You can roast pumpkins, grill them, cook them, puree them, transform them into lasagna sheets, or turn them into a spread: culinary journalist Janneke Vreugdenhil has come up with the necessary recipes over the years for preparing the typical autumn vegetables. These are six of her favorites, all vegetarian.
Having lunch with pumpkin
1 The non-boring pumpkinsoup
Pumpkin soup can taste a bit bland and stale, but Janneke thought of that. Some apple and lime juice provide the necessary acidity, coconut chutney for some spice. You can use any kind of pumpkin for this non-boring pumpkin soup.
In the recipe, Janneke explains how to make the soup. A bonus tip: if you have trouble carving raw pumpkin, You can also cook it in the oven for a while.
2 lukewarm autumn Salad
Making a salad with what autumn has to offer, that’s what Janneke does in this recipe. The leaves of a head of oak leaf lettuce, a pumpkin, hazelnuts. Her tip: take a good look around the nature in the area. Sometimes hazelnuts are up for grabs. Crack and roast them until they are golden brown and fragrant.
It doesn’t matter what kind of pumpkin you use. The same is true for the blue cheese: use what you like or still have at home.
Main dishes with pumpkin
3 The beloved pumpkin spinach lasagna from janneke
When this recipe came in a few years ago NRC it became a family favorite of many of Janneke’s fans. She came up with this recipe during the National Week Without Meat, and builds the lasagna with layers of lasagna sheets, roasted pumpkin and creamy spinach. Slide the whole thing in the oven for about 40 minutes and you have a bowl of delicious food for the whole family.
She explains why the Week Without Meat was emphatically not the reason for Janneke to come up with this vegetarian recipe in her recipe.
4 Turkish sinkonta from pumpkin
Sinkonta in the traditional Turkish preparation is a casserole of pumpkin with onions and a concentrated puree of sun-dried tomatoes. For her variant, Janneke initially accidentally used paprika puree, but she liked it so much that she kept doing it that way. This sinkonta is therefore definitely not authentic Turkish, but it is addictively delicious.
Janneke further explains the preparation of this sinkonta in her recipe. And as a bonus, she explains to you right away what about that pepper or tomato puree.
pumpkin as side dish
5 sweet-spicy roasted pumpkin
The soft and sweet taste of pumpkin lends itself well to being roasted in the oven with all kinds of spices. Janneke immediately gives two options in her recipe: a more oriental variant with cumin and coriander and a more South American variant with chili pepper and maple syrup. Pieces of roasted pumpkin go well as a side dish with almost any meal.
For those who like to use as much of the whole pumpkin as possible: you can dry the seeds and roast them with some sea salt. A nice addition to a serving board.
6 Hindustani pumpkin puree
It has been a while, but when Janneke had to feed herself and her family for two months without a kitchen in 2006, she often joined her friend and neighbor Bidjma. She cooked all her delicious Hindu dishes loosely, without a recipe. But after Janneke hung her nose over Bidjmas’ pans for the umpteenth time, she got a recipe for a puree of stewed pumpkin, called khora.
The recipe uses massala and djeera (ground cumin seeds). Those ingredients were less easy to get at the time, but are now available often just in the supermarket.