Good food is our natural medicine. We continue our culinary adventures with fresh pumpkins and other winter squashes. Enjoy them now. The season for pumpkins will last only until the New Year’s Day.

Pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie are all part of the American tradition, as are faces carved from the pumpkin shell at Halloween and turned into an exotic light. As a child, I used to carve not pumpkins, but watermelons, and put inside of them big, white candles to celebrate a beautiful summer with its blue sky, warm sun, colorful  flowers, and moonless nights sending a gentle light to the earth from the shimmering stars.

Here are my family’s  recipes. Probably these meals  are new to your palate, but be open minded and try to make some of them. These dishes with an European flair will definitely enrich  your healthy and  natural diet.

My Salads 010Pumpkin Pure Delight

Ingredients:

  • One-two slices pumpkin 
  • 2 cups spring water, and more as needed
  • 2 tbps organic brown sugar
  •  1 tbsp unsallted butter   &   A pinch sea salt

Method:

  1. Slice and peel pumpkin into slices (the same way as watermelons). Remove seeds.
  2. Cut pumpkin flesh into small cubes and wash them.
  3. Place pumpkin cubes into a pot.
  4. Boil pumpkin in  little water for about 20 minutes until tender.
  5. Add a pinch of salt, brown sugar and butter. Mix all together.

Serves 3-4 people. Eat immediately while it’s still warm.

Pumpkin Oatmeal

Ingredients:

  • The same ingredients as in previous recipe.
  •  Add 2 tablespoons Irish Steel Cut Oatmeal which can be cooked in 5 minutes. 

Method  is the same, but with a small addition: 

  1. Let pumpkin cubes boil in a little water (2 cups) for 15 minutes.
  2. Add water if needed.
  3. Then pur oatmeal in a pot with pumpkin for the the last 5 minutes.
  4. Total cooking time: 20 minutes.  

Serves 4.

Pumpkin Rice  is made the same way with the same ingredients.

  • Just add 1/2 cup organic brown rice and cook with pumpkin for 20 minutes.

These three meals/porridges are warm, comforting and healthy breakfast meals for adults and children. From the ancient times porridge was a traditional food in Europe. Europeans eat them constantly as a breakfast dish made only with grains and add salt, sugar, honey, berries, milk  or cream. These meals can be also eaten at lunch or dinner, but not only as traditional breakfast.

A combination of pumkins and other vegetables with grains are the easiest ways to digest highly nutritious foods. This fact explains why these meals are used traditionally for centuries in many cultures as a healing food to nurse the sick and weak back to health.  

Pumpkin Garnish

Ingredients:

  • 1-2 slices fresh pumpkin
  • 3 cups water

Method:

  1. Remove seeds.
  2. Cut pumpkin flesh on small cubes.
  3. Put cubes in a pot with boiling water.
  4. Boil for 15 minutes.
  5. Sieve pumpkin cubes and let them cool.
  6. Put them on a plate.
  7. Sprinkle with fresh lemon juice.
  8. Spread fresh Italian parsley on a top.

This is a colorful and tasteful side dish or garnish that can be added to the grilled chicken, veal or fish. 

 Hard Goat Cheese Pumpkin

Ingredients:

  • 3 lbs fresh pumpkin, peeled, seeded and sliced
  • 2-3 oz or 1/2 cup freshly grated hard goat’s cheese
  • 1 onion, chopped finely
  • 2 garlic cloves, chopped finely
  • 2 tbsp organic virgin olive oil
  • 2 cans/14 fl.oz organic diced tomatoes
  • 2 tbsp fresh Italian parsley, chopped
  • 2 tbsp fresh dill, chopped
  • 1 tsp organic brown sugar
  • 2 organic egs, beaten lightly
  • Sea salt and sweet paprika
  • 1/2 cup dried whole wheat bread crumbs
  • 2 tbsp unsalted or clarified butter

Method:

  1. Heat the olive oil in a large, stainless steel pan.
  2. Add onion and garlic.
  3. Sautee onion and garlic over low heat for 5 minutes or until softened and turned into golden color.
  4. Stir in the diced tomatoes, parsley, sugar.
  5. Season with sea salt and sweet paprika.
  6. Let it simmer for 15 minutes, until thickened. Your sauce is ready.
  7. Put the beaten eggs in a glass bowl.
  8. Spread the whole wheat bread crumbs on the big, flat plate.
  9. Dip the slices of pumpkin in the eggs, the in the bread crumbs to coat.
  10. Grease an All-Clad stainless steel (3-ply construction) 9″  round baker.
  11. Melt the butter in a large, heavy bottom pan. Add the pumpkin slices and cook until turned golden brown.
  12. Transfer the cooked pumpkin slices to the round baker.
  13. Pour onion-tomato-garlic sauce over the pumpkin slices.
  14. Sprinkle with the grated goat’s cheese.
  15. Bake in a preheated oven, 350 degrees F/180 degrees C, for 25-30 minutes, until the cheese is bubbling and got golden.

Serves 6. Eat immdiately.

Pumpkin Plachintas (Pastries), sort of turnovers

Ingredients:

  • Two big slices fresh pumpkin
  • 1/2 cup organic brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 
  • 4 sheets frozen puff pastry dough

Method:

  1. Cut pumpkin on slices, peel the skin and remove the seeds.
  2. Grate pumpkin flesh  in a  big glass bowl.
  3. Add brown sugar, walnuts, and cinnamon. Mix all ingredients.
  4. Pheheat an oven to 375 degrees F (about 200 degrees C). Sprinkle organic virgin olive oil on the baking sheet or line it with parchment paper.
  5. Unfold the puff pastry on a wooden surface lightly floured with organic whole wheat flour and rool out to a 20 x 20 inch square.
  6.  Cut each sheet into 4 squares.
  7. Spread pumpkin mix with a table spoon into the center of each square.
  8. Roll all sides of the pastry toward the center. Pinch them together in the center.
  9. Place plachintas in the  baking sheet.
  10. Bake in the preheated oven for 10-15 minutes or until pastry is puffed and turned into golden brown.
  11. Take the baking sheet out the oven and cool the pastries for 15-20 minutes.
  12. Place each pastry on a beautiful glass plate and sprinkle fine, powdered sugar on a top.

Pumpkin Rainbow Muffins

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups fresh pumpkin, cooked
  • 3 cups organic Whole Wheat flour
  • 4 organic eggs beaten
  • 1 and a half organic brown sugar
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 cup organic goat’s milk
  • 1/2 cup kefir or buttermilk
  • 1/2 cup mineral water
  • 1 ripe organic banana, mashed
  • 1 soft organic kiwi, mashed
  • 1 cup raisins
  • 1 tbsp dried apricots, chopped
  • 2 tbsp blackstrap molasses
  • 1/2 tsp sea salt

Method:

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (ab. 175 degrees C).
  2. Blend the flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together in a large, glass bowl.
  3. In another glass bowl, whick together the eggs, milk, kefir or buttermilk, mineral water, pumpkin, mashed banana, kiwi, chopped apricots and raisins.
  4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir  gently.
  5. Spoon the mixture into parchment-lined muffin forms.
  6. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until you check with a wooden toothpick inserted into the center of one muffin, comes out clean.

Makes 16 muffins. For very busy people who don’t have too much time to bake  very often these delicious goods, there is a solution. Use as many freshly baked muffins you need. If you have some left, freeze them. These muffins reheat beautifully and don’t loose any nutritious properties and taste because you baked them yourself with  the best ingredients and love.

References: Photo “Pumpkin Delight” and text by Svetlana Konnikova. Copyright 2009.