Cinderella Pumpkins: They can do more than decorate your front stoop!

Cinderella Stew

(recipe created with input from a few cookbooks including: “Pumpkin” by DeeDee Stovel, “Moroccan Modern” by Hassan M’Souli, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by Julia Child and friends, and a bit of my own brain juice)

1 cup of decent Bordeaux wine (quality does matter here)

2 Tablespoons of butter, divided

1 Tablespoon of olive oil for Dutch oven

Olive oil, enough to coat your hands and rub down a pumpkin

1.5 lb of Sirloin Tip Roast, cut into bite size pieces (pat dry with paper towel)

1 teaspoon salt (or so, I use about 2 pinches)

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 lb pearl onions, peeled (frozen works great, just thaw first)

8 oz (or so) baby Portobello mushrooms, cleaned, dried, and stems trimmed

½ cup of tomato sauce (plain, no added seasonings or anything)

2 Tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 Tablespoon brown sugar

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 bay leaf

1 cinnamon stick

6 whole cloves

¼ cup currants

½ teaspoon ground cumin (feel free to use more if you love cumin like I do!)

2 cups (about 1lb) butternut squash, peeled and cubed into bite sized pieces

1 Cinderella pumpkin

Rice

Pour a glass of Bordeaux to sip on while you cook.  Heat 1 Tablespoon of butter in a large sauté pan.  Add pearl onions and cook on medium high heat until they just begin to soften.  Add mushrooms, raise heat and stir constantly while sautéing for just 3 minutes more.  Turn heat off and set aside.

Heat the remaining Tablespoon of butter and 1 Tablespoon of oil in a large Dutch oven (cast iron is best) over medium heat.  Add meat, salt, and pepper.  Stir to coat the meat, DO NOT BROWN the meat!  Spread pearl onions and mushrooms on top of the meat, reduce heat a tad to avoid burning and cover the Dutch oven.

In a glass bowl, whisk together: wine, tomato sauce, minced garlic, vinegar, and brown sugar.  When thoroughly mixed, pour over meat and onions.  Scatter bay leaf, cinnamon, cloves, currants, and cumin.  Mix it all up with a wooden spoon incorporating any scrapings there may be on the bottom of the pan.  Bring stew to a boil, mix once more, reduce heat, and simmer coverd for 2 hours.

After the stew has been simmering for about 1 ½ hours, heat the oven to 350°F and place the rack on lowest setting.  Cut off the top of the pumpkin and scrape out the seeds and goopy, stringy insides.  REALLY make sure you get all the goopy strings out, they don’t feel or taste good!  Rinse inside and out, and pat outside dry with a dish towel.  Place pumpkin open end down on a cookie sheet or low rimmed oven safe dish filled with a half inch or so of water.  Rub the outside of the pumpkin down with olive oil to coat evenly.

Check your stew for flavor by tasting a spoon with a bit of the broth.  Adjust seasonings as necessary (I often add a few more drizzles of wine at this point and refill my glass).  Add butternut squash and mix well.

When the oven reaches temperature and you’ve added the butternut squash to the stew, place the Cinderella pumpkin on its cookie sheet with water in the oven and bake for 45 minutes, or longer if needed- until inside of pumpkin flesh pierces easily with a fork, but outside shell does not collapse.

Turn pumpkin shell open side up on cookie sheet (water should have evaporated, if not, get rid of it) and set aside.

Check your stew’s broth for flavor and pierce a piece of butternut squash.  Adjust seasonings as necessary.  If squash pierces easily with a fork, you are ready to transfer the stew to the inside of your pumpkin!  Cover your pumpkin with the lid from your Dutch oven or the uncooked "lid" you cut off the pumpkin, and place inside the oven again at the lowest setting possible or “warm” setting.

Cook 1-2 cups of rice (the kind that takes at least 20 minutes to cook) the way you normally would, except use beef broth for water or add beef bouillon to your water when it boils.

When your rice is ready, your stew should be as well!

To serve:  Spoon some rice on a dish. Spoon a scraping of pumpkin on top of your rice.  Spoon some hot stew on top of the rice and pumpkin.  Enjoy with a glass of left over Bordeaux or pumpkin beer!

Background:

Pumpkins are healthy!  Pumpkins adorn my front stoop every Fall, and I hate to let them sit there so long that they waste away- and we never carve every pumpkin I have on the front steps for Halloween…

So, I have really enjoyed finding ways to incorporate my pumpkin fall décor into our diets.  I find, the larger the pumpkin, the more watery the flavor and more coarse the texture- meaning, that the oven seems to be the best way to cook them!  What I don’t peel and dice for roasting in the oven, I tend to use as a serving dish for the stew in this recipe, or my pumpkin chili!

Additional Notes:

The Meat:  You can certainly use any old stewing beef for this dish.  HOWEVER, I have found that the Sirloin Tip Roast makes for a leaner and more tender stew!  For me, lean and tender is KEY and since red meat makes it to our dinner plates so infrequently, I might as well get it right and tasty.

Mushrooms:  If you think they are missing from the photos, you are right!  Turns out the baby bellas I thought were in my fridge- weren't.  No worries, Vidal probably liked the dish better as he isn't a big mushroom fan.

TIME:  I know this dish is time consuming.  I love my kitchen, and therefore enjoy spending the time in it that it takes to make this dish (admittedly tinkering on the computer and reading during the down times).  However, I know not everyone loves their kitchen-  SO, to cut some kitchen time out of this recipe, consider using your crock-pot!  You can sauté the onions and mushrooms, then put everything into your crock-pot, and go about your day returning to your kitchen in time to prepare the pumpkin in the oven and cook the rice!  You can even prep a day or more before by peeling and choping your butternut squash as well as cutting and cleaning out your pumpkin ahead of time and storing in your fridge (if you have room).

Personally, after finally getting my Julia Child Boeuf Bourguignon to taste right, and being enlightened by its AMAZING flavors, I have found it difficult to go back to using a crock-pot as it simply cannot compare to a cast iron Dutch oven!  So, I encourage you to make this dish on a day that you find yourself at home.  For me, that was yesterday as it was rainy, cold, and my errands could wait!

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