I found this great recipe and article on NPR.
If you had a bumper crop of pumpkins, I'm sure you've already made the pies for tomorrow's Feast, but save an extra one for this scrumptious side dish. A pumpkin stuffed with bread, bacon, garlic and cheese can be a main course, according to cookbook author Dorie Greenspan.
Makes 2 very generous servings
1 pumpkin, about 3 pounds
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 pound stale bread, thinly sliced and cut into 1/2-inch chunks
1/4 pound cheese, such as Gruyere, Emmenthal, cheddar, or a combination, cut into 1/2-inch chunks
2–4 garlic cloves (to taste), split, germ removed, and coarsely chopped
4 strips bacon, cooked until crisp, drained, and chopped
About 1/4 cup snipped fresh chives or sliced scallions
1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme
About 1/3 cup heavy cream
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment, or find a Dutch oven with a diameter that's just a tiny bit larger than your pumpkin. If you bake the pumpkin in a casserole, it will keep its shape, but it might stick to the casserole, so you'll have to serve it from the pot — which is an appealingly homey way to serve it. If you bake it on a baking sheet, you can present it freestanding, but maneuvering a heavy stuffed pumpkin with a softened shell isn't so easy. However, since I love the way the unencumbered pumpkin looks in the center of the table, I've always taken my chances with the baked-on-a-sheet method, and so far, I've been lucky.
Using a very sturdy knife — and caution — cut a cap out of the top of the pumpkin (think Halloween jack-o'-lantern). It's easiest to work your knife around the top of the pumpkin at a 45-degree angle. You want to cut off enough of the top to make it easy for you to work inside the pumpkin. Clear away the seeds and strings from the cap and from inside the pumpkin. Season the inside of the pumpkin generously with salt and pepper, and put it on the baking sheet or in the pot. Toss the bread, cheese, garlic, bacon, and herbs together in a bowl. Season with pepper — you probably have enough salt from the bacon and cheese, but taste to be sure — and pack the mix into the pumpkin. The pumpkin should be well filled — you might have a little too much filling, or you might need to add to it. Stir the cream with the nutmeg and some salt and pepper and pour it into the pumpkin. Again, you might have too much or too little — you don't want the ingredients to swim in cream, but you do want them nicely moistened. (But it's hard to go wrong here.)
Put the cap in place and bake the pumpkin for about 2 hours — check after 90 minutes — or until everything inside the pumpkin is bubbling and the flesh of the pumpkin is tender enough to be pierced easily with the tip of a knife. Because the pumpkin will have exuded liquid, I like to remove the cap during the last 20 minutes or so, so that the liquid can bake away and the top of the stuffing can brown a little.
When the pumpkin is ready, carefully, very carefully — it's heavy, hot, and wobbly — bring it to the table or transfer it to a platter that you'll bring to the table.
Serving
You have choices: you can cut wedges of the pumpkin and filling; you can spoon out portions of the filling, making sure to get a generous amount of pumpkin into the spoonful; or you can dig into the pumpkin with a big spoon, pull the pumpkin meat into the filling, and then mix everything up. I'm a fan of the pull-and-mix option. Served in hearty portions followed by a salad, the pumpkin is a perfect cold-weather main course; served in generous spoonfuls or wedges, it's just right alongside the Thanksgiving turkey.
Storing
It's really best to eat this as soon as it's ready. However, if you've got leftovers, you can scoop them out of the pumpkin, mix them up, cover, and chill them; reheat them the next day.
Greenspan's Stuffing Ideas
There are many ways to vary this arts-and-crafts project. Instead of bread, I've filled the pumpkin with cooked rice — when it's baked, it's almost risotto-like. And, with either bread or rice, on different occasions I've added cooked spinach, kale, chard, or peas (the peas came straight from the freezer). I've made it without bacon, and I've also made and loved, loved, loved it with cooked sausage meat; cubes of ham are another good idea. Nuts are a great addition, as are chunks of apple or pear or pieces of chestnut.
November 5, 2010
You can do more with a pumpkin than carve it and stick a candle in it — you can also stuff it, bake it and eat it all up.
That's what cookbook author Dorie Greenspan suggests in her new cookbook, Around My French Table. Greenspan says she loves her recipe "Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good" because it has "almost no rules."
"So you can play with it. You can change the filling a million different ways," she tells NPR's Michele Norris in Norris' Washington, D.C., kitchen. "We're going to use a stuffing of bread, bacon, garlic and cheese, but you could add spinach or chard, or once I used some leftover cooked rice in place of the bread. It became almost like risotto. You can put in nuts, you can put in apples ... you can put in chestnuts."
The possibilities depend on your imagination and your pantry, Greenspan says. And there's also a big payoff from this very simple recipe — one she says she almost missed.
"My wonderful friend Helene Samuel in Paris had told me about this dish, and I thought, 'That's nice, that's nice,' and finally she said, 'You're not paying attention to me. This is a great dish. You have to make it. I'm going to have my sister send you the recipe.' And her sister lives in Lyon. And she said, 'Here's how I make it, but I'm sure you'll make it a different way, and maybe you'll improve on it.' "
But there was one thing Greenspan couldn't improve on — the pumpkin.
"Her husband is a farmer, and he grows pumpkins. And when the pumpkins are very, very small, she goes into the fields with her children, and they carve their name in the pumpkins. And as the pumpkins grow, their names grow with the pumpkin, and then they each have their own pumpkin to make this dish."
Greenspan says the French tend to use pumpkins for savory dishes, not for sweet treats. But when she travels to France, she makes sure to pack at least one American convenience: canned pumpkin, which Greenspan says is impossible to find in Paris.
