pumpkin love part 1

So this is part 1 because out of this one humble pumpkin you can make a delicious pumpkinny, smoky risotto AND a autumn spiced pumpkin pie! yum! Part 1 is the risotto, I'll do the pie part 2 tomorrow hopefully.

Before you do anything you need to cook your pumpkin. I suppose you could buy canned pumpkin but where's the fun in that? This is an easy thing to do and it's satisfying and makes your house smell good so set aside a couple of hours to have a little pumpkin fun.

A medium sized pumpkin makes exactly enough puree for these two recipes, if yours is a big 'un, you could keep the extra puree in the fridge and throw it onto a pasta dish or something later in the week.

To cook your pumpkin couldn't be much easier. Cut it in half and look at the two open halves. Check out all those seeds! Grab a metal spoon and start scooping them out, you don't need to get out every last stringy bit, just the majority.

You've taken out enough when it looks like this:

Do both halfs, then rub a little oil over the insides. Flip them and put them cut side down in a deepish baking tray. Add a cup of water to the tray and bake at about Gas mark 5/200C/380F for at least an hour.

Mine took 1 hour 20, you can tell it's done if you press the skin with a wooden spoon and it gives easily. When you take it out of the oven, after a couple of minutes it'll look like this:

amazing! Put both halves onto a board and grab two wooden spoons (wooden is better than metal because they don't tear the skin as easily).

Grab a mesh sieve and put it over a bowl like this:

There's quite a lot of water in the pumpkin so you want to drain a bit off. As you're scooping the pulp out, dump it in the sieve, then when you've done an entire half, tip the sieved pulp into a bowl. You don't need to press on it or anything, the excess fluid should just dribble out a bit (we don't want bone dry pumpkin).

(the empty skins)

Once you've done both halves, that's it! you made pumpkin puree! good job! You'll notice it's so soft that if there are any lumps, just smushing them gently with the spoon will make them disappear, no need for a blender.

Risotto time!

To make enough to eat for a week (seems like it) you'll need:

1 red onion

1 tbsp olive oil

2 cups risotto rice (arborio)

1 cup of white wine (or a whole one of those mini half sized ones)

4 (FOUR!) cups of vegetable stock

1 heaped cup of your homemade pumpkin puree

1 tbsp of soya margarine

1 1/2 tsp of smoked paprika

1/2 tsp ground ginger

Chop your onion and put it in a pan over a medium heat with the olive oil for a few minutes until it's softened. Add the rice and stir it into all the oil, I know it feels weird to put rice into a dry pan but it's ok, you're supposed to.

Slowly add the wine. I'm talking 1/3 cup at a time. The rice will absorb it pretty quickly so just add, stir, wait, add, stir, wait, stir until it's all absorbed.

Once you've done the wine, start adding the vegetable stock the same way, gradually. By the time you get to the fourth cup of stock you'll think 'no way Naomi, NO WAY, this rice is not going to absorb any more, you're bananas'. Not true, it will.

As you add the fourth cup, chuck in the margarine too and let it melt and get stirred in as you finish up with the stock.

Now add the pumpkin!

Also add here, the paprika, ginger, and salt and pepper to taste. Once you've stirred all the pumpkin in, keep it over the heat for maybe 2 or 3 minutes more. Once it's a smooth mass, not liquidy any more, it's done.

Tomorrow, pumpkin pie for your leftover puree!