Pasta with Pumpkin
During a recent trip to Rome, all restaurants had pasta with pumpkin on the menu. I tried it twice and loved every bite.
Most people I know use pumpkins to decorate their front steps around Halloween, without bothering to eat the meat. That’s a great shame not only from an environmental point of view. The pumpkin tastes a lot better than it is given credit for. In savoury dishes, the inherent sweetness of the pumpkin has to be balanced by acid and salt, but once this is achieved, the result is delicious. Especially, when creamed up with ricotta and caciocavallo and served with good home- or handmade pasta.
Ingredients
300 g pasta
200 ml vegetable broth
100 ml white wine
1 shallot onion
50 g bacon
500 g pumpkin
50 g ricotta
50 g Caciocavallo cheese (Pecorino or other semi-hard cheeses can be used instead)
Olive oil, salt, pepper and fresh rosemary
Preparation
Cut the pumpkin in halves scoop out the seeds, cut the fruit in slices to make it easier to remove the rind and chop the meat finely.
Peel and chop the shallot onion
Chop bacon and fry it in a little olive oil.
Remove the bacon from the pan and fry shallot onions until soft and transparent.
Add chopped pumpkin to the saucepan and stir fry for a few minutes before adding the vegetable broth and white wine.
Add salt, pepper and Chopped rosemary to taste.
Let the sauce simmer for 15-20 minutes.
Blend the sauce with ricotta.
Pour the blended sauce back in the saucepan and mix with the fried bacon pieces.
Boil pasta and heat the sauce through.
Mix pasta and sauce and tiny cubes of Caciocavallo, and your pasta with pumpkins is ready to serve.
Down here in New Zealand and Australia pumpkin is geberally cooked as an accompliment to a roast dinner.It caramalises beautifully, along with roasted potatoes and Kumara, which is a sweet potato with yellow flesh and purple skin and originally from the Andes. It was widely cultivated by the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand, the Maori
How interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Kumara in Europe, but maybe it’s just sold under a different name. I’ll be sure to look for it now:)
I have been side tracked. I am planning to go to Italy and recall a list of must sees for 2016 I think you posted a day of two ago.
Side tracking is the point of all good travel experiences in my opinion, so I hope you enjoyed it:) We haven’t done a post on must sees for 2016, but you can find some highlights from last year here: https://italiannotes.com/best-italian-notes-2015/. Hope you’ll have a wonderful time in Italy.