"Every recipe you see with a pumpkin puree starts with cutting the pumpkin, roasting it and pureeing it. But when I want pumpkin muffins, I want them now!" she laughs.
1 pumpkin, about 3 pounds
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 pound stale bread, thinly sliced and cut into 1/2-inch chunks
1/4 pound cheese, such as Gruyere, Emmenthal, cheddar, or a combination, cut into 1/2-inch chunks
2–4 garlic cloves (to taste), split, germ removed, and coarsely chopped
4 strips bacon, cooked until crisp, drained, and chopped
About 1/4 cup snipped fresh chives or sliced scallions
1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme
About 1/3 cup heavy cream
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment, or find a Dutch oven with a diameter that's just a tiny bit larger than your pumpkin. If you bake the pumpkin in a casserole, it will keep its shape, but it might stick to the casserole, so you'll have to serve it from the pot — which is an appealingly homey way to serve it. If you bake it on a baking sheet, you can present it freestanding, but maneuvering a heavy stuffed pumpkin with a softened shell isn't so easy. However, since I love the way the unencumbered pumpkin looks in the center of the table, I've always taken my chances with the baked-on-a-sheet method, and so far, I've been lucky.
Using a very sturdy knife — and caution — cut a cap out of the top of the pumpkin (think Halloween jack-o'-lantern). It's easiest to work your knife around the top of the pumpkin at a 45-degree angle. You want to cut off enough of the top to make it easy for you to work inside the pumpkin. Clear away the seeds and strings from the cap and from inside the pumpkin. Season the inside of the pumpkin generously with salt and pepper, and put it on the baking sheet or in the pot. Toss the bread, cheese, garlic, bacon, and herbs together in a bowl. Season with pepper — you probably have enough salt from the bacon and cheese, but taste to be sure — and pack the mix into the pumpkin. The pumpkin should be well filled — you might have a little too much filling, or you might need to add to it. Stir the cream with the nutmeg and some salt and pepper and pour it into the pumpkin. Again, you might have too much or too little — you don't want the ingredients to swim in cream, but you do want them nicely moistened. (But it's hard to go wrong here.)
Put the cap in place and bake the pumpkin for about 2 hours — check after 90 minutes — or until everything inside the pumpkin is bubbling and the flesh of the pumpkin is tender enough to be pierced easily with the tip of a knife. Because the pumpkin will have exuded liquid, I like to remove the cap during the last 20 minutes or so, so that the liquid can bake away and the top of the stuffing can brown a little.
When the pumpkin is ready, carefully, very carefully — it's heavy, hot, and wobbly — bring it to the table or transfer it to a platter that you'll bring to the table.
Serving
You have choices: you can cut wedges of the pumpkin and filling; you can spoon out portions of the filling, making sure to get a generous amount of pumpkin into the spoonful; or you can dig into the pumpkin with a big spoon, pull the pumpkin meat into the filling, and then mix everything up. I'm a fan of the pull-and-mix option. Served in hearty portions followed by a salad, the pumpkin is a perfect cold-weather main course; served in generous spoonfuls or wedges, it's just right alongside the Thanksgiving turkey.
Storing
It's really best to eat this as soon as it's ready. However, if you've got leftovers, you can scoop them out of the pumpkin, mix them up, cover, and chill them; reheat them the next day.
Greenspan's Stuffing Ideas
There are many ways to vary this arts-and-crafts project. Instead of bread, I've filled the pumpkin with cooked rice — when it's baked, it's almost risotto-like. And, with either bread or rice, on different occasions I've added cooked spinach, kale, chard, or peas (the peas came straight from the freezer). I've made it without bacon, and I've also made and loved, loved, loved it with cooked sausage meat; cubes of ham are another good idea. Nuts are a great addition, as are chunks of apple or pear or pieces of chestnut.
November 5, 2010
You can do more with a pumpkin than carve it and stick a candle in it — you can also stuff it, bake it and eat it all up.
That's what cookbook author Dorie Greenspan suggests in her new cookbook, Around My French Table. Greenspan says she loves her recipe "Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good" because it has "almost no rules."
"So you can play with it. You can change the filling a million different ways," she tells NPR's Michele Norris in Norris' Washington, D.C., kitchen. "We're going to use a stuffing of bread, bacon, garlic and cheese, but you could add spinach or chard, or once I used some leftover cooked rice in place of the bread. It became almost like risotto. You can put in nuts, you can put in apples ... you can put in chestnuts."
The possibilities depend on your imagination and your pantry, Greenspan says. And there's also a big payoff from this very simple recipe — one she says she almost missed.
"My wonderful friend Helene Samuel in Paris had told me about this dish, and I thought, 'That's nice, that's nice,' and finally she said, 'You're not paying attention to me. This is a great dish. You have to make it. I'm going to have my sister send you the recipe.' And her sister lives in Lyon. And she said, 'Here's how I make it, but I'm sure you'll make it a different way, and maybe you'll improve on it.' "
But there was one thing Greenspan couldn't improve on — the pumpkin.
"Her husband is a farmer, and he grows pumpkins. And when the pumpkins are very, very small, she goes into the fields with her children, and they carve their name in the pumpkins. And as the pumpkins grow, their names grow with the pumpkin, and then they each have their own pumpkin to make this dish."
Greenspan says the French tend to use pumpkins for savory dishes, not for sweet treats. But when she travels to France, she makes sure to pack at least one American convenience: canned pumpkin, which Greenspan says is impossible to find in Paris.
"Every recipe you see with a pumpkin puree starts with cutting the pumpkin, roasting it and pureeing it. But when I want pumpkin muffins, I want them now!" she laughs.
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