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I read Annie Kate's wonderful tips for microwaving pumpkins, but was concerned about the warning she posted about them potentially killing the microwave (by overheating it), so I poked around a little to find a safer alternative for mine. (I already replaced my microwave and my refrigerator this year plus have had repair bills on my dryer and my oven, so I'm NOT about to take any more chances, LOL!) If you have a larger pumpkin, this will be a safe alternative that won't overheat the m-wave.
I figured that it would be safer (and yes, take longer) and healthier to just steam-cook it in the oven. A Google search brought me to "SeasonalChef.com" where I found this wonderful tidbit taken from a book titled, "The Perfect Pumpkin," by Gail Damerow:
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"The standard method of producing a puree is to boil chunks of pumpkin, peeled either before or after boiling. But that method results in some loss of flavor and nutrients. So Damerow proposes a better way, taking a cue from Native Americans, who cultivated pumpkins for 8,000 or 9,000 years before Columbus reached the New World. They would bury pumpkins whole in the hot ashes of a fire. You could do it that way yourself, or more conveniently, use an oven.
'Baking a whole pumpkin will give you drier meat, which saves you time simmering off liquid if your ultimate goal is to make a pie,' she explains.
To bake a pumpkin, stab it in at least six places to release steam. Place it in a pan with some water in the bottom and bake at 350 degrees until the pumpkin is soft enough that you can depress the shell with a poke of the finger. Then let it cool, remove the seeds and scrape out the soft flesh.
Damerow recommends making more puree than a recipe calls for so that you can enjoy some of it on the spot, straight and hot, with melted butter and perhaps a sprinkling of cinnamon."
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I know to cook an acorn squash at 350 degrees would take an hour, so for a pumpkin, I imagine it wouldn't be much less, if not more.
Author Damerow's book also has recipes in it, three of which are given on the "Seasonal Chef" website. One is for Pickles, another is for Canned Pumpkin Bread...soooo cool, you bake the recipe in greased glass canning jars, then take a jar out of the oven, wipe down the rim, and quickly put on a lid and tighten the rim around it...it'll suck in and seal the lid, and then you store it with your other canned stuff! How cool is that???
And this one looked so different, I want to try it sooner as opposed to later:
This recipe is from the Stonycreek Farm in Noblesville, Indiana, home of a month-long Pumpkin Harvest Festival each October.
3 cups raw pumpkin, sliced
1/3 cup butter
2 eggs, beaten
¼ cup milk
1 tsp salt
dash cayenne
¼ tsp dry mustard
½ cup shredded Swiss cheese
Parmesan cheese
1. Saute the pumpkin in the butter until tender. Remove to a serving dish.
2. In remaining liquid in pan, combine the eggs, milk, spices, and Swiss cheese. Heat until the cheese melts.
3. Pour the cheese mix over pumpkin. Top with Parmesan.
Again, the website where I got all of this is "SeasonalChef.com" if you want to get the other two recipes! Yummy pumpkin!
God Bless
Lori
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