AUTUMN
2022
Let the CEO cook, fall is at the table
Autumn is undoubtedly one of my favourite seasons, the air becomes fresher, the woods give off warmth with colours ranging from yellow to orange and red, and the undergrowth begins to give life to the dance of mushrooms and animals rush to look for warm places for the winter. At the market counter, it is the season of pumpkins, artichokes, citrus fruits, and pomegranates, in short, a riot of flavours and clear and intense colours that lend themselves to warming up our coldest evenings.
I am not a chef but I like cooking and experimenting, perhaps because my food intolerances led me to study and understand how to continue to eat with taste, or perhaps simply because I have a mother who cooks beautifully and who naturally made me passionate.
Thinking about an ingredient and an autumn recipe, I thought about pumpkin.
Pumpkin is healthy, digestible, and easy to store, it is to watermelon as winter is to summer, it bursts with colour, flooding the kitchen and then the table with optimism. Botanists and nutritionists love it, as it is low-calorie (18 calories per 100 grams), and rich in vitamins A and C, potassium, calcium, phosphorus, and fibre. We can prepare it in a thousand ways and here I will propose two in particular.
Pumpkin cream
Ingredients for 4 people
Pumpkin 1kg
Vegetable stock 1lt
EVO oil 60g
Potatoes 200g
White onions 80g
Black pepper 1 pinch
Nutmeg 1 pinch
Ground cinnamon 1 pinch
Salt to taste.
To prepare the pumpkin cream, start by preparing the vegetable stock. Then move on to cleaning the pumpkin. Cut it into slices and remove both the external peel and the internal seeds; at this point, you will have to obtain 600 g of pulp, then cut it into cubes. Peel the potatoes and cut these into cubes as well. Peel the onion, chop it finely then transfer it to a pan with oil and let it brown over low heat. Once the onion has changed colour, add the pumpkin and potatoes. Also, add a part of the stock to cover all the vegetables. Season with salt and pepper. Cook over low heat for 25-30 minutes, adding more broth from time to time if needed. Once the vegetables are cooked, turn off the heat and blend everything with an immersion mixer, until you get a smooth and homogeneous cream. Then add the cinnamon, and nutmeg and mix everything.
For a touch of originality and also to make this dish even more special you can serve it richer with crunchy bacon and croutons or with Mazara red prawn tails and dried porcini mushrooms cooked in olive oil, garlic and parsley.
Fried pumpkin
Ingredients for 4 people
1 kg pumpkin
150g baked black olives
Garlic 4/5 whole cloves
½ glass of vinegar
Salt to taste
Cut the pumpkin into slices and fry in abundant seed oil. Drain it with a slotted spoon, salt them, and set it aside. In a separate pan, sauté the whole garlic in olive oil until it leaves its beautiful aroma in the oil, add the black olives and leave to flavour.
Add the pumpkin and vinegar and leave to flavour over a high flame.
A dish of the peasant tradition, very poor in ingredients but very tasty, excellent as an appetizer or as a side dish.
Credits to Laura Lo Mascolo
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