I have a pumpkin... and some ground meat...

[Georgiana]

Yesterday I went shopping and on the cover of some German cooking magazine there was a picture of a pumpkin stuffed with some meat mixture. I didn't really understand the recipe (German...), but I know it had rice in it.

Anyway, I have some beef & pork ground meat in the freezer. And I have a pumpkin. So, I thought I could stuff the pumpkin with some meat and some veggies, and bake it. Other than eggs, meat, some onion (what's better to use --- dark red globe onion or Vidalia?), garlic, thyme, oregano, salt and pepper... what else could I add to it?

[mizski]

I would use the vidalia onion.

Here's a recipe that I have for stuffed pumpkin that might give you some ideas:

Stuffed Pumpkin

1 pumpkin
1 onion
1 rib celery, chopped
1 lb. ground pork
1 lb. ground lean hamburger
1 egg, beaten
Poultry seasoning
Salt and pepper to taste
1-2 TBS pine nuts or several roasted chestnuts, chopped (optional)

Saute onion and celery. Add hamburger and pork. Cook until brown. Drain grease. Add egg, poultry seasoning and salt and pepper to taste (and nuts, if using). Mix well.

Cut off top of pumpkin. Keep. Remove seeds and stringy part. Put stuffing in and put top back on. Cook in shallow pan (add a little water to pan—1 cup?). Bake at 350 degrees until soft, 1 hour or more.

Carefully remove from pan with two big spatulas.

[not2late]

I make pumpkin lasagna. Peel and slice the pumpkin into 1/4 inch thick pieces. Then you sautee the ground meat, add herbs and spices, and tomato sauce.

Put some sauce on the bottom of a baking dish, add a layer of the pumpkin, top with more sauce and cheese, and keep repeating ending with a layer of cheese.

Put it in the oven and cook until the whole thing is bubbly and the pumpkin is tender.

[Georgiana]

Thanks for the recipes. I will play with them in the next weeks. I think I ate more pumpkin this month than ever. Not complaining at all!

[mizski]

It's pumpkin time (or close to it)! I eat a lot of pumpkin in October and November when the fresh sugar pumpkins are available. Pumpkin soup, pumpkin custard, mashed pumpkin, etc. I like to serve or cook things in the shell too whenever I can. It just looks so nice.

Roasted pumpkin seeds are tasty too and I think we can have them in OWL. I need to start looking over my pumpkin recipes and begin making them Atkins friendly so I'll be ready.

p.s. We had a LOT of rain in June and July which affected a lot of crops like pumpkins. I hope it's not going to be a bad pumpkin year here.

p.p.s. Apples are doing great...too bad for me though as I am no where near the fruit rung. Next year though...

[Georgiana]

The stuffed pumpkin is baking in the oven. I mixed 2 parts sauteed ground meat and 1 part mashed cauliflower (mashed until it had the consistency of mashed potatoes), and added thyme, oven-dried tomatoes, oregano, chili paste (this is a stuff grandma gave me), onion, slivered almonds, garlic, salt and pepper. And I rubbed the inside of the pumpkin with coarse sea salt and freshly ground mustard seeds. I hope it tastes good, or is at least edible, because it's going to my dinner tonight.

ETA: Oh, I forgot about eggs. I added an egg too.

[Georgiana]

Tasted it. Liked it. Still needs some tweaking though. I used a 750 g Hokkaido pumpkin, ~2/3 cup sauteed ground meat (beef and pork), ~1/3 cup mashed cauliflower, 1 medium egg, 1/2 oz slivered almonds, 2 oven-dried sliced of tomato, 3/4 small onion (about 40 g), 1 garlic clove, 1-1/2 tsp thyme, 1 tsp oregano, 1 tbsp chili pepper paste, salt and pepper. And I rubbed the inside of the pumpkin with 1 tbsp ground mustard seeds and some coarse sea salt.

Next time I'll definitely add more onion. And I think I'll add more thyme too. I didn't find celery and pine nuts when I went shopping this weekend, but if I can get my hands on some, I'll add celery and use pine nuts instead of almonds. I'm not very sure what's missing from the recipe...

Anyway, I was afraid to use cauliflower, but that stuff tastes quite neutral and takes the flavor of the meat and spices, so pretty much all it does is help bind everything together. The stuffing didn't fall apart when I cut the pumpkin (yay! ) and the servings look quite nice.

[mizski]

That looks great, G! When I made mine, I was trying to emulate chestnut stuffing for the filling. Chestnuts are very rich and go well with the pork/beef. Pignolis (pine nuts) also had a similar richness. The original recipe called for bread crumbs and with those you could even put the meat in raw...sort of like a meatloaf mixture as the crumbs absorb the fats. Without the crumbs, I had to improvise and put cooked meats in instead. Never thought of using cauliflower as a filler/binder.

I also used a poultry seasoning which is sage, thyme, marjoram (3 : 1 : 1), freshly ground peppercorns and some chopped curly parsley if I have it. Never tried oregano. I think sage was a key ingredient though.

That said, I think this is one of those type recipes that you can play with and customize with whatever mixtures you like.