Jack o’ Lantern Gluten-Free Filets + Breakfast Pumpkin Cheesecake
ILLUSTRATED RECIPES INCLUDED BELOW!
Ok! Celiacs and those with irritable bowel syndrome and those of us who are gluten-free by choice and like it, take heart. There’s more value you can wring out of a pumpkin than just scaring the kids at Halloween. We’re using our Halloween Jack o’ Lantern for toothsome Christmas goodies now. Talk about your Frugal Gourmet!
If you were beaten into frugality by parents who went through the Depression and were determined “never to be hungry again, no not me nor any of my people”, you probably know all this stuff already. But if not, listen up. It’s now cool again to be frugal. In our house, that means no vegetable end goes wasted but gets put into a container labeled “Future Soup” and used in weekly stock-making.
Even the Halloween jack ‘o lantern does not suffer the ignominy of the compost heap. We paint ours with its festive face, placing a tealight on top of the pumpkin (well glued-down with hot wax) for Halloween night, then remove the tealight, turn the pumpkin around and use it as a Thanksgiving centerpiece with other seasonal fruits and flowers. After Thanksgiving, the pumpkin is scraped of paint, baked, and both filets and chunks carved from it to use in cooking.
One of our favorite dishes is an Afghani entree of sauteed pumpkin filets covered with a delightfully savory sloppy-joe type ragu and finally a yogurt sauce gently scented with garlic and a touch of brown sugar. The dish is called Kadu Borani and is served over fluffy, long-grained jasmine rice. One gluten-free recipe for Kadu Borani is here and here is its graphical representation:
1.
Prepping pumpkin to be baked
2.
Slicing filets from the baked pumpkin
3.
Gluten-free dredge/breading for pumpkin cutlets: This time, tapioca & cornstarch with a little sorghum flour & spices. We used Cavender's Greek Seasoning (a favorite in our house) and mixed Italian herbs
4.
Brown both sides of filets in coconut or olive oil, after dredging in flour/herb mixture
5.
Plating the filets. Sweetened garlic-yogurt mix in background
6.
Simmering a one-person portion of ragu sauce. In this case we went veggie and used crumbled, soaked walnuts in place of hamburger meat. It was dee-licious and extra-nutritious!
7.
Ladle your meat or nut-based ragu over the pumpkin filets...
8.
Final plating with pumpkin filets, ragu & yogurt sauce, parsley garnish.
Awesome-sauce! Right?
Just a handful of ingredients you probably already have on hand and this dish is practically cost-free.
Other less intensive dishes can be made with pumpkin or other squashes, which are highly beneficial for those with celiac disease, irritable bowel syndrome and other conditions that require greater amounts of natural fiber added to the diet. One of my favorites is a recent innovation with this year’s jack o’ lantern cutlets:
5 Minute Breakfast Pumpkin Cheesecake
Now could you “diet” on your busy schedule if you had Pumpkin Cheesecake plus a mouthwateringly luscious cup (