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Don’t Throw Away Your Pumpkin!
Julia Gasper 29 October 2008
 Every
year at Halloween we buy thousands of pumpkins, to use them as lanterns in the
American style. Then, sadly, many people throw them away. They don’t seem to
understand that pumpkins are actually edible. Cinderella set a bad example by
using one for a coach. The real reason people grow pumpkins is that you can eat
them. Why not try?
A Google search says that there are 2,860,000 recipes for pumpkin on the
internet alone. OK, so 2,000,000 of them are variations on pumpkin pie. That
still leaves 860,000 ways to eat your Halloween pumpkin. Imagine that all those
noughts are round, amber-coloured pumpkins, and beautiful gigantic vegetables
like globes of sunshine captured to brighten up our autumn. Beginning to feel
hungry?
You’ve only got to go to the Sainsbury’s webpage to find 26 recipes, the hazard
being that they are written in USA language (I won’t call it English). At the
top of the list of ingredients for Spooky Pumpkin Pasta, it says “For Tip”. Tip?
Don’t go and fling all the ingredients on your compost heap! What it really
seems to mean is that these ingredients are used to make a sauce, which you then
put (“tip”) on top of some tagliatelle, or ribbon pasta. By the time you’ve
figured that out, you’ve already thrown away your pumpkin, and the battle is
lost. What’s more, a lot of the recipes include fancy ingredients you are not
likely to have to hand, such as shallots, Thai fish sauce or lemon grass. What
people really need to know is that pumpkin and its cousin the squash are
delicious just chopped into chunks and roasted with a little oil or butter, like
potatoes. Put that alongside a roast chicken, or serve it as a course in itself.
No sweat, no Fret
I have looked around for some no-sweat, no-fret ways to cook and eat that
pumpkin. Here are some of the best. We will start with soup, which is always
welcome when the weather has turned cold:-
GOLDEN AUTUMN SOUP.
A slice of pumpkin, approx. 1 pound in weight (450g)
1 large onion
1 mug of dried yellow split peas
1 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
A little sunflower oil – about 2 tablespoons
A bay leaf, preferably fresh
A sprig of parsley
1 flat teaspoon of dried dill, or fresh if you have it
Soak the spilt peas until well expanded, preferably overnight.
Slice the onion finely. Heat the oil in a large, heavy pan. When making large
quantities, you may like to use that cauldron your great-grandmother got out at
Halloween (and stir it with a broomstick). If in a hurry, you may like to use a
pressure-cooker. Sauté the onions, turning frequently, and don’t let them brown.
Cut the pumpkin into 1-inch chunks. There is no need to remove the peel. When
the onion is soft and golden, add all the other ingredients to the pan and pour
in enough water to cover them all generously. Cook gently with a lid on until
everything is mushy and soup-like. Add salt and pepper only after the spit-peas
have softened.
Exact timing for this soup is difficult. If you cook it in a pressure-cooker,
which is a laudable way of saving energy, it may take only 20 minutes. If you
simmer it on your hob or Aga, it may take an hour or more. Split-peas that have
been stored for a long time will need longer soaking and cooking.
What you should enjoy is the mild, comforting flavour and the glorious saffron
colour of this soup, which I invented. It looks as if you have used saffron or
turmeric, when you haven’t!
CORSICAN PUMPKIN SOUP
I got this recipe from a book by Rolla Lucarotti, who says it comes from Vico,
high in the Corsican Mountains.
It is very simple. Take one kilo of pumpkin, cut it into chunks and simmer it in
water with a pinch of salt until nice and soft. Put the flesh through a food
blender (they used a sieve in the original), return the mush to a large saucepan
and add one litre of milk (1 ¾ pints). Bring this back to the boil and put in a
good handful – about 100 grams or 3oz – of small pasta shapes. Let them cook in
the soup until tender, season to your taste and then the soup is ready to serve.
PUMPKIN AND RAISIN GALETTES
This is another Corsican recipe from the same book. It will give you all the
taste of pumpkin pie with half the trouble.
1 kilo of pumpkin flesh, without the peel
A couple of tablespoons of plain flour
4 eggs
100g (3oz) of sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
A handful of raisins
A tablespoon of oil or butter
2 tablespoons of brandy, or calvados or any other liqueur to your taste
(optional)
If you are going to use the booze, soak the raisins in it before you begin.
Grate the flesh of the pumpkin using a coarse grater. You may be able to do this
using a clever food-processor. The result should look like a pile of
wood-shavings. Add the flour and mix it together to bind the pumpkin. Break the
eggs into a small bowl, add the baking powder and sugar, and beat this together
thoroughly before combining it with the raisins and grated pumpkin.
