More pumpkin

Can't get enough of pumpkin, so in between the party dinners I made another pumpkin risotto. A simpler version of the recipe posted before, only with pumpkin, no onions or carrots. I used a big slice of organic muscat pumpkin and it tasted delicious. Contrary to my habit, this time I prepared it in the proper risotto way, adding small portions of water at a time and stirring a lot.

Sweet roast pumpkin

I had more than half a pumpkin left from making the pumpkin and hazelnut cake. I was inspired by labelga's 19 December post of an oven-baked pumpkin cup and I also remembered a dish my friend K once prepared as part of a Jamaican meal: sweet potatoes baked with rum and butter.

So I invented this dessert:

I greased an oven dish with sunflower oil, added the pumpkin half and a few more pumpkin wedges, added a few broken cinnamon sticks on top and sprinkled a bit of sugar and quite a bit of rum over the pumpkin. I baked this in the oven at 200°C for around 40 min, until the pumpkin was really tender.


It tasted delicious. I was out of butter, but I think that would be a nice addition.
You can eat it just like this. Maybe vanilla ice cream would go well with it.

This is Babette's duck, which really does change colour when it gets hot.

Pumpkin and hazelnut cake

Recently I copied this Spanish recipe from Larousse's 'Les cuisines du monde'. I decided to try it for my yearly get together with my friends from school.

Serves 10-12

400 g pumpkin, peeled and chopped (weight is without peel and seeds)
4 eggs
40 cl sunflower oil
350 g flour
200 g sugar
200 g ground hazelnuts
a little butter
3 tsp cinnamon
pinch of salt

Steam the pumpkin until soft. Let it drain in a sieve overnight.
Crush it with a fork or using a handmixer.
Add eggs and oil and whisk everything.
Mix flour, sugar, ground hazelnuts, cinnamon and salt, and add this to the pumpkin mixture.
Mix well.
Grease an oven dish or cake tin with butter and add the mixture.
Bake for 50'-1hr at 180°C, until a knife comes out dry when you stick it in the cake.

Note: Unless you have a huge party, use half the quantities mentioned.

Unfortunately my cake was in competition with 3 delicious pies from Les tartes de Françoise.


So I took some of it home again and had a piece for breakfast.

Pumpkin and quince stew

Last month I had friends over for dinner and now I'll finally share a delicious recipe with you that I prepared that day. It's a sweet dish with pumpkin and quince that accompanies a couscous, in stead of oignons confits for instance. The recipe comes from Claudia Roden's 'The book of Jewish food' and she calls it 'Hlou aux coings et potiron'. I love quince almost as much as pumpkin, so I really wanted to try this combination.


Serves 4-5

2-3 tbsp sunflower oil
100 g sugar
1 big onion, chopped
250 g pumpkin, peeled and chopped
2 quince, peeled and chopped
juice of 1/2 lemon

Heat oil with sugar until sugar starts to caramelize and get brown.
Add onion and fry for 5 min.
Add pumpkin and quince and lemon juice, add water until everything is just covered.
Let the dish simmer for 45 min.
The mixture should be thick, like a jam.
Serve hot or cold with couscous.

The taste was fantastic and the dish was a great success with my guests.

I prepared the couscous according to Claudia Roden's basic recipe, which I won't copy here.

Pumpkin and chickpea soup

Yes! Today I prepared my first pumpkin of the season. It comes from my friends' garden.
I'm feeling a bit ill so I made a spicy soup to fight my cold.


1-2 tbsp sunflower oil
2 small onions, peeled and chopped
1 small dried chilli pepper (peperoncino), chopped
3 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
1/2 tsp dried coriander seeds, crushed
6 cm ginger, peeled and cut in 3 big pieces
1 small pumpkin
2 potatoes, peeled and chopped
400 g chick peas, cooked and drained (this is the weight of cooked and drained chick peas)
salt


Fry onion and chilli in oil for a few min on low heat, add ginger and coriander seeds and fry for a few more min. Raise the heat a little, add pumpkin, cover the pan and fry for a few more min. Then add potato and chick peas, fry for a few min and add a little water if necessary to avoid burning. Add more boiling water, bring to the boil, add plenty of salt, then lower the heat and let the soup simmer for 30 min. Remove the pieces of ginger and serve, e.g. with fresh coriander leaves.

