Main

October 03, 2007

Pumpkin, it's not just for pie

One of my favorite things to do is cook, esp now that the weather is cooling down and the kitchen won't heat up as much. Lucky for me Mark (husband) LOVES my cooking, he calls it my light and tasty meals of love Smile  . I like to learn spice combinations that work and then create original dishes.  Anyway, I have this new cookbook called Spice, it's about Morrocan, North African food. My mother in law gave me the cookbook along with a bunch of sampler spices. I've tried some recipes from the book and now am venturing out on my own. Mark brought home a little pumpkin from the farmers market and I realized that this would go great with my new spices. I quickly checked the cookbook, there were no recipes. So I made up my own recipe and it was good

Ingredients

1 small pumpkin

olive oil

mint, sumac, salt, fresh chives and dried urfa chiles

couscous

quarter the pumpkin, toss the seeds (or toast em) place on a cookie sheet. coat with some olive oil and sale and place into oven set to 450 degrees. Roast about 30 mins until pumpkin is starting to carmalize and is soft. Pull pumpkin out, set aside to cool.

Mix the spices and dice up the chives. I just toss in enough to taste good, I have no idea on amounts. The urfa chiles are low on the heat scale and high on the flavor scale, they have a warm smokey flavor. The sumac is lemony, the combination is this bright, smokey thing that is great.

Cook the couscous set aside

when the pumpkin is cooled enough, peel it and cut into chunks, add the spices and a little more olive oil then mix with the couscous.

It's a fun dish, easy to make and YUMMY