A pumpkin round-up: savory and sweet

Before November is over, let's talk about pumpkin for a little bit because YES PLEASE.

1. Pumpkin chili

This chili is decidedly savory and (big surprise) I love it. It is vegetarian as written but I think it'd go great with meat, which is how I'm going to make it today. Kayla - who brought us the tomato paste freezing tip in a previous post - blends the canned tomatoes before adding them, which definitely takes it to the next level.

I highly recommend doubling the recipe and making jalepeno cheese cornbread muffins to go alongside!

2a. Roasted kabocha salad

Trying out another recipe from Vegetarian that I have had bookmarked (literally, ha) for a while. I always steal the kabocha from the tempura pile; it's absolutely my favorite pumpkin (so starchy!).

2b. Oh wait, this is my favorite pumpkin:

Sweet, savory, and tangy.

4. Pumpkin bread

Kathy loves to reminisce about the pumpkin bread I made six years ago when Kenny helped me cut and roast sugar pumpkins and we made the bread from homemade puree.

(It also didn't hurt that I put chocolate chips in the batter.)

We love using this Orangette recipe, but we cut the sugar in half so we can enjoy putting the (optional?!) chocolate in it. I've written it as a doubled recipe (so you can use up a can of pumpkin, or if not you can make the pumpkin chili, see point number 1 above) so you can do one loaf plain (which a lot of our family loves) and the other with chocolate and/or walnuts. We decided we like chocolate best, no walnuts.

Pumpkin Bread with Chocolate Chips
adapted from Orangette

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 t baking soda
1/2 t baking powder
1 1/2 t salt
1 T cinnamon
1 t ginger
1 t nutmeg
1/2 t cloves

2/3 c water
1 t vanilla

12 T unsalted butter, at room temp
1 1/4 c sugar {this is halved from Orangette's recipe}

4 large eggs, room temp
2 cup pumpkin puree (if making homemade puree that is thinner in texture than canned pumpkin, you can reduce the water above)

1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease two 9x5 loaf pans.

Whisk dry ingredients together.

Beat butter until creamy, about 30 seconds, then add sugar and blend until lightened in color, abut 3 minutes. Beat in eggs one at a time.

Add pumpkin puree, and beat on low speed until just blended.

Add flour mixture in three parts, alternating with the water-vanilla mixture in two parts, beating on low until smooth and just combined.

Fold in chocolate and pour into pans.

Bake for about an hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan on a rack for five or ten minutes before unmolding to cool completely on the rack.