Notes:
You might add leek.
You can also chop the ginger finely or grate it and leave it in the soup.
The taste of the coriander seeds was a bit weak, so you could probably add a whole teaspoon of them.
On the whole the soup received acclaim, from grumpy old men!

Parsnip and sweet potato soup and other soups

I love soup and I was inspired by this combination of vegetables in labelga's post on March 6.
My basic method for soup is: fry chopped vegetables for a few min in oil or butter, add boiling water, bring to the boil. Then lower the heat and let the soup simmer for about 10 min. Not longer, unless the vegetables are not cooked yet. Then mix it with a hand mixer.
This is the method of my mother's housekeeper. She used butter. I usually use olive oil - or sunflower oil when I use Asian spices - but butter tastes nice once in a while. I remember her endives (witloof) soup, delicious! The trick in this recipe is not to boil the soup for very long, so the vegetables keep their flavour.
When my vegetables are about to go off, I often throw them into a soup.

Sweet potato and parsnip soup



1 small onion
2 medium parsnips, peeled and diced
1 big sweet potato, peeled and diced
some leftover lettuce
1 dried small chilli pepper, chopped finely
1/2 tsp ground cumin
vegetable stock
1 tsp butter

Heat the butter and fry the onion and chilli pepper in it on low to medium heat. After 1-2 min add parsnips and sweet potato and cumin. After a few more min add the lettuce and let this shrink a bit. Then add boiling water, stock and salt. Bring to the boil then lower the heat and let the soup simmer for about 10 min. Mix it with a hand mixer.

I served the soup with sour cream and chopped parsley.

Pumpkin, endives and red pepper soup

This was a combination I once made at a friend's with her leftover vegetables. It turned out really well.
I used these ingredients:

1 small pumpkin, peeled and chopped
2 endives, washed and chopped
1/2 red pepper, chopped
2 onions, peeled and chopped
2 small potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 tsp sugar
2 bay leaves
"herbes de Provence"
olive oil
vegetable stock
pepper & salt

Broccoli and fennel soup

This was another successful combination.

1 onion
1 sprig of broccoli
1 fennel
olive oil
fennel seeds

Meatballs in vegetable sauce

Yesterday I went to see two of my old schoolfriends. My friend suggested to cook together which I thought was a great idea. So we exchanged recipes by email and got our shopping lists organized. And yesterday I took the train to Ghent armed with two cookbooks and a bunch of ingredients.

We made our own version of Claudia Roden's kubba bamia, which are meatballs cooked in a vegetable sauce.



Serves 6-8

500 g minced beef
2 onions
2 tbsp oil (olive oil or other)
2 garlic cloves, chopped or crushed
1 small bunch of celery
1 small bunch of parsley or coriander
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tsp sugar
pepper and salt
1-1,5 kg vegetables such as okra (ladies fingers), courgette & pumpkin

Chop 1 onion finely and add it to the minced beef. Add a little chopped parsley and pepper and salt. Mix this with your hands and make it into small balls.
Fry the other onion in oil until it's golden. Add garlic and fry a little longer. Add the chopped vegetables (including the celery) and fry for a few min. Add enough hot water to let the meatballs boil in it.
Add the meatballs, sugar, lemon juice, chopped parsley or coriander, pepper & salt and let the dish boil. Then lower the heat and let it simmer for about 25 min, until the meatballs are cooked.
We served it with steamed potatoes.

Note: Claudia Roden suggests that you can use other vegetables such as tomatoes and aubergines. Use just one of the vegetables mentioned or just any mixture of them.

For dessert, I made the Danish apple dessert again (see previous post).

At night I went back to Brussels and saw the Michael Franti show, which was just terrific! It was the last concert of the Yell Fire tour in Europe. The band was very animated, the concert was sold out and the whole public was going nuts. After the show, Michael Franti was shaking hands with the fans and even came down in the public. Labelga managed to get hold of his hands twice, wouwww!

Before the concert, labelga brought me one of her juices, made with the recently bought extractor: apple - carrot - mint, yummmmy!

Pumpkin ratatouille

I still had half a pumpkin left, so I made this dish, based on a recipe by Nigella Lawson.


Serves 2-3

1-2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, chopped
2 peppers, one yellow and one red, chopped
2 courgettes, sliced
500 g pumpkin, chopped (weight without seeds or skin)
1 tsp cumin seed
1 tsp ground coriander
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tsp sugar

Fry the onion in olive oil for a few min. Add garlic, cumin seed and coriander and fry for a few more min.
Add peppers and fry on medium heat for a few min.
Add pumpkin, courgettes, sugar, pepper and salt and fry for a few more min.
Cover the pan, lower the heat and let the dish simmer for 30-45 min until the vegetables are soft.
One day later, this dish tastes even better!

