Cooking Pumpkin

Yesterday was a very exciting day for me, becase it involved trying something totally and completely new. I finally got the time to cook up the sugar pumpkin I got from La Familia Ranch (which I posted a review of a week or so ago) after it had been sitting on my desk just staring at me, begging me to slice into it and unravel the wonderful possibilities of fresh, non-canned pumpkin.

Cooking it was easy enough, cut the top off, scoop out as much of the seeds and stringy guts as possible (save the seeds! For the love of God, save the seeds!) and then cut the entire thing in half. My pumpkin didn't look like much, and I wish I had remembered t document this entire process with pictures, but I was with a friend and I don't think he woul have understood excessive picture-taking, I was already being weird enough yanking out all the guts with my bare hands. Anyways, after you get the pumpkin cleaned out, simply place both halves cut-side down in a large baking tray. The pumpkin will leak some juice, so I'd advise against a cookie sheet to prevent overflow. Stick that in a 375 degree oven for about an hour until tender.

When the pumpkin came out, the shell was a nice, dark orange and a little crispy, but the interior was exactly like a cooked acorn squash, somewhat stringy with some very soft parts. We stuck the baking tray in the freezer to cool it cook, but in the meantime we got to work on the seeds. Rinse them in cold water and remove any of the pumpkin that stuck to them. Coat them lightly (or heavily) in vegetable oil and spread out on a cookie sheet. From here you can do whatever you want, we choose to sprinkle with sea salt and pepper, but I have a feeling cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, or even cayenne pepper would be a nice addition. Make sure you get a nice even lyer and put them into an oven at 325 for 25 to 30 minutes. They should have a litle bit more color but not a whole lot.

Even with just salt, these things were amazing, crispy and crunchy and easy to grab a handful and pop into your mouth like popcorn. I'd only had the store-bought pumpkin seeds and I remember the shell being exceptionally hard to chew, so much so that I tended just to snap the shells and eat the seeds like sunflowers, but these bad boys were so easy to eat it was amazing. I wish they had canned seeds that I could roast myself, because I don't think I'd ever get tired of the possible flavor combinations and how easy these were to make.

After the seeds came out, we pulled out the pumpkin halves and scooped out the rind and piled it into a bowl. Now....what to do with it... We ended up making pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Be warned, these do taste like pumpkin, but not the kind we're used to from the can. It's a lot more subtle and a lot more vegetable-tasting, but in my opinion just as good. We probably got about 2-3 cups of pumpkin, and since our recipe only called for 1 cup of the canned stuff, I had plenty left over. I was a bit concerned that the consistency of our pumpkin would be different from the canned stuff and throw off the recipe, but we did a drect substitution and it worked out marvelously.

All-in-all, I couldn't be more pleased with this experiment in pumpkin cookery, it takes a little while but is completely worth it, especially if you have a friend to help. Plus, with the pumpkin shortage and my inability to find canned pumpkin (I did! But that's another story), this is probably your best bet to compensate for the canned stuff.