Any Americans or Pumpkin experts around to answer a quick question????

[MaggieBruja]

Ok, with some difficulty have sawed the top off the pumpkin. NOw inside is stringy orange fibrous stuff and seeds. Hve put the seeds aside with a plan to roast them or something.

BUT ... I'm presuming that the stringy stuff isn't the edible part. That's the hard stuff around the outside of the pumpkin.

So, do you thin out your pumpkin and that is what you make the pumpkin pie or whatever you make out of?

do you have to liquidise it? it seems too hard to be put into a pie!

I think it's quite clear that this is the first year my children have been old enough to demand a pumpkin.

pumpkin pie recipes also gratefully received???

Hi Maggie, i usually get my mom to send me a large tin of libby's pumpkin puree !

doing pumpkin from scratch, i scrape out and discard the stringy bits (roast the seeds like you), cut flesh in chunks and either steam or roast till tender. then mash with a masher or you can push through a sieve. it may be easier with a liquidiser or processer but i don't have either.
hth.

oh, i don't have a recipe but do google one. defn use mixed spice, cinnamon, cloves, brown sugar, vanilla to flavour.

i think libby's website (verybestbaking.com) has a pumpkin cheesecake recipe which is lovely.

Libby's pumpkin puree! ok, next year, 2010 I'm going to get some of that! if it's good enough for an american, then I can do it do.

OK, thanks for the tip. Will try and cut off enough chunks to make something out of it... and then boil it gently and mash it.

I think Selfridges food hall (or similar) has Libby's Pumpkin puree but it costs a small fortune for what it is. Haven't made pumpkin pie for years but you've now made me think about it.

Cut chunks of the hard flesh, smear with ground nut oil and roast till tender.

Sweat onions for ages till super yum, add milk, add pumpkin flesh, cook for about 20 minutes. Season well with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Whizz in a whizzer, served with small chunks of gruyere cheese, which melts in the soup so you get yummy stringy cheese bits, and croutons.

I think this is in Delias Winter book and it is amazing!

Most Americans use canned pumpkin for pumpkin pie. The fresh stuff is too stringy.

Because tinned pumpkin is too hard to get here, I make my own pumpkin puree, by roasting the hard part (no stringy bits) in the oven, and then pureeing it. Butternut squash is easier than normal pumpkin, though, and tastes and looks the same once roasted.

Roasting is better than boiling, because with boiling, it ends up a lot wetter than tinned pumpkin.

I scrape out the hard flesh with a big spoon and then steam it and puree it for pumpkin pie and pumpkin soup.

You can just pull the stringy stuff out with your hands, it comes away from the flesh quite easily.

To roast the seeds, wash them and then soak them in very salty water for a few hours or overnight, then drain and layer them in a roasting pan and slow roast until they are dry and crispy. They will be slightly salty which is lovely.

I have a big bowl of pumpkin guts in the fridge now, but it's not really chunks. It's more ... like flaky bits as I scoop it out. But i will roast it for 10 minutes...?

I wish I'd known to soak the pumpkin seeds overnight before roasting!! just roasted them and they are a bit tough. Chewy and tasty but too tough to really enjoy

Martha Stewart's pumpkin pie

This one is for the purists apparently, and it looks quite easy.

I had a look at the other website, but you need to register..

The reason the Libby's canned stuff works better than making your own pumpkin puree is that the contents of the can are butternut squash or any other dry sweet dense fleshed squash not pumpkin.

DH is half american, grew up in Michigan, even he admits that butternut squash puree in pumpkin pie is just fine

I got Libby's tinned pumpkin puree from Waitrose.
It is £1.19, see here
Have made Nigella's pumpkin cheesecake with it and it is delicious

I bet I will develop a taste for pumpkin pie, and then I will be traipsing the streets trying to get hold of pumpkin in a tin, and the shopkeepers will look at me like I landed in a space ship and say, not much call for canned pumpkin love... duh!

takver, i've never heard of butternut squash in Libby's pumpkin. I worked for nestle who own Libby's and my US colleague use to send me Libby's 100% pureed pumpkin, there was no other ingredient. maybe libby's make another variant with butternut squash (?).

I do think canned stuff works better because tit doesn't have as much water as the stuff we try to make from scratch.

blametheparents, there aren't many waitrose up north but my DH works fairly near one so I'm going to send him to buy pumpkin, that's not expensive at all!

Hmm, squash/pumpkin is botanically the same thing, so the ingredients could easily say pumpkin IYSWIM.
I got the tip to use squash from a US gardeners email list, was assured that the canned stuff is all orangy-beige skinned dense fleshed winter squash, with Waltham butternut given as a suggested variety, they may be wrong but it definitely works! BTW the reason for orange/beige skin they gave was that if any flecks of skin got missed they didn't show up in the puree.
Certainly if you make a puree with a dense fleshed squash it is very very much less watery than a 'halloween' style pumpkin, IMO the pumpkin types are generally only really suitable for soup, though there are a few exceptions (Triple Treat is good)

Here's a link, btw. This one says that Libby's uses a variety called Dickinson Pumpkin, which is a tan skinnned Cucurbita moschata variety.
Most of the halloween style pumpkins are Cucurbita pepo (same species as marrows/courgettes). Butternut, Cheese squashes etc are also C. moschata.
Hubbards are another species again, C. maxima - which are easier to grow in this country than C. moschata.

Takver, you're an encyclopaedia for canned pumpkin, thanks for the info.

going to buy a few pumpkins this week as they seem to disappear after halloween. i quite fancy pumpkin soup a la Mrssaxon's post.

for pumpkin pie at thanksgiving (end nov), i'll certainly be scanning the aisles at waitrose for the tinned puree. if I can't find it, i daresay i'll be trying butternut squash in the recpe instead. bet it would work a treat.

Leonie, that's very kind! may be cheaper for DH to get at Waitrose (if they have it) if it's only £1.19. where did you get yours?

You can make a sweet potato pie too, much the same taste and no faffing with pumpkin innards. Here's the recipe from the Libby's tin that I use:
3/4 cup sugar )
1/2 tsp salt )combine
1 tsp cinnamon )
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves

2 large eggs )beat in large bowl

Stir in 1 can pumpkin (15 ozs or 425 grams),

then 1 can evaporated milk (12 ozs). Not sweetened condensed.

Pour into pastry shell, bake at 425 F 15 mins, then reduce heat to 350 F and bake 40 to 50 mins or until a tester comes out clean. Pie will sink a bit as it cools.

I usually add treacle or molasses (about 2 Tbsp) also. You can follow this recipe for sweet potatoes too. It's much easier to roast the pumpkin in the shell than to take it out first. But remove the strings and seeds first.

That should be: combine the sugar and spices in a bowl and add to the beaten eggs.

On the subject of pumpkin/squash, dd went pumpkin picking with her school the other day and came back with a 'sugar pumpkin' - she said we couldn't carve it but we could make pie. It looked just the same as any other pumpkin to me.

So seems like there are different types of pumpkin.