Hello, pumpkin!

Many years ago, my colleagues and I used to frequent a French cafe for lunch. All the staff there had fabulous French accents. I remember asking the waiter what the soupe du jour was one day and he replied, 'It is pumpkin, Pumpkin!' Pumpkin still reminds me of that day ...

This year's pumpkin crop is currently maturing in our back yard. So exciting! This week I harvested the first one:

You can't see the size from the picture but it weighed about 3 kg so I've put it into several dishes: four portions of pumpkin soup (one we ate for dinner, and the other three went into the freezer), steamed pumpkin chunks to jazz up a boeuf bourguignon, and a large batch of pumpkin scones.

Fun fact about pumpkin scones ... I don't much like making plain scones as I don't like the sensation of rubbing butter into flour, but pumpkin scones use melted rather than rubbed butter, so are much less faffy! Yaaaay.

900 g pumpkin, peeled and cut into chunks
50 g butter
2 eggs
3 cups wholemeal flour
3 tsp baking powder

Microwave the pumpkin until it is soft, then mash roughly and stir in the butter so it melts through. Cool the mixture a little, then add the eggs. Add the flour and baking powder and mix well to make a soft dough. Turn onto a floured tray and pat into a square or round about 3 cm thick. Bake at 200 degrees C for about 30 minutes. Cool a little, then break into chunks and serve with butter.

I like to freeze buttered scones to defrost for lunch on days when I'm hunkering down with a huge pile of editing work.