C Squared W: Caribbean Kitchen: Pumpkin!

This week for the cooking challenge, I made two dishes with local pumpkin. They were so good!

Pumpkin Soup with Rice

4 cups of chicken broth

2 cups of water

1 cup or rice or small pasta (like orzo)

1/2 kilogram of pumpkin, cubed

1 T olive oil

2 carrots, sliced

1 onion, diced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

2 T Caribbean curry powder

salt and pepper, to taste

Heat up 1 T of olive oil in a large pot. Add onions and garlic and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, until slightly browned. Add chicken broth and water and bring to a simmer. Add carrots, pumpkin, and curry powder. Add rice to the broth and cook until softened (according to time on package). Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve with crusty bread and salad. This turned out so tasty. The curry powder gives the soup a delicious flavor, but not enough that it tastes like curry... so good! Sorry, we ate it all before I was able to take a photo!

{photo from Daily Unadventures in Cooking}

Mashed Pumpkin & Potatoes with Roasted Garlic

(serves 4 to 6)

1 head garlic

1 teaspoon olive oil

1 sweet potato, diced

2 potatoes, diced

1/4 kilogram of pumpkin, diced (half of the pumpkin chunks you can buy around here!)

1/3 to 1/2 cup sour cream

1 to 2 tablespoons butter

salt and pepper, to taste

Heat your oven to 350F. Cut a slim amount off the bottom of the head of garlic, just enough to expose the cloves (the flat part is the bottom, where all the pointy ends meet is the top). Coat the exposed cloves in olive oil and wrap up in aluminium foil so the exposed cloves are enticing upwards. Place in the oven and bake for 45 minutes total, about 15 minutes before you start cooking the potatoes.*

Place the potatoes and sweet potato in a large pot. Add enough cold water to cover and bring to a boil. Once water boils for a few minutes, add diced pumpkin. Remove potatoes and pumpkin after 10 to 15 minutes, or until soft. Reserve 1/4 cup of the cooking water and drain potatoes and pumpkin, and return to the pot. Mash with reserved cooking water, and incorporate butter and sour cream. Remove the garlic from the oven and squeeze the roast garlic right into the potatoes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

*We have a toaster oven, so for Dominica, this extra 45 minutes of baking was not too painful (read: my kitchen wasn't swelteringly hot just for some cloves of roasted garlic). If we didn't have a toaster oven, I would probably do some multi-tasking and roast or bake something, and just throw the garlic in there with it.

Thank you to Daily Unadventures in Cooking for the idea to add garlic to sweet mashed potatoes, and for the instructions on how to deliciously roast garlic!

The verdict: These were really, really good. Charlie wasn't feeling garlicky, so he had his potatoes sans garlic, but I had mine with it and they were so, so delicious! I cannot wait to make these again.