CSA and Cooking Pumpkin

I LOVE pumpkin! My all-time favorite pumpkin recipes are sweets (pumpkin cookies, pumpkin pasties, and pumpkin butter), but for CSA pumpkins, my favorite recipes are pumpkin puree (which is then used or frozen) and pumpkin curry stew.

Pureed Pumpkin

Bake pumpkins, whole, in the oven at 350 until they are soft when you poke them with a fork.I left the little pumpkin below in the oven for an hour, but it probably would have been fine at around the 45 minute mark.

Remove and let cool.

Them remove skin, scoop out the seeds, and chop into cubes.

Puree in blender.

Here I am baking the pumpkin and sweet potatoes at the same time.

You can see the color change in the pumpkin and the holes where my fork easily pierced the skin, indicating that it is done cooking.

Pumpkin Curry Stew adapted from Martha Stewart

3 tbsp canola oil

1 onion finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsp curry poweder

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ground ginger

1 tsp salt

½ tsp black pepper

2 cups halved cherry or golden tomatoes, or 2 chopped large tomatoes

2/3 cup water

1 small pumpkin, chopped

1/2 cup – 1 cup of pumpkin puree, to taste

1 can of red kidney beans or 1 chopped chicken breast

1 sliced carrot

2 chopped potatoes

1-2 spicy peppers, seeded and chopped

Either follow Martha Stewart's directions for cooking, or put ingredients in a crockpot on high and add enough water to cover. If using the crockpot method, give it a stir every so often to prevent burning, and turn the heat down to medium after a couple of hours.