Creamy Pumpkin Pasta. I did a poll over on my Instagram asking if people liked to eat pumpkin. I was quite surprised that a lot of people voted no! I wonder if the answer would be the same if I asked about butternut squash (my favourite vegetable!) Pumpkin is very similar to butternut squash and I presume people are put off eating it with the association of Halloween. With a creamy, sweet flesh, it is perfect for my Creamy Pumpkin Pasta. If you can’t get the Halloween image of pumpkins out your head, use butternut squash instead.
If you enjoyed my Creamy Pumpkin Pasta, see my other Pasta recipes
Recipe
Serves 4
Difficulty level rookie
Ingredients
- 1 small pumpkin
- 5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
- 300g dried rigatoni (use any shape you like)
- 250ml double cream
- 200g Parmesan
- 1 small onion, very finely chopped
- Large handful of pine nuts, lightly toasted
- Packet of sage leaves, half the leaves chopped and half kept whole.
- A couple sprigs of rosemary
- Vegetable stock cube
- Salt and pepper
- Olive oil
Method:
- First prepare the pumpkin for roasting. Heat the oven to 180C. Half the pumpkin, scoop out the seeds (keep to roast, if you like) and peel one half of the pumpkin. The skin has wonderful flavour and caramelises when cooked.
- Chop both halves of the pumpkin into similar sized small chunks.
- Toss the pumpkin chunks in one or two large roasting dishes (try to keep the peeled and unpeeled chunks separated) with a little oil and the rosemary sprigs. Roast for around 30 minutes until soft but not falling apart.
- In a frying pan over a medium heat, add a drizzle of oil, the chopped onion, garlic and the chopped sage leaves. Cook slowly for around 10 minutes until the onion is soft but not coloured.
- Once the pumpkin is cooked, cook the pasta in boiling salted water, retaining a 500ml jug full of the cooking water before draining. Crumble the stock cube into the retaining pasta water.
- Place the unpeeled, roasted pumpkin, onions, garlic and sage in a blender with a good ladleful of the pasta water. Blend to a paste. If you don’t have a blender, mash with a potato masher.
- In a large frying pan over a medium heat, place a drizzle of oil and then the pumpkin mix. Add the cream gradually and stir to make a creamy sauce. Add more of the pasta water to thin out the sauce (you are unlikely to need it all). Grate in the Parmesan and stir to melt. Stir through the remaining, unpeeled pumpkin chunks. Season with plenty salt and pepper. Add the pasta to the sauce and stir to combine.
- Crisp up the remaining sage leaves in a pan drizzled with a little olive oil over a high heat. They crisp up really quickly, don’t let them burn.
- Serve the Creamy Pumpkin Pasta sprinkled with crispy sage leaves and toasted pine nuts.
