As I mentioned in my chocolate cupcake recipe post last week, my Grandma did indeed arrive at our house with an enormous pumpkin this week. I felt a little bit like Cinderella!
For size comparison purposes (my hand is about 6 inches from hell to middle finger-tip) - that is one huge pumpkin! |
Despite my sisters complaints that she didn't like pumpkin pie- I knew that that was exactly what I wanted to make first , especially as I'd just discovered a lovely looking pumpkin pie recipe in the hummingbird recipe book.
If I were to do each section in one post (the pumpkin puree preparation, the pastry and the pie itself) the post would be insanely long, so I've split it into parts- this post will show you how I made my pumpkin puree :) Part 2 is the shortcrust pastry recipe, and Part 3 is the pumpkin pie recipe.
1) Take a suitably huge and sharp knife (and possibly a really strong helper- I had to rope in my Dad!) slice the pumpkin in half, then scoop out the stringy/seedy bits with a spoon.
2) Chop up the halves into smaller, more manageable slices- then remove the skin and any remaining stringy bits.
3) Cut the flesh into small chunks- preferably evenly sized (so that it cooks evenly)
4) Place the chunks into a (very large!) saucepan, and fill with water until the pumpkin is just about covered.
At this stage I wanted to know if Nibbles would like pumpkin- guess what, she did! (she'll eat anything)
5) Boil the pumpkin for around 15/20 minutes- until the pumpkin is cooked through and is nice and soft.
6) My pumpkin practically disintegrated itself (the benefit of being a homegrown pumpkin and not a shop-bought one I think) but you may need to either mash it or blend it to get a puree- think baby food texture!
Leave this to cool completely before using it in the pie recipe. I made mine about 2 days before I got around the actual pie making, so I kept it in the fridge. I know I'll have too much puree to use up before it goes bad, so I'll also freeze some in small portions for later use- pumpkin pie all year round!
Of course if you can get your hands on canned pumpkin (which sounded so weird to me when I first heard of it) you can completely skip this step, and go straight to making the shortcrust pastry.
xGretalRabbitx
Aww Nibbles is so cute!!!!
ReplyDeleteShe is! You can see all the tiny nibble marks she left in the pumpkin :)
ReplyDeletexGretalRabbitx