Monday, November 8, 2010

November=Pumpkins

Many people consider October to be pumpkin month...I guess I do too-on my front porch.  But come November it's time to hack those puppies up and make some food!
This weekend I took some time to finalize my youngest son-Truman's 1st birthday menu.  I knew I had to add something pumpkin for my lil punkin ;)  Now you're probably thinking I decided to make a soup-I thought so too...until I found a sweet pumpkin smoothie!  I will be serving these in tiny baby food jars as 'shots'. Yeah I'm serving shots at a baby party-so what?!
But along my search for a great pumpkin addition I found this amazing pumpkin meal! I had hoped to make this tonight but at the store I forgot what cheese it required-so I am putting it off for another day.  I love that I am 'allowed' everything on the ingredients list-and anytime something says cheese-well, I'm there! I found this recipe via one of my new fav foodie blogs, Honest Fare, which actually holds 2 of the recipes I will be make for Tru's party.  I'll be sure to reveal his menu after his party so you can see it in all it's goodness!
If you make this-let me know how you love it?!  As always, you're welcome to join me in the 100 Days Real Food Challange I'm partaking in!  It's not really meant for weight loss-but I anticipate it prepping my body to not crave the junk so much when I do finally go for even healthier and better sized portions to aide alongside my workouts.



Recipe

Measurements/cook times are based on a 3lb baking pumpkin.
Cook/prep time: about 1 hour.

You need:

  • Olive oil
  • ½ teaspoon cinnamon
  • ½ teaspoon paprika
  • ¼ teaspoon ground clove
  • ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1 Tablespoon agave maple syrup
  • 1 baking pumpkin
  • Fontina cheese (slices or shredded)
  • 1 clove garlic
  • ¼ cup chopped sage
  • 1 Tablespoon chopped oregano
  • 1 Tablespoon chopped rosemary
  • 2 Tablespoons chopped scallions
  • 1½ cup cubed stale baguette

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350°
  2. Cut an opening at the top of pumpkin at a 45° angle. Scoop out seeds & stringy guts and scrape inside of the pumpkin clean. Do your best to untangle and separate meat from the seeds. Set meat aside for use.
  3. Pumpkin seasoning: Must be pretty potent to flavor pumpkin meat enough. Combine cinnamon, paprika, clove, nutmeg, salt, cayenne pepper, sweetener and 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 1 tablespoon of water. Mix well. Puncture inside of pumpkin in several places with a fork and then slather inside of pumpkin with the seasoning. Put top on pumpkin and place in oven on baking sheet for about 15 minutes.
  4. The filling: Cut up about ½ a stale baguette into roughly ½ inch squares. Dice herbs and garlic. Chop pumpkin meat to untangle. Sauté pumpkin and garlic on medium heat in olive oil heat for a minute. Add bread and herbs. Toss all together and immediately add ¼ cup water to pan. Sprinkle salt and little black pepper to taste. Remove from heat when everything is evenly on bread and seasoned to your liking.
  5. Stuffing it: Remove partially cooked pumpkin from oven. Fill pumpkin with about 4 layers of bread filling separated by cheese. Compact the bread down so everything fits nice and snug.
  6. Place top back on pumpkin and put back in oven (you may have to remove the top rack or trim off a portion of the stem to make room). Bake for about 35-45 minutes or until pumpkin meat is soft (just remove top to test doneness of pumpkin meat). Bake last 5 minutes with top off to brown the cheese!

1 comment:

  1. Well I have to be honest...we did not enjoy this dish. So much so that we didnt' eat more and maybe 5 bites each before packaging it up to take over to my parents-my dad eats foods I refuse ha. So needless to say-we will not be making it again. And I spent 1/5 hours on it! :(

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