The Great Pumpkin Feast

I have a theory
about pumpkins and Halloween. Back in the old days, when people
subsisted on the land, families lived on what was growing on the farm.
That meant October was filled with a steady diet of pumpkin and other
winter squash. If a hard-working farmer was forced to eat pumpkin every
night for a month, I can see why he might take great pleasure in
plunging a butcher knife into one and carving it into a spooky
decoration to scare small children for Halloween.

For
this recipe, roasted pumpkin is the star of a feast featuring a spicy
soup and flat bread which includes spinach and ricotta cheese. The soup is smokey with cumin. The heat is in the seeds that are
sprinkled on just before
eating. I wasn’t thrilled with this flat bread when I first tasted it.
But, other than spaghetti squash, I have never really liked any of the
winter squash varieties.

It
was when I witnessed my niece slurp chunks of pumpkin off her slice –
like a shop vac picking up gravel – that I decided to use it. She and my
Mom loved it. If you like pumpkin, you’ll like this. I call this flat
bread and not pizza because it contains no sauce and pizza crust was
just the easiest option to deliver the toppings. I could have used a
number of different breads to the same effect. (For the newspaper
version of the column I did call it a pizza.)

BEHIND THIS BITE

While
I was making a recipe for spaghetti squash the week before last, I ate
it
4 days in a row. I was really tired of it to say the least. My opening
thought about pumpkins and Halloween and taking pleasure in carving a
pumpkin is what popped into my head. I wrote it down, like I do when any peculiar thought
comes to me, something I started doing while I was a working stand up
comic. When I started to think about what I was going to make for this
week, I decided to incorporate pumpkin. I created this pumpkin feast because of a
quirky paragraph I wrote the week before. Ironically it was inspired by another
member of the winter squash family. Sounds crazy but here we are.

I really had never made anything with pumpkin before.

I
started by roasting it al dente. I knew that I would be applying heat
again to it, so I didn’t want it to be complete mush when I pulled it
from the oven. The
first batch I roasted, I seasoned the pumpkin with different spices. I
realized then that pumpkin itself is an acquired taste and, unlike beer,
I hadn’t really acquired a taste for it. The spices didn’t help. The
second batch I seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper and went from
there.

For
the soup, I was inspired by potato-leek soup. I replaced the potato
with pumpkin. I start with the smokey flavor of bacon and end with the
compliment of cumin. The seeds feature smokey chipotle and contain the
zing for the dish. If I made this again, I would serve it as a shot with
the seeds going on right before it is consumed. I could see this as a
gourmet appetizer for a fall party.

For
the flat bread, I choose to compliment the rich and creamy flavor of
pumpkin with ricotta cheese and spinach – and it worked. As I mention in
the introduction, I just don’t care for the flavor of pumpkin. The soup
features bolder flavors that mask it, the flat bread is all
about pumpkin. I really thought my efforts were a bust until other family
members – who happen to love pumpkin – couldn’t get enough of it. The
recipe wasn’t bad, it was my dislike of pumpkin that soiled it.
I rarely eat pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving and have only ever
enjoyed the seeds. The soup I would make again for myself, but I’ll never crave the flatbread. I would make it for my family but, if I were to make it for myself, I would replace the pumpkin with
artichoke and shower it with some fresh grated … oh wait, that’s for
another post.