Thai Pumpkin Curry

The end of the year is always a crazy time for me in life and work, and I usually don’t have much time to blog my recipes or other endeavors, but it doesn’t mean I stop doing and cooking things I want to write about, just that I don’t have enough time to document them. More to come as I play catch up for the last few months, but luckily I did jot down one particularly successful recipe I tried last month.

I find that I like pumpkin a lot, just not in pies. As with sweet potatoes, I’m a bigger fan of savory dishes than sweet, so when pumpkin is readily available in the autumn months, I usually stock up on cans of it to keep me into the next year. While this curry recipe is not exactly “from scratch,” it could be if you used homemade curry paste, but I was feeling lazy and happened to have some store-bought paste in my cupboard. I used a combination of chicken and vegetables because I was short of meat, and it turned out quite tasty.

SARAH’S PUMPKIN CURRY

2 tablespoons oil
1 medium onion
2 hot green chilis, diced (optional)
3 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons ground ginger
1 1/2-2 tablespoons Thai red curry paste
1 (15oz) can pumpkin
1 (15oz) can coconut milk
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 1/2 lbs chicken, beef, other meat, and/or vegetables
3 tablespoons sour cream
fresh cilantro, for garnish

Saute the onions, chilis, and garlic until onions are softened. Add the ginger and curry paste (and a little water as needed) and saute another 5-10 minutes. Add the pumpkin, coconut milk and brown sugar. Stir until combined or use an immersion blender to puree, if desired.

Add the meat or vegetables, and stew until they reach desired tenderness. If using both, then make sure the meat is already well-cooked before adding the vegetables. Stir in the sour cream; heat through. Serve with bread or rice and garnish with cilantro leaves.

Pasta with Creamy Pumpkin Sauce

It may seem strange, but recipes for pasta in pumpkin sauce pop up often when I’m searching for recipes online. It was always a concept that appealed to me. I like creamy sauces on my pasta, and I like recipes involving pureed vegetables, and sweet potato and pumpkin are certainly among my favorites.

But I’ve tried these recipes, and they always turn out disappointing. They always ended up so bland, that I gave up on the concept for awhile. I kept booking-marking interesting recipes with pumpkin, and pasta recipes inevitably cropped up. Among them, two recipes intrigued me with their additional ingredients. One added sun-dried tomatoes to the pumpkin sauce, another added gorgonzola cheese.

Wary to try another pumpkin pasta only to be disappointed, I put off examining these recipes more closely. But when I recently discovered a can of pumpkin from last Thanksgiving season in my cupboard, I got a zany idea. Why not combine these two recipes to make a pumpkin pasta with sun-dried tomatoes AND gorgonzola. That couldn’t possibly turn out bland, could it?

SARAH’S PUMPKIN PASTA WITH SUN-DRIED TOMATO AND GORGONZOLA

2 slices of bacon, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1-2 teaspoons garlic, minced
1 (15 oz) can of pumpkin (not pie filling, but plain pumpkin)
1-2 cups of chicken stock
1/4 to 1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
1 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon of dried sage
dash of nutmeg
salt and pepper, to taste
1/2 cup half & half or sour cream
2-4 oz crumbled gorgonzola
pasta, prepared according to package directions

Fry the bacon in a medium large skillet until crisp. Next saute the onions and garlic in the bacon grease until softened. Add the pumpkin, the stock, tomatoes and spices. Simmer on low until heated through. Add the cream and half the gorgonzola and heat through. Serve over pasta. Sprinkle with remaining cheese crumbles.

I didn’t use exact proportions on this recipe, which is why I included ranges of ingredients in so many cases. The gorgonzola, especially, is an ingredient that should be added carefully, as it is a strong flavor. But luckily this combination of strong flavors finally made a pumpkin pasta tasty enough for me to enjoy and want to make again.