After the meal, we went to see the Sara Tavares show in Brussels. It was great!

Chicken in coconut sauce

Yesterday my cousin who lives in Tanzania told me she prepares this dish very often there. It's a recipe by Claudia Roden, also called macalcal or masala chicken. I still had one pumpkin left that my other cousin gave me, so I decided to add this.

Serves 6

4 onions, chopped

4 tbsp sunflower or sesame seed oil

6 garlic cloves

7 cm ginger root, crushed or ground

1 tsp turmeric

6 pieces of chicken (e.g. breasts)

salt

a lot of white pepper

500 g potatoes

500 g pumpkin

1 can coconut milk or 75 g santen (creamed coconut)

1 tsp sugar

100 g cashew nuts or almonds

2 tbsp raisins

Fry the onions on low heat in the oil until they are soft and golden.

Add garlic and fry for a few more minutes.

Add ginger and turmeric and stir this.

Add the pieces of chicken and pepper and salt. Fry this a bit and turn the chicken around.

After 5 min, add the potatoes, pumpkin and coconut milk. Add hot water until everything is just covered.

Let the dish simmer for 30-45 min until everything is cooked.

Add cashew nuts or almonds and raisins and heat for a few min.

Roast pumpkin

Roasting is my favourite way of preparing vegetables. It gives them a great flavour. I do it with potatoes, carrots, fennel, sweet potato etc. and usually just add some olive oil, salt and rosemary or fennel seeds.
For pumpkin I use this delicious recipe by Jamie Oliver. The nice thing about it is that you don't need to peel the pumpkin, which is hard work sometimes. Depending on the type of pumpkin, you can even eat the skin.

Serves 6

1 pumpkin
2 tsp coriander seed
2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp fennel seed
2 small dried chili peppers
1 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 garlic clove
1 tbsp olive oil

Wash the pumpkin, cut it in halves, remove top en bottom and the seeds. Cut it in wedges of 2,5 cm.
Take all dried herbs and spices and ground them with the salt and pepper in a mortar. Add garlic and mash it together.
Put this mixture in a bowl, add the olive oil and mix well. Add the pumpkin wedges and turn them around until they're all covered with the mixture.
Put them in an oven dish and roast them for 30 min. at 200°C.

Carrot and pumpkin risotto

My cousin J. gave me two beautiful pumpkins from her neighbour's garden, hooray!
Today I used one half for this delicious risotto.
The recipe comes from 'Italian vegetarian cooking' by Emanuela Stucchi.


Serves 4

120g butter
1 small onion, chopped
210 g pumpkin, chopped (weight without skin and seeds)
4 carrots, chopped
2,5 l vegetable stock
400 g Arborio rice
90 g grated Parmezan
pinch of nutmeg
salt and pepper

Fry the onion in half of the butter until it's transparent. Add pumpkin and carrots and cook for about 30 min. until they are soft. Mash them with a fork.
Add the rice and cook this for a few min. on high heat, while stirring. Add boiling vegetable stock and lower the heat. Let the risotto simmer for 20-40 min. until the rice is done. Stir regularly.
Switch off the heat, add the remaining butter, Parmezan, nutmeg and pepper and salt. Cover the pan and let it stand for 5 min.

Thai pumpkin and coconut dessert

A long time ago, an Indonesian roommate taught me how to cook this simple dessert, which she called kolak.
I also found a recipe in 'THAILAND The Beautiful Cookbook' by Kevin Weldon.
I used palm sugar (gula djawa) which I found in an oriental supermarket but you can use any type of sugar.

Serves 4

5 dl coconut milk
60g sugar
300g pumpkin, chopped (weight without skin or seeds)

Heat the coconut milk with the sugar. When it boils, add the pumpkin and let it simmer for 15 min. until soft. Serve cold.

This is the version from the book. My roommate boiled the pumpkin in water and added a glass of coconut milk in the end.

Bolo de abóbora delicioso - Delicious pumpkin cake

I found this recipe on a Brazilian blog, Pecado da Gula. It reminded me of the carrot cakes (bolo de cenoura) which I had in Brazil. I made it for brunch with my cousins.


