Pumpkin.
Pumpkin.
The vibrant orange squash that is for more than just carving.
Welcome to ingredient (especially to those of you who have found your way here after Substack were kind enough to recommend ingredient on their front page!), where once a month I take a deep dive into some of my favourite seasonal and store cupboard ingredients. This month I’m focusing on pumpkin. You know, the big, classic orange variety that you’re more likely to carve than cook, but which, it turns out, is also bloody delicious.
For paid subscribers click here for my recipes for Pumpkin Gnocchi in Nutmeg, Garlic & Sage Butter, Pumpkin Pasties, and my Pumpkin & Golden Beetroot Curry.
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*Yes I’m aware that this picture features mostly squash rather than pumpkin, but they’re mostly orange and it is all I could find on my phone this morning when I realised I’d failed to snap something to accompany this post!
I’m going to whisper this very quietly, but I’ve never really been that into cooking pumpkin, preferring to focus on other autumnal squash varieties. I’ll say it even quieter: while I’ve made some delicious pumpkin dishes in the past - last year aside from versions of my Creamy Squash Pasta with Crispy Bacon & Sage, and the Butternut Squash Risotto from One Pan Pescatarian (pg 60) made with the leftovers, the best thing I did with a pumpkin was carve it with a power drill to an Addams Family backing track that got stuck in the heads of everyone I knew. Sometimes I can be a bit basic. While in most cases I like to go for the rare and fancy, come October I’m as basic as a butternut squash.
Perhaps it was because I’d not found the right culinary pumpkin, or perhaps it was because butternut is more widely available, but I’d always found pumpkin easy to dry out when roasted, and just, you know, less exciting. But, as I’d already predicted, in really putting myself to work cooking a tonne of pumpkin for this newsletter, I was seriously missing out.
First, before we discuss the history of human interaction with these wonderfully bulbous orange squash, we ought to get the difference between a pumpkin and a squash straight.
The simple answer is that there isn’t one, not really: all pumpkins are squash, but not all squash are pumpkins. Pumpkins are all edible squash, rather than being gourds which are inedible and decorative. Pumpkin do tend however to have tougher, spikier stems than squash, as I can attest as someone who has grown both pumpkins for carving and butternut for souping. I feel that now is also the time to remind you that not all pumpkins are the classic orange (usually sugar pumpkin variety) that exists on our emoji keyboards, but that is the pumpkin I’m talking about today because unless you’re into seasonal home decor, our first instinct is to eat all those other varieties of pumpkin, rather than carve them. Still with me?
Right. Now we’ve got that over with, how on earth have we got into the habit of carving and displaying, rather than chopping and eating this particular food stuff?
Regardless of if you call it Halloween, All Hallows Eve, Samhain, or similar, October 31st has always been associated with all thinks ghoulie and ghostly. And at this most wonderful time of year (because obviously for someone who consumes as much gothic literature as you’ll find on my shelves the most wonderful time of year is Halloween, not Christmas) one used to carve a turnip, which, sadly (I can’t stand the things) are plentiful at this time of year and can prove a hardy crop. Said turnips, once carved, had all the hallmarks we’d recognise from a modern day pumpkin: scary features and a candle-lit centre, designed to ward off evil spirits in 19th century Ireland. Irish immigrants brought the tradition to America where pumpkins have always been an important part of the native diet, and as anyone who has ever tried to even chop a turnip will tell you, they’re also much easier to carve. Switching to pumpkin was a no brainer really. Then, eventually, the tradition of carving a pumpkin was bought back to our little cluster of islands again, hence why I grew up growing and carving a pumpkin, not a turnip, every Halloween in the depths of the Kentish countryside.
Today, the obsession with packing pumpkin and ‘pumpkin spice’ into just about anything edible come October is - unlike the pumpkin carving tradition we’ve just discussed - uniquely American, and every time you see something pumpkin ‘spice’ here in Britain it is inevitably inspired by our friends across the pond. This brings me onto the final topic I wish to touch on before we move onto this months recipes: is pumpkin better enjoyed in something sweet, or something savoury?
For most sweet applications you’ll need a can of pumpkin puree, an American tinned good deemed essential to Thanksgiving’s ubiquitous pumpkin pie (something that I honestly can’t understand the appeal of, but I think it is a mixture of my non-American tastebuds and psychology, because I enjoy Kentish Gypsy Tart1 which is similar in sweetness and texture) and which I only discovered existed stacked up in a mountain in the middle of the grocery store my first and only Thanksgiving living in the States.
