Find the best author and classic quick pumpkin recipes on the wonderful online resource for food-loving gourmets, alittlelunch.com. Try the magnificent first courses made from this amazing fruit, along with light and healthy sides, salads, casseroles, desserts and sauces. Pumpkin flesh is so tasty, healthy and versatile that any dish comes together quickly and without extra fuss.
For successful cooking it's important to learn how to choose the right pumpkin. Size matters a lot for cooking. The flesh of overly large fruits is loose and fibrous, with a not-very-pleasant taste. Small pumpkins, as a rule, aren't ripe and also aren't suitable for cooking. The ideal choice is a medium-sized, firm, undamaged fruit. Only the tender flesh is eaten. The inner seeds, along with the fibrous surrounding tissue, are carefully removed. The thick, tough skin is also peeled off, along with the greenish underlayer.
The five most commonly used ingredients in quick pumpkin recipes:
Interesting recipe:
1. Peel the pumpkin, cut it up, and blend it to a purée.
2. Season with salt and spices to taste. Add sifted good-quality flour. Knead a medium-stiff, elastic dough (as for dumplings)
3. Roll the dough into a "sausage." Cut it into small rounds. Press a round of dough against the tines of a fork and, pressing with the pad of your thumb (not too hard, but not too gently either), leave a striped pattern on it while slightly rolling it. The dough should slide off and pop out with a patterned curl.
4. Drop the prepared gnocchi into boiling salted water.
5. As soon as they float up after the water returns to a boil, tip them into a colander. Let the water drain and dry them slightly.
6. Make the duxelles: fry the finely chopped onion with mushrooms until the moisture evaporates.
7. Add the gnocchi to the duxelles. Fry for a few minutes.
8. When serving, sprinkle with chopped fresh herbs.
The five fastest pumpkin recipes:
| Name of the dish | Cooking time | Calories per 100g | User Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quick raw pumpkin salad with cucumbers and carrots | 2 min | 56 | +326 |
| Pumpkin with apples | 10 min | 101 | +79 |
| Raw pumpkin salad Vitamin | 15 min | 114 | +112 |
| Salad with seaweed and squid | 15 min | 56 | +133 |
| Pumpkin, tomato and seafood purée soup | 15 min | 46 | +34 |
Useful tips:
• For first and second courses it's better to choose round pumpkin varieties. For sweet desserts and casseroles — pear-shaped, pineapple and melon varieties.
• Steaming or oven-cooking preserves most of the pumpkin's beneficial substances. The vegetable is especially valuable in children's and dietary diets.