80g unsalted butter at room temperature
1,5 cup sugar (240g)
3 eggs
200g pumpkin (weight without skin and seeds)
0,5 cup grated coconut
1,5 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
0,5 cup coconut milk
pinch of salt

1 cup = 200 ml

Chop the pumpkin, cook it until soft with a little water, and at the end let the remaining water evaporate. Mash it and let it cool.
Mix sugar and butter with a wooden spoon until it has a creamy texture. Add egg yolks one by one and keep stirring. Add the mashed pumpkin and stir again.
Add grated coconut and coconut milk.
Mix the flour with baking powder and salt and then add all of this to the mixture.
Beat the egg whites and incorporate them carefully into the mixture.
Grease a cake tin and add the mixture.
Bake it for around 30 min. at 180° C.

Chestnut and pumpkin pie

Lyn sent me her mother's recipe for pumpkin pie. Inspired by this I made a new pumpkin pie, in which I also added chestnuts.


230 g puff pastry
200 g chestnuts
400 g pumpkin, chopped (weight without skin and seeds)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla seeds
juice of 1 lemon
1 dl cream
1 tsp butter

Peel the chestnuts. I've perfectioned my method for this:
Make an incision in the form of a cross at the top of the chestnuts. Make sure you cut deep enough.
Boil them in water for 5 min. Pour off the water but leave 0,5 cm in the pan. Leave the chestnuts in the pan with the lid on, so that they stay warm and moist. Take them out one by one to peel them.
When they are peeled, put them in a pan of boiling water again and let them simmer for 15-45 min. until they are soft.
In the mean time, boil or steam the pumpkin for 10-15 min. until soft.
Mash pumpkins and chestnuts together and add the other ingredients.
Roll out the puff pastry, put it in a buttered pie dish, cover with baking paper and beans and pre-bake for 10 min. at 220° C.
Remove baking paper and beans, add the filling, lower the heat to 180° C, and bake the pie for 20 min.

Pumpkin pie

Some time ago I made a sweet pumpkin pie. It was before I started my blog, so I don't have a picture. Anyway, everybody liked it! You eat it as a dessert and the taste is unusual but very nice.

Pie dough

Cut 100g butter in small cubes. Put 200g flour in a bowl, mix it with a little salt, make a hole in the flour, add 1 egg, 60g sugar and the butter. Mix with your fingers until you have a nice dough. Let it rest for 1h in the fridge.

Filling

Cut 500g pumpkin in cubes (this is the weight without skin or seeds). Steam or boil this until soft. Mash it and add a little freshly squeezed orange juice and lemon juice. Add 100g sugar, 1 egg and 1dl cream. Add a little vanilla seeds (you can buy them like this or scrape them from the pod) and ground ginger.

Pie

Roll out the dough and put it in a pie dish. Pierce the dough with a fork and cover it with baking paper and some beans. Bake it for 10-20 mins in the oven at 180° C. Remove the baking paper and the beans and add the filling. Bake for another 20 mins.

We ate it straight but you can serve it with sour cream or mascarpone.
I used soy cream instead of real cream and the result was nice.

Lamb with chestnuts and pumpkin

Last weekend I went to my mother's house in the countryside with some friends. We picked chestnuts and walnuts and my mother also gave me apples and a pumpkin and home made quince jelly, all from the garden.
All of this tastes fantastic and I wondered what I could cook with it. So I checked my cooking bible, Claudia Roden's 'The book of Jewish food' and I found a recipe of lamb with chestnuts. I also found a recipe with pumpkin and chestnuts as a side dish for couscous, so I decided to combine things.
Peeling chestnuts is a real pain and it takes ages, but the result is worth it!



Lamb with chestnuts and pumpkin

Serves 3-4

600 g lamb meat
1 onion, chopped
sunflower oil
1 tsp cinnamon
1 chilli, chopped
20 chestnuts
500 g pumpkin, chopped

Cut the meat in cubes of around 3 cm.
Fry onion and chilli in oil on low heat until golden.
Raise the heat, add the meat and add pepper and salt. Fry the meat until brown on all sides.
Add boiling water and cinnamon. Let the mixture boil, then let it simmer for 1,5-2 h until the meat is very soft.
Make a cut in the form of a cross in each chestnut on top and boil them for 5 min. Peel them while they're still hot.
Add chestnuts and pumpkin to the meat and simmer for 10 min. until they are cooked.