Pumpkin madness

We don't really "do" halloween that much here, but there has been a distinct shift towards celebration this year, with the accompanying hustle and bustle you might expect in the kitchen.

I chanced upon an episode of Jamie at home last week. After cooking a few Jamie recipes from Annie's blog recently (sweet and sour squash, sticky carrots), I was keen to watch, it's been ages since I saw him in action. I settled for the "pumpkins and squashes" programme. I'm glad I did, my corner shop had some fine specimens in stock...

I've always liked these beauties...good to eat in so many different ways. Jamie says just to cook the skin. Cool. I'm not sure if this is old hat and everyone else knows this already, but it was news to me and I was very excited! So, I went and got my pumpkin and started with some really easy and absolutely delicious muffins.

Now this is my first foray into blogging about food so forgive me if it's all a bit clunky and messy and my pics aren't great.

Pumpkin Muffins

400g squash or pumpkin, skin on
250g light soft brown sugar (Jamie used 400g but I couldn't bring myself to use that much...)
4 eggs
pinch salt
300g plain flour (I used wholemeal)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
handful of walnuts
175ml oil

Whizz up the squash or pumpkin as finely as possible in the food processor, add all the other ingredients, whizz up again. Fill the muffin tins 3/4 full, bake at 180c for 20 min, until brown. Leave to cool in tins for a few minutes and turn out. Mmmmmmmm! This makes 24 muffins, be warned you may want to eat that many...

Actually these were so good, I baked several batches to sell for charity at Esme's riding school, and to give to friends.

Then i decided to make some soup to take to a friend's Halloween party. Again, very easy but really tasty.

Pumpkin Soup

3kg pumpkin, skin on, cut into wedges
2 carrots, sliced roughly
few cloves garlic
red onion- 1 or 2
fresh rosemary
2 sticks celery
2 litres stock
olive oil

Heat olive oil in a big pan (this makes a lot of soup), add onion, celery....then carrots, garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper. Chuck in the pumpkin. Sweat it for a bit then add stock and simmer for about 45 min until the pumpkin is absolutely obliterated. (About 6 minutes in a pressure cooker. Guess what's on my Christmas list!)

Blend it with a hand blender............

This bit was tricky for me as I managed to blow up my hand blender some time ago ;)

We enjoyed this with cheesy croutons

Fry some sage leave in hot olive oil to infuse it, then remove the sage. Dip some crispy/slightly hard bread in the oil, then grate cheese over it and pat into the bread on both sides. Fry in a dry pan for about 1 min on each side.

I still have the enormous pumpkin (pictured) left over so I'm going to make some more muffins, the sweet and sour dish from Annie and some more soup to freeze. I also fancy having a go at this ...but I still have all those pears from Jodrell Bank waiting to be made into chutney, and looking at that picture, I really need to scrub the grout....blush ;/

Anyway, thanks Jamie Oliver. After a looooooong break from watching TV I am going to be tuning into you more often.

And we had a great time at the party, with friends we haven't seen for ages. It was really good to reconnect. I miss you guys.