I should have run this 1 1/2 weeks ago, but I was busy trying to start my nano novel.
Every Nov. 1st, Americans throw out a whole bunch of squash. Now granted, some of these are rotted and need to be thrown out, especially if they were carved two weeks before Halloween and sat on a sunny front porch. But a pumpkin is a squash, and should not meet a garbage can demise just because Halloween is over.
When my girls were young, we always bought them each a pumpkin for Halloween. I looked for the thick, ribbed kind, yellow-orange in color, rather than the redder, smooth skinned ones. The large red ones tend to be spongy and have too much water to make good food. The ribbed kind are better for eating.
They were allowed to draw on them with china markers, and the drawn-on pumpkins sat on the porch. Now, our house was in the woods, but even so, central and eastern N. Carolina is too warm to leave a cut squash sitting out for two weeks. They rot. So we never cut the pumpkins until the day before Halloween. That may have made it more special, but the real purpose was to preserve the fruit and our noses.
The day after Halloween, I processed the pumpkins into food.
Cut the pumpkins into large chunks, and put them pulp side down on a sheet pan. Throw out any parts that are burned or have candle wax on them. Bake the pumpkin until soft, probably about 1/2 hour at 350˚. It should scoop easily out of the skin. The skin is waste. I always composted my vegetable waste, but some people don't have a place to compost. Just do the best you can.
The pulp is the part you can eat. If you want to use it as a side vegetable, dice it, and toss with a little salt and garlic butter. It's delicious. If you want to use it like canned pumpkin, the easiest way to get it smooth is to put it in a food processor. From there, you can freeze it for later use. You can also just chop it up and do the same thing, but it won't be quite as smooth.
If you do freeze it, I recommend doing it in the amounts you will need for your recipes. You can't measure 1 cup off a large hunk of frozen pumpkin. It will separate when it thaws, but you can mix it back together.
What brings this up is that I made a pumpkin-mushroom soup tonight. It can be done with any winter squash. This is a takeoff on a soup in Moosewood Cookbook.
Prep:
1/2 cup diced onion
6 oz. sliced mushrooms
1/4 of a decent sized green bell pepper, diced
3-4 cups vegetable stock (boil the onion skin and other vegetable scraps, like carrot peels and celery tops in water, and you get stock. Drain to use)
In your soup pot, saute the onions in 2 T butter, Add 1 clove crushed garlic, 1/2 t ground cumin. 1/2 t coriander. 1/2 t cinnamon, 3/4 t ground ginger, 1/4 t dry mustard (or a squirt of mustard, if that's all you have), 1 1/4 t salt and a pinch of cayenne.
When the onions are close to clear, add the mushrooms and peppers. Cover, and cook for a few minutes, until the mushrooms begin to soften.
Uncover, and add the stock, along with 1 cup of orange juice. Stir in 1 1/2 cups of pumpkin or squash pulp. If using canned pumpkin, use a whole can. Add a squirt of lemon juice, and simmer, uncovered, at least until everything is mixed well and heated through. I think I cooked mine slowly for about a half hour, but don't cook so much water off that you have sludge instead of soup.
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