I don’t object to canned pumpkin puree, but pumpkins usually yield so much flesh which I struggle to use up (especially as J is not the biggest fan of eating it) that I often end up making my own2, freezing it in silicone ice cube trays and then filling up bags of it, which inevitably cause me to turn to American recipes - that almost always rely on canned pumpkin puree rather than diced fresh pumpkin - to use it all up. This is how my recipe for Pumpkin Gnocchi in Nutmeg, Garlic & Sage Butter came to be. Feather light potato gnocchi, coloured and flavoured with pumpkin puree before being browned and tossed in butter flavoured with the herb (sage) and spice (nutmeg) that I always associate with / start putting in everything come autumn.
Now you may be wondering why in this meandering ode to pumpkins I’ve stuck a picture of Hogwarts at Halloween here, with Hagrid’s enormous carved pumpkins from the pumpkin patch levitating above the four house tables. Is it just me, British readers, or was the only time we came in contact with pumpkin being eaten in British film or literature growing up in Harry Potter? Before the Golden Trio became old enough to sip Butterbeer in the Three Broomsticks they drank pumpkin juice like it was going out of fashion, and who can forget the pumpkin pasties served up by the trolly witch on the Hogwarts Express?
I’ve always assumed that pumpkin juice is sweet, as a sort of wizarding version of orange juice on the breakfast table, but when I went down a Harry Potter-related rabbit hole researching this months recipe for Pumpkin Pasties, it turns out that if a pumpkin pasty in Harry Potter is to be perceived as sweet or savoury is a bit of a cultural thing.
I know it is unusual to get upset about such things, but I was genuinely stressed by the idea that the pumpkin pasties served fresh from the oven in Honeydukes (a wizarding sweetshop, for the uninitiated) at Universal Studios are sweet (though I don’t trust any of the food served at the Harry Potter experiences after tasting how terrible Butterbeer tastes on the London studio tour!): Harry Potter is British, Cornwall is even a location in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and Cornish pasties are, well, savoury. So obviously a pumpkin pasty ought to be savoury, right? Don’t worry if you’re not able to quote, verbatim whole scenes from the Harry Potter books like I can: my (savoury) Pumpkin Pasty recipe this month features slightly spiced, roasted pumpkin and slow cooked onions stuffed into a crisp, traditional butter and lard pastry for a portable treat that tastes delicious hot or cold that anyone will enjoy.
Once I’d dragged myself back out of the Harry Potter rabbit (or should it be Niffler?) hole and the more I read about the way pumpkins are cooked and consumed around the world, I realised that perhaps seeing a pumpkin as something savoury is perhaps a very British idea (they first arrived during the Tudor era and were commonly used as a pie filling), or perhaps even just one inside my own head?
The Spanish use it both to make stews and sweet fritters, and while the Italians who also love a good pumpkin tend to keep things savoury, the Japanese also love to utilise it for both. So do the Indians, cooks in Thailand, Mexico, Afghanistan… you get the picture.
I think this autumn I’m going to have to make an effort to seek some more sweet applications for that mountain of pumpkin already resident in my vegetable drawer, though I’m not promising to enjoy them any more than the savoury ones I settle on.
So, this months recipes. We’ve already touched on my Pumpkin Gnocchi in Nutmeg, Garlic & Sage Butter, as well as my wonderfully savoury, Cornish-style Pumpkin Pasties, but also for subscribers this month I’ve created a Pumpkin & Golden Beetroot Curry. Yes I know I probably should have tried for something sweet, but I think this recipe really shows off the wonderful sweet potential of pumpkin flesh in spite of the savoury context - paired with sweet but earthy beets - in a cosy bowlful which is as delicious served over nutty brown rice as it is with a chunky loaf of crusty bread for wiping the bowl.
Gypsy Tart is a regional dessert from where I grew up and now live here in Kent on the South Eastern tip of England. It is made from a light mousse of condensed milk, brown sugar and eggs being poured into a pastry case, and thankfully it does not keep well or I’d eat a whole one in one sitting. This edition of Vittles focusing on Britain’s regional bakeries and their bakes has a lovely bit on Gypsy Tart, but I must stress that the thick pastry, single serve versions he writes about are inauthentic hybrids made for the mass market: a true Gypsy Tart must have a thin, crisp pastry, usually made in big school dinner trays ready to be cut in squares - it was always bad luck if you got a corner piece! If you’re visiting the best, most authentic slice I’ve had recently can sometimes be found on the dessert menu at Rocksalt in Folkestone Harbour.