The latest post in the Kürbisfest2024! series.
The French call this Hungarian variety „Bleu de Hongrie“, but my supplier and I see more grey than blue. Generally, I can expect grey pumpkins to last well into February. Didn’t happen this year–found a soft spot during the weekly check and had to come up with a plan.
As I gave him his glamour shot, I noticed the skin looks more orange than in September. Meaningless, but intriguing.
Inside, he’s dark orange, and very firm. Of all the pumpkin varieties that I have butchered so far, this one has my favorite color.
The flesh is firm, and not as sweet as the Lakota, but can caramelize lightly when roasted. This is a popular variety for filling, but I just did that last week (Taco Ufos), so I peeled and chopped up 3/4 of it for a one-pan spoonable bowl meal.
I bookmarked this recipe for “Kürbis-Hackfleisch-Pfanne mit Feta” (Pumpkin in a pan with ground meat and feta cheese) several years ago, but had tried it out yet. The original blogger uses Hokkaido, the most popular pumpkin in Germany because the shell is edible, but the dark orange varieties can be interchangeable if you know what you are doing.
Once you get the pumpkin butchered, this is the easiest thing in the world: brown some ground meat (this time beef), add some onion to it, then add your pumpkin with some tomato sauce and water. Drop a lid on it, wait 15-25 minutes (depending on the size of your pumpkin pieces), then add some curry spices and feta crumbles. It’s basically a homemade Hamburger Helper without noodles–and I think it would be super easy to convert it into a one-pan pasta dish, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Mr Radish ate his over white rice, but I left mine plain. He thought there was disproportionately too much pumpkin, but I find a 2:1 ratio of veg to meat reasonable. I could add other chopped winter vegetables to it in the future, but it might lose some of the creaminess.
The creaminess! It was an absolute delight to shovel this into my face.
I plan to bake the rest of it in the oven with some potatoes in the next few days.
