Pumpkin Bolognese

(Serving suggestion)

With any luck at all, I should finish uploading all the pictures for this, today. This is an improvised recipe, so it's not as quantified as my usual stuff, and there's all sorts of side-business, so you might want to take notes.

I started this sordid tale with two Butternut pumpkins (or Squash, as the Americans call them) that had been sitting in our mini-fridge for way too long. So long that they got freezer burns from sitting under the freezer part.

We needed to do something with them, and making a form of pumpkin brownie was out of the question because intense effort. So what do I do? I go for more intense effort like the big silly that I am.

First up, cut the pumpkin at the seed ball...

Then remove the seeds and pith. Scraping motions not captured here, because Hubby was feeling crook, that morning, and had a touch of the Gastro[1]. So I was on my own for a bit. One of these pictures shows a good angle for de-pithing your pumpkin in one neat move.

Now chop up your pumpkin into roast-able chunks...

(Sharp-eyed readers will note that Hubby was able to help me by this point)

Some muscle may be required at the stem part.


(If this method hurts too much, you can also lean on the stem and crack the piece that way. Or just mutter, "Buggerit," and roast that piece whole)

And place into trays for roasting:

Spray with the oil of your choice and season to taste. We used plain salt and pepper with some oregano, because it is going into a bolognese sauce.

Then it's into the oven at 180C or 360F to roast for about two hours or until it smells delicious.

As you can see, ours got a little bit scorched, but that doesn't effect the flavour.

Allow to cool, and protect from predators, because you've just made some pretty awesome roast pumpkin. Miss T decided to help herself:

She ate it skin and all! Quite the feat for a young lady who doesn't ordinarily like my home-cooked veggies.

Now you could quit here if you want, those roast pumpkins are just lovely on their own. And I wouldn't blame you, either. But I'm no quitter! I started scraping out the 'meat' of the pumpkin because I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin skins in my sauce.

If you want to mince up the pumpkin skins for extra fibre or eat them as they are, I'm not judging you. Half of my family agrees with your dietary choices. Hubby and Miss T both had a go at the empty, roasted pumpkin shells.

I was going to mash them by hand with a masher or a fork, but then I wised up and remembered I have an electric mixer. We chopped up two blocks of Philly to mix in with our two pumpkins(And softened them in the microwave for a minute). And don't be afraid of mixing on 'high', either. It all looks tough, but it blends up well.

Hubby said he didn't want a sauce you could stand a spoon up in, but...

...looks like we got one anyway.

Unfortunately, it's also way too thick to be a sauce for anything, so we added a can of pure coconut cream:

Now, this chunky noise could make a lot of pumpkin butter, a nice spread, or side to whatever you choose to ingest, but I wasn't done! Heck no!

We had some 750g packets of cheap, fatty minced beef, and I thawed out two of them to be part of our dinner. Which Hubby and I fried up in butter. Now, the nice things about Woolies' no-brand butter are (a) cheap!, (b) pasture-fed cattle, (c) completely organic, and (d) they come with these nice little markers so you can know how much butter you're using.

I put 50g of butter in the pot for the mince to cook in. Then I added some essential herbs.

Then it was time to cook the mince:

Yes, that is the same pot I had pumpkin bits in. I figured that pumpkin was going in there eventually, so why not?

When it's all browned and the mince fat has melted into the butter, add the pumpkin sauce:

And for heaven's sake, stir it all in CAREFULLY!

Allow to simmer while you prepare your zucchini noodles:

(We had a little spill-over)

We have an electric spiralizer, which is cool and all, but we figured we could get more out of our zucchinis by leaving the stem on. Alas, the presser didn't want to dig in to the woody stem, so we had to cut notches.

(As well as cutting the very bottoms off, of course)

We spiralized noodles out of two zucchinis.

Hubby put 100g of butter into our small non-stick pan and fried up the noodles in two batches:

And after that was done, he got four eggs and a mixing bowl, whisked them together and had me add salt and pepper. Then he put that in the fry-pan as a sort of blank omelette.

I had no idea what he was up to when I took this picture from my last blog entry:

Then Hubby split the omelette into four, and added it to our plates.

Reviews from the household:
Hubby: Lovely sauce (had seconds of the sauce)
Me: I wanted more noodles (had seconds of the sauce)
K: Too sweet
T: (scoffed the lot and grabbed seconds of the sauce)

The sauce was the only survivor of the evening. The remainder, after seven helpings, was two and three-quarters rectangular take-out boxes full of pumpkin-y deliciousness. Which means we just have to spiralize and fry more zucchini noodles the next time I'm having a low-battery day. You could plausibly freeze portions of the sauce for later, but it may wind up tasting 'green'.

[1] Note for Americans and other people who don't understand Strine: Gastro is short for Gastroenteritis and has come to mean, "any gutsache that comes with a side of The Trots." This has been your education in TMI.