scratch, unlike Antony Worrall Thompson's lazy recipe! (We've never trusted him since he crimped pasties with a fork!). The recipe I used was from Jamie Oliver, which I also halved the quantities of.
My small pie serves six, or four greedy people!
For the pastry you will need:
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| Cut to fit whatever tin you have! |
- 250g plain flour
- 50g icing sugar
- 125g butter/margarine
- one egg
- a splash of milk
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (use in place of the lemon zest listed in the recipe)
For the pie filling (in a cake tin) you will need:
- 375g pumpkin, peeled
- A third to a half of the pastry you made above, depending on tin size
- 70g sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 egg
- 15g butter, melted
- 85ml milk
- 1/2 tablespoon icing sugar
One tip is to use a hand blender on the cooked pumpkin, rather than trying to push the stringy pumpkin flesh through a sieve. Also, wait for the pie to be fully chilled in the refridgerator before eating because it has to set.
Whilst you have the oven on, why not try the next recipe too...
Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
Even if your Halloween carvings haven't yielded enough flesh to make soup or pumpkin pie, you'll always be left with a bunch of stringy pumpkin goop and some pumpkin seeds. Why not roast the pumpkin seeds to bring out their flavour as a snack?
I followed a recipe on the All Recipes website.
Just wash the gunk off your fresh pumpkin seeds, cover with a little oil and sprinkle with salt. You then roast the seeds for around 15 minutes at a low temperature (perhaps on the lowest shelf of the oven whilst you have something else cooking). When the seeds start making a popping noise they are done. You can store them in an air tight container in the fridge.
Give one of these a try for Halloween themed food!
I made all of these things in one morning. I had pumpkin soup followed by pumpkin pie for lunch, pumpkin seeds for a snack and then roast pumpkin for dinner. I can't get enough of it!! :)
1 comment:
Such great ideas.
I hate it when people throw the pumpkin away. What a waste.
Sft x
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