Pumpkin Erissery (Kerala style curry)

I made it for the first time many months ago and did not think much about posting the recipe. A month earlier I was routinely asking my daughter what she wants me to make for lunch. Its a question which comes up every now and then in my house when I am out of ideas on what to make. Imagine my surprise when she says "Amma, make that pumpkin thingy you made long back"! First of all I did not think she would remember a specific dish made once many months ago and second  I did not have pumpkin in the refridgerator. So I took a rain check on it and made her favourite pulav instead.
In keeping with this week's Thanksgiving run-up I decided to bring the vegetable home and make her favorite curry today.

Pumpkin Errisery is really simple to make and turns out into a delicious dish. I think it would be a perfect side dish and looks awesome in the middle of a spread. So make it for a pot luck or party  and get some kudos while taking it easy!

Pumpkin Errisery (Kerala Style Curry)

Servings: 3 cups
Prep Time: 10 mins Cook Time: 20 mins

Ingredients 

To Boil

4 cups Pumpkin (cut into 1-inch cubes)
Salt to taste
A pinch of turmeric

To Grind

1 tsp Cumin seeds
3 Green Chillies
1/4 cup Coconut

To Temper

1/2 Medium onion or 4-5 Shallots
1 tsp Mustard seeds
1 tsp Urad dal
2 Red Chillies
8-10 Curry leaves
3 tsp Oil

Garnish

2 tbsp Coconut

Instructions

1. Grind coconut, green chillies and cumin seeds to a coarse mix and keep aside.
2. Boil pumpkins in water till nearly soft along with turmeric and salt. 
3. Add the ground paste to the pumpkins and continue to cook on simmer till pumpkins are well done.
4. Heat oil in a heavy bottomed vessel and add mustard seeds.
5. When the mustard seeds splutter, add red chillies and urad dal and saute for a couple of minutes.
6. Add in onion and saute till transluscent and then put in the curry leaves.
7. Mix well and pour the tempering on top of the cooked pumpkin
8. In the same heavy bottomed vessel fry 2 tbsp of coconut till they are crisp and mix it into the pumpkin curry.
9. Mix well and serve with hot rice or chapathi

Gori Manchurian

Yes, you read it right. There is no spelling mistake in the title of the post. I accidentally made an important discovery which will come in very handy to serve a vegetable which is inherently so dry that it usually gets relegated to second cousin status as compared to beans. Cluster Beans or Gori kayi as it is called in Kannada is a thin and dry variety of beans.
I used to be an extremely fussy eater as a kid and gori kayi was one of the many vegetables that I did not like to eat. Adding to my misery was the abundance of this vegetable in the local market in Hyderabad, thus finding its way to my plate more enough than I would have liked. My mom tried to encourage me in various ways to eat more... well lets just say eat. With gori kayi she found an ally in numbers.She always told me that eating gori kayi would make me really good at math! That was a good reason for me to eat it all up although I might say that 101/100 times I might have got my numbers mixed up! I did hallucinate about pieces of gori kayi making its way up my blood vessels to the math controlling part of my brain.
Coming back to the recipe, it was a fridge clean out session where i discovered a bag of gori kayi and pizza sauce left over from last weekend. The rest as they say is Manchuristory.

Gori Manchurian

Servings: 2 cups
Prep Time: 25 mins   Cook Time: 15 mins

Ingredients

2 cups of Cluster Beans (Gori Kayi in Kannada)
1/2 Medium sized Onion
1/2 cup Toor Dal
1/2 cup Pizza sauce
1/2 tsp Mustard seeds
1/2 tsp Cumin seeds
A pinch of turmeric
3 Green Chillies cut lengthwise
3 tsp Oil
Salt to taste

Instructions 

1. Cut cluster beans and onion into small pieces.
2. Wash the toor dal under running water, atleast three times
3. Pressure cook toor dal and cluster beans and keep aside
4. Heat oil in a heavy bottomed vessel and add in mustard seeds. 
5. When the mustard seeds splutter, add in green chillies and cumin seeds and saute for a minute
6.  Add in onion and saute till transluscent.
7. To this, add the pizza sauce and fry for a few minutes till the raw smell of tomato has gone
8. Mix in the pressure cooked cluster beans and toor dal. Add salt and continue to cook for a few minutes till the first boil.
9. This curry tastes good with roti or chapathi or plain rice. I enjoyed eating it as is!

Instant Pizza sauce

Ingredients

2 Tomatoes / 5 heaped tsps of unfavoured natural tomato paste

2 garlic pods

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

2 tsp Olive oil or Vegetable oil or Canola oil

Instructions

1. Grind all the ingredients together adding 1 tbsp of water if required

Pumpkin Soup Curry flavored

Here comes yet another post using the pumpkin puree that I made day before yesterday. After a tiring day pumpkin soup is something you could snack on to both relax and fill your tummy. It is wholesome and the curry flavour gives it an extra spicy kick. This soup can be made as sweet or spicy as desired. 

