All photos benjamin reynolds 2018
Ingredients
Pumpkins
Pumpkin seeds
Salt
Your last bit of specially blended cinnamon
honey
avocado oil
a oven
So, this is two recipes in one largely because you’re sort of doing it all at the same time. De-stalk them gourds with a knife, then cut them in halves starting from the smooth plateau that results from the first cut (the second cut goes much more easily than the first, which might make you question what you’re even trying to do). To scoop the seeds and pith out, the recipe I read recommended a melon baller, which I just happened to have and was very effective. Separate the seeds into a colander, we’ll get to those later. For right now, we’ve already preheated the oven to 350F and are placing our halved gourds on a baking sheet.
While this is going on, we’re gonna rinse our pumpkin seeds, separating them from the pith and really have much of an impact on that pumpkin slime. After what turns out to be an hour and roughly twenty minutes, get those pumpkins and squash out of the oven and allow to cool for at least a half hour. Set your blender up. Alright, now end up meticulously scooping all the pumpkin out of the rind into the blender with the last bit of some cinnamon you’ve blended a while ago, about a tablespoon of impulse buy honey and just keep blending that stuff until you get a nice, smooth puree. Jar it.
Alright, now that we have a baking sheet empty of pumpkins, lets get those pumpkin seeds blanching because you read a youtube comment some time back about how to pull the bitterness that pepitas can impart to mole from a user whose family passes down a recipe. We’ll blanche it for about 5 minutes, rinse them again, and then set them out to dry on our baking sheet overnight. Bake them the following afternoon, dress them with avocado oil and salt before popping them in your oven that was pre-heated to 250F for a little over an hour. Bam! You got pepitas!