Recipe : Halloween pumpkin – curried, baked whole

This is really a test recipe but what the heck,   Halloween is just around the corner and pumpkin is THE vege.  I found imported US pumpkin going for RM229 per  fruit in the supermarket.  It is huge, I think bigger and heavier than I can carry.

Of course,I cannot afford a RM229 pumpkin so I bought a tiny one for only RM1.33.  Hehehe, cheap eh?  I checked through some internet sites to see if it is ok to bake a whole pumpkin and apparently, it can be done.  So I scoop out those seeds and stringy part, throw them away and use an ice-cream scoop to scoop out the flesh.

Jamie Oliver (hehehe, yes him again!) has a recipe called Laksa rice with pumpkin.  It gives me an idea to make curried pumpkin.  I used heat some oil, fry some curry leaves, fennel seeds and cummin seeds till fragrant.  Then, add in the pumpkin to mix well.  It seems to smell dull.  So I added some meat curry powder, add some dried rosemary and basil.  *cross fingers the Western and Eastern spices and herbs don’t clash*

I returned the stir fried ingredients back into the hollow pumpkin and there seems to be a lot of spaces there.  So, I poured in some red gram (lentils) and added some cream plus water.

I put back the top of the pumpkin which I cut out ealier, wrapped an aluminium foil, just in case the pumpkin leaks and place it in a baking tin.

The pumpkin is now sitting in the oven, at 180 deg. celcius and I expect it to be cooked in another hour or two.

The pictures turned out mighty attractive with its bright orange flesh so I thought of putting it up first.  Let’s see how it tastes like later, ok?  Then again, pumpkin is such a great vege/or is it fruit? to cook because it absorbs the flavours of everything it is cooked with.