Pumpkin Soup Curry flavored

Servings: 2
Prep Time: 5 mins Cook Time: 20 mins

Ingredients

1 cup Pumpkin Puree
1 cup Water
1 tbsp Butter (or less) or 1 tbsp Oil
1 medium sized Onion
2 Garlic pods
1/2 inch piece Ginger grated
1/4 tsp Nutmeg powder
1/4 tsp Cinnamon powder
1/4 tsp Coriander powder
1/4 tsp Cumin powder
A pinch of turmeric
2 Cloves whole
2 tsp Red Chilli powder
Few coriander leaves cut fine
Salt to taste

Instructions

• Cut onions and garlic fine
• Heat the butter in a heavy bottomed wok and saute the onions till transluscent.
• Add garlic and ginger and saute for a couple of minutes
• Add in all the spices and saute for a couple of minutes
• Pour the pumpkin puree along with water into the wok and continue to boil for a few minutes.
• Add salt and simmer for five minutes.
• Garnish with coriander or parsley
• Serve the soup hot

Spiced Eggless Pumpkin Quick Bread

Pumpkin bread is the kind of food that you want to take with you when your mind wanders into nostalgia. It evokes a lot of emotions, most of all happiness. Done with the right spices, this wonder food, which is a big source of Vitamin A, can be relished as a snack any time of the day.

With my resolve to post a pumpkin recipe everyday of this week leading to Thanksgiving day, I made a list of all the dishes I wanted to prepare and this bread topped the list. It is an extremely simple quick bread which means there is no wait time required between making the batter and baking.

The pumpkin bread is symbolic of warmth. The recipe below does not make an overtly sweet bread. Its a sure-fire crowd pleaser and I am very happy to report that the two food critics in my house absolutely loved it! I recommend it as a kid friendly recipe and it can easily make its way into the school snack box.

Spiced Eggless Pumpkin Quick Bread 

Recipe adapted from Gayathri's cookspot
Servings: 1 9-inch loaf
Prep Time: 10 mins Cook Time: 60 mins

Ingredients 

1 cup All purpose Flour
3/4 cup Whole Wheat Pastry flour
1 cup granulated Sugar
3/4 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 tsp Double acting Baking powder
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Nutmeg
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
2-3 Cloves (If using powder then 1/2 tsp)
1 cup Pumpkin Puree
1/2 cup Oil
3 tbsp Honey
3 tbsp Water
Chopped walnuts (handful to 1/2 cup)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 deg F. Line a 9 inch loaf tin with parchment paper or grease with oil.
2. Sift together all purpose flour, whole wheat pastry flour. sugar, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves together in a bowl.
3. In another bowl mix together pumpkin puree, oil, water, honey
4. Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients to form a thick batter. Mix only till well combined, do not overmix.
5. Fold in the walnuts
6. Fill the loaf tin with the thick batter and lightly spread to be even topped
7. Bake at 350 deg F for 60 minutes till a skewer inserted comes out clean with no batter sticking to it. Check from 55 mins to see if it is done
8.  Remove from oven and cool in the loaf tin for 5 minutes. Continue to cool on a wire rack.

Pumpkin Puree

'Ts the week where all of America is thinking about recipes. After all its the biggest culinary expedition of the year. Thanksgiving! 
Vegetarians and Vegans have a lot of resources on the internet to ensure they dont have to forego joining in the celebration. Potatoes, Beans and Pumpkin are some of the vegetables that find their way to the dinner spread and creatively so. My take is that there is only so much you could stuff into a turkey so all the creativity gets unleashed on accompaniments and dessert. I have decided to dedicate this week to recipes which could easily adorn the Thanksgiving banquet.
What better way to do this than the rotund pumpkin.

As luck would have it I had a huge pumpkin leftover from the Halloween times which had failed to make it to a Jack-o-Lantern. I had to use it before it spoilt. Does a pumpkin spoil? I dont know but I wasnt going to find out today. I took it out of the refridgerator and what ensued after that was a 40-min ordeal to crack it open! The shell was extremely hard and I had never encountered a pumpkin with such a hard exterior. Armed with a sharp knife and gritting my teeth I started puncturing through the vegetable with T reminding me of the fact that I am a klutz and should be careful. I have a history of slicing right through my hands so I dont blame him for being worried. Once I had it open it took me an indecisive 5 minutes to resolve making a puree out of the whole thing instead of trying to skin it for a curry.
Pureeing a pumpkin is really simple as you will read later on. Once done, it could be frozen for a few months atleast and used whenever required. The puree could be used in baking recipes, soups, casseroles etc.

Pumpkin Puree 

Servings: 4 cups from a pumpkin the size of a football.
Prep Time: 5 mins Cook Time: 1 hr 30 mins (includes waiting time)

Ingredients

1 Pumpkin (size of a football)

Instructions

1. Cut the pumpkin into quarters
2. Place it on baking tray
3. Bake at 350 deg F for an hour
4. Allow it to cool and then scrape the pulp out of the skin
5. Blend the pulp in a food processor or mixer to a paste. Use a couple of tbsp of water if required.
6. Store in an airtight container. Freeze for longevity.