The Great Pumpkin

One of the sadder aftershocks of Hurricane Irene has been news that New England is short of pumpkins this year. Most of those in the Hudson and Connecticut River valleys drowned at the end of August. So it's seems fitting to salute the pumpkins that are making it to market, and now is the time those small, sweet sugar pies show up to liven stands with that intensely bright hunter's orange.

These volley ball sized pumpkins coming off the vine right now are actually squash, so you can cook them like a vegetable, if you don't want to bother making mousse or pie. You can chunk and braise the 'meat' with South Asian spices: cumin and fenugreek seeds, fresh ginger root, turmeric, cinnamon, coriander, and chili for a hearty side dish. You can grate the flesh and combine about 4 cups of it with a cup of soft ricotta, 2 eggs, a bunch of chopped dill, a diced onion, a cup of flour and a pinch of cayenne to make the most delicious pancakes. (If you're gluten averse, you can use chickpea or corn flour.)

Most easily, you can stick the whole pumpkin in the oven and bake/roast it at 350 until it collapses. Then you scoop out the flesh and puree it with a 2 or 3 tbsp coconut cream or creme fraiche or thick yogurt into mashed pumpkin you can spice up with nutmeg, allspice and a pinch of clove--or just cardamom, if you prefer. You can cook it any way you would cook a butternut squash.

You can clean out the seed cavity and stuff it with, say, the kale mushroom stuffing in How to Fix a Leek and Other Food from your Farmers' Market, baking the pumpkin until it's soft enough to slice. Or stuff it Thai style, with a coconut milk pudding that you steam by placing the filled pumpkin in the steamer and cooking until it softens and the pudding firms up. You can even pre-soften in in the microwave or oven, hollow it out and stuff the cavity with a butter, cheesy polenta and finish cooking in the oven until the pumpkin's soft enough to cut in wedges. This is really colorful, especially garnished with lots of chopped cilantro.

Best of all, you can clean and dry all those pumpkin seeds you took out of the cavity and turn them into a profoundly nutritious snack. Nothing could be easier--once they're cleaned and dried. Combine 2 cups of them with 1 tbsp corn oil, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp arbol chili powder, 1 tsp chipotle chili powder, 1/4 tsp ground cumin, 1/8 tsp ground coriander, 1/8 tsp ground allspice and a pinch of nutmeg. Mix everything together really well and spread the seeds out on a cookie sheet. Bake them at 300 degrees about 30 minutes, until they start to turn color. They should snap and crackle as they cool. You can store these in tins and/or give as gifts. They're great scarfed up alone or lightly sprinkled on a green salad or an avocado, added to chicken salad, sprinkled on whipped cream atop your pumpkin pie, tossed into your oatmeal. Remember, seeds are where the source of life is stored, so they're very rich in vital nutrients. And they come free with the pumpkin.