Smashing Pumpkins!

Hello fall, Y'all!

For some of us it is just falling leaves, grey and cold wather, but for me it is also pumpkin time! Last week my employer treated the staff with a round of pumpkin spice lattes. Thus the guys from the coffee shop across the street packed their equipment and carried it into our office. Do finish the ambience, they had a local farmer deliver twenty pumpkins to decorate accordingly. 

These pumpkins were edible, and after the coffee fiesta I managed to get hold of one of the pumpkins. Which means I literally had to schlep it home, because it was humongous!  

So after my weekly grocery shopping on Saturday I was determined to fight the monster pumpkin! To cut it was easier than expected - the usual Hokkaido is much more stubborn than his Maltese colleague, I must say. I saved the seeds and cleaned them from all the fibers, rinsed them thoroughly and distributed them on a baking sheet to dry overnight on the terrace. Sunday they had dried nicely, and I gave them a short but sweet bath in saltwater. Back in the oven to get nice and toasty. Usually you do that for about twenty minutes, but in my gas oven, things are different.  After ten minutes only, my pumpkin seeds identified themselves as popcorn. To prevent them jumping around in my oven I stopped the experiment. But much to my surprise they were really good, already. After they cooled down a bit, we finished them off completely. 

A good third of the pumpkin I left uncut - one piece we will have for dinner tomorrow night and the other piece I cut in slim wedges which I roasted in the oven with bacon and feta cheese. We had Maltese bread with home made garlic butter as a side dish, and it was delish! No vampires were seen in the building that night...

The remaining part of the pumpkin I peeled, because in contrast to your usual Hokkaido you cannot eat the skin of the local one. I diced the pumpkin and cooked it for about twenty minutes in my two largest pots. I then drained them and pureed them with an immersion blender. This pumpkin puree (over three and a half kilo!) I bagged in smaller portions and put in the freezer. 

A part of the puree I used yesterday already - first for simple muffins and then for brownies with a creamcheese topping. The latter weren't too convincing, but the muffins were awesome. 

As we were invited yesterday, I did not want to come empty-handed and tried small pumpkin cheesecakes (made them individually in my muffin tin). First of all they got a bottom of shredded ladyfingers with melted butter and a pinch of cinnamon. I topped them with creamcheese and pumpkin puree spiced with the usual suspects aka cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger and allspice. The cream was completed with an egg and a bit of cornstarch to make sure the cream gets firm. After only fifteen minutes they were done and I let them cool in the oven with the door left ajar - normal procedure with all cheesecakes. After that they could rest in the fridge. Btw I used lactosefree creamcheese for the first time, and the little cakes were sensational! No difference to "normal" creamcheese at all.

But I needed something salty as well for yesterday's menu. And because of the time constraint due to our invitation I decided against pumpkin gnocchi, because they take too long with boiling potatoes and all that jazz. Instead Instagram made me do scissors pasta! Basically you prepare a dough with all purpose flour, pumpkin puree and salt and then with a pair of scissors you cut little pieces of that dough directly into a pot of boiling water. It's as simple as that. 

Because the little creatures are done so quickly (you know they are good when they reach the surface - in my case within a few minutes), I did not make an elaborate sauce but just heated some sage and garlic in butter and tossed the pasta into the pan.

Was incredible and definitely worth doing again. Although my cutting technique has room for improvement, I know, I know... :-) 

What else is on my pumpkin-to-do-list? A classic American pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup for sure, a chicken-pumpkin casserole and a pumpkin curry, because curry is an all-time favorite of ours. 

On that note - enjoy fall and all the pumpkins!