Kurbisfest 2023: Sweet Mama Enchiladas

This is the first pumpkin post of the season, because after I bought the pumpkins in September, the weather stayed hot until my parents came to visit. It’s cold now, and I’ve got lots of time, so here we go!

In previous years, my green pumpkins have kept until February or even March. This year the green one, a Japanese variety called Tsurunashi-Yakko, or “Sweet Mama” in Germany, was the first to go soft and a bit fuzzy on the bottom. Sigh. Time to butcher.

Since it was going to be a few days before I could use it in a meal, I decided to roast and puree it.

I like how the color changed, the orange deepened, after roasting.

While researching this post, I learned the rind is edible, but at the time I didn’t know, so I scraped off the meat, including the burned spots, for my puree.

The Sweet Mama was indeed sweet, with a noticeable pumpkin flavor that was not very intense.

And then I left it in the refrigerator for a few days, until chicken went on sale and I could make Pumpkin-Chicken-Bean Enchiladas. The recipe has been in my grimoire for a few years; I think it might be adapted from this one.

It’s not really spicy, just intensely seasoned. Or to put it another way, it’s not hot, but flavorful. (I am struggling with the English language here–in German, this is a very easy thing to say, “Nicht scharf, nur hochgewürzt!”) Anyway, one thing that makes this recipe different from other enchiladas I like to make is that the sauce is cold–you blend up the puree with tomato sauce and sour cream–when it goes into the oven. It’s an umami bomb: the only ingredient that doesn’t seethe with flavor is the tortillas.

(Not pictured: Instead of jalapeno, I used some green salsa chiles that I grew in pots. Go me!)

I was so excited about the first enchiladas of fall, I forgot to take any pictures before we dug in. They are very, very creamy.

That only used up about half of the puree, so next stop was muffins. It’s the same ingredients as Aunt Inez’s Pumpkin Bars from the 1986 church cookbook, but with less oil, and “pumpkin pie spice” (I used cinnamon and nutmeg). The cinnamon-sugar on the top uses Indonesian cinnamon, not Ceylon, because I need the coumarin.

Will I buy another Sweet Mama next year? It was delicious, and easy to cut up, but I’ll have to take the short storage time into consideration.