Heat a pancake pan, i.e. a nice flat shallow frying-pan, and grease it with a
minimum of oil. Add the mixture in tablespoons, enough to form into small
pancakes, and cook in batches of two or three, turning them half-way through.
Remove with a spatula and drain well on a newspaper before serving, very hot and
fresh.
Now, aren’t you glad you didn’t throw that pumpkin away?
CURRANT
AFFAIRS
By Julia
Gasper 10 August 2008
For recipe
suggestion
 Everybody
with a garden should have a currant bush in it somewhere. Currants, which are at
the peak of their season now, in early August, are ridiculously easy to grow,
packed with flavour and vitamin C, and have no thorns or bad habits. All they
need is a little space and a reasonable amount of sun. They don’t need a
trellis, they don’t need to be pruned carefully, you don’t have to water them
once they are established, and they don’t get too big.
I don’t put any nets on my currant
bushes to protect them from the birds. I think birds have a tough time perching
in currant bushes to peck at the dangling berries (or maybe they are too busy
ruining my apples and strawberries), so you get delicious currants every year
without any trouble at all. They are easy to pick and any child can do it
without a ladder. No need for seeding, stoning or peeling! You don’t even have
to cook currants – unlike rhubarb, which has little to recommend it. The currant
is altogether the world’s most obliging fruit. So why has everybody forgotten
about them?
Until the last war, currants were a
common English fruit, grown in great quantities and used in puddings, jams and
home-made wines. Now you can’t even buy them in shops. I have seen little
punnets of imported currants in the covered market, for three or pounds each, as
if they were an exotic delicacy. Supermarkets only sell them as dried currants
or as a sickly-sweet cordial for children.
I think it is time to re-discover
the currant. There are three types, the black, the red and the white. The
French, who eat them with cream cheese, have always favoured the white currant,
but I like the rich colour of the red and the black. The latter is really purple
when you burst it open, and it can grow almost as big as a small grape. Fresh
red or blackcurrants served with sugar and cream are in my opinion more
scrumptious than strawberries. They are ideal for making ice-cream, cheesecake
or summer pudding.
If you want some more adventurous
ideas, what about making a preserve with currants and serving it instead of
cranberry jelly at your next Christmas dinner? The only reason we serve
cranberries with turkey is that the turkey came from America, where wild
cranberries were one of the few fruits that the early settlers could find.
Currants are just as tasty, have a similar texture and would make a pleasant
change.
Or you could try duck with currant
sauce. There are classic recipes combining duck with bitter oranges or morello
cherries, both of them sharp fruits, so why not fresh currants? Take four ounces
of fresh currants, wash them, drain them well and then simmer them gently for
ten minutes in red wine or a mixture of water and port. There should be enough
liquid to just cover them. Stir them and squash them slightly. Then take two
boneless breasts of duck, and sear them in butter in a heavy pan. (I use one of
those wonder-cookers so that you don’t need to use any fat at all). Add the
currants, and a few drops of soy sauce, re-cover and cook the meat to your taste
- red, pink or brown inside, any of which are safe with duck. Taste the sauce
and if it is too sharp for you, stir in a teaspoon of honey. Before serving, cut
into diagonal slices with a sharp knife.
If you like summer pudding, you will
also like the French pudding called clafoutis, a sort of cake baked with
fresh cherries or plums inside it. It can be adapted successfully using fresh
currants instead.
You need as ingredients
1½ lb of fresh currants, 4 eggs, 2½
ounces of flour, 2½ ounces of butter, 9 fluid ounces of milk, a pinch of salt, 4
oz of sugar (I am being generous with the sugar as currants are less sweet than
dessert cherries), and a little more for sprinkling.
Preparation
You start by heating the oven to gas
6, or a medium high setting. Then generously butter a wide, shallow baking dish.
Put 2/3 of the remaining butter on a low heat to melt. Arrange the currants
evenly in the dish. Beat the eggs lightly in a large bowl, whisk in a pinch of
salt and most of the sugar. Sift in the flour gradually, still whisking, and
then whisk in the melted butter. Finally, you add the milk, and stir it all
together to make a runny batter. Pour this batter over the currants and dot the
rest of the butter on the top.
Cooking
Bake the pudding for 35-40 minutes
until set, and then sprinkle with a little more sugar before serving. You can
add cream if you like. The clafoutis will be light and springy, more like
a Yorkshire pudding than a cake, and the fruit will be buttery and delectable.
Enjoy!
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