True to my word...

I've spent the weekend with pumpkin. I cooked down the rest of the meat Saturday. The way I did it this time was to just spread it out in a baking dish and bake it at 350 F (175 C) for about an hour and a half. I periodically stirred it and also carefully drained any released water out. The only sad part is that I really don't have a lot of total meat. I'd say the entire 6 kilo pumpkin yielded only about 640 g of puree. Sad!!

So as I mentioned Friday, I wanted to make pumpkin burgers. I actually followed the recipe pretty closely until it came to breadcrumbs/wheat germ. Instead of that, I used 1 cup of ground hazelnuts. I also used 2 tbs chopped coriander instead of the parsley. For some reason, parsley in a "southwestern" dish seems wrong. It's always coriander!! Also, I ended up using about 3/4 to 1 cup of pumpkin because I kept smelling the mixture and deciding it wasn't "pumpkin-y" enough. The only problem with adding more pumpkin though was that the mixture was decidedly more moist than it should have been. I ended up forming the mixture into patties, and baking the burgers on parchment paper for about an hour at 375 F (180 C) and flipping them halfway through. So they were GREAT with my homemade guacamole and salsa. My friend brought a gorgeous baguette and we had a veritable feast. I was unfortunately so excited, that I didn't take ANY pictures, and even though I promised my boyfriend I would save him a burger...they were so good that none were available for consumption by the time the night was over.

Last night I made more guacamole, more onion and garlic jam, and pumpkin gnocci. This was almost ridiculously easy.

Pumpkin Gnocchi

125 ml pureed packed pumpkin
50 ml whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
pinch of pepper.

Mix all ingredients together. Mine looked like this:



Here it gets interesting: At this point, the dough is not dry enough to roll out and cut into little squares. However, I REALLY wanted the taste of the pumpkin to shine through, and not have the flour be the star.

I had been watching Jaimie Oliver a couple of weekends ago and he had made edamame dumplings (I totally cannot find the recipe online!!!!). The way he formed them was interesting and looked easy, so I tried it with this dough. Absolutely perfect!!! You take two spoons, and spoon a bit of dough into one. Then you use the other to scoop it off, and between the two you keep scooping until a dumpling shape is formed. Very easy, here's a picture for the visual learners out there:
After this, I placed them on a baking sheet. I used the tines of a fork to make the classic gnocchi-esque grooves, but I don't think they're incredibly necessary.
After that, you just drop them in boiling salted water, and wait a couple of minutes until they rise to the top and start bouncing around. Remove with slotted spoon...

I had some last night with some smoked ricotta and sprinkled some dried sage and toasted hazelnuts on it. I think the ricotta overwhelmed it though. Today I would probably just have it with some browned goats butter, sage, and the hazenuts. Or even by themselves! They are QUITE yummy.