When people learn that I cook for living, they often ask if I cook a lot at home. I used to be a bit embarrassed to admit that I really don't cook much when I'm not at work. After 8 hours on my feet in front of a hot stove, the last thing I want to do is spend any more time than 20 minutes throwing together a dinner for myself. I will cook when it's for/with friends but when it comes to feeding myself, I have
very low standards. I'm talking about sandwiches, salads, quick pastas, stir fry or even sometimes just hummus and pita (I'm obsessed with hummus.)
Yesterday, however, I spent 4 1/2 hours in the kitchen experimenting with pumpkin recipes and hardly noticed how much time had passed. I could go as slow as I wanted, make a mess and just enjoy what I love. Jeff had a giant pumpkin leftover from Halloween that we never got around to carving and I've never cooked with real pumpkin before so I couldn't not give it a go. After some pumpkin research, I learned that there is a smaller sugar pumpkin variety that is sweeter and better for cooking than the giant beast I had. I used it anyway and bought a smaller sugar pumpkin for my pie just to see the difference in taste. I decided to make pumpkin soup, pumpkin ravioli and pumpkin pie.
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Raw pumpkin massacred....I should have taken a picture of the whole pumpkin before I chopped it up.
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Soup's on! Sauteing pumpkin, butternut squash, onion, carrots, leeks.
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A few turns in the food processor, a touch of cream and butter and voila---pumpkin soup!
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Roasting pumpkin and butternut squash for my pumpkin ravioli filling. I pureed the vegetables, mixed in some ricotta, mascapone cheese, cinnamon, nutmeg and ground ginger. Forgot to take a picture of the finished product but I used wonton wrappers instead on fresh pasta since I don't have a pasta machine and it tasted fine. I cooked them in boiling water than sauteed in brown butter with sage. It was quite delicious. Thankfully I have tubs of extra filling in the freezer to make more later.
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Pumpkin pie! The filling has pureed roasted sugar pumpkin, cream cheese, sugar, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg and ground ginger. Unfortunately the pie crust is not home made. I don't have
that much time on my hands! It tasted delicious with whip cream! :)
No more pumpkins for me. I'm pumpkined out. Finito.
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