Pumpkin Surprise

Now that another Halloween has passed, the shops will be looking to offload their surplus pumpkins as quickly as possible to make way for Christmas; you may have thought that pumpkins are good for nothing but carving, but actually you can make turn them into pretty tasty treats.  Here are just a few pumpkin recipes to introduce this unusual food to your children:-

• Toasted pumpkin seeds: Scrape out the seeds from the middle of a pumpkin, dry fry them in a heavy based frying pan for 4 to 5 minutes and eat!  For adults, add a little bit of olive oil and salt, but leave unsalted for children.
• Pumpkin Puree: Perfect for babies!  Cut your pumpkin in half, cover each half with foil and bake in the oven for an hour.  Blend the flesh and freeze into ice cube trays.
• Pumpkin Soup: Cook the pumpkin as above, add to a pint of chicken or vegetable stock and blend.
• Pumpkin Pasta: Cook some pasta, dice some pumpkin and sautee it in a skillet with a lid for 3 - 5 minutes.  Toss into your cooked pasta, add a tablespoon of creme fraiche and serve.
• Pumpkin Curry: follow any traditional chicken curry recipe substituting diced pumpkin for the meat.

We tend not to consider pumpkin as a food, rather a novelty item to adorn Halloween, but actually it's very versatile and can be used in lots of different ways!  Look out a pumpkin in the post-Halloween sales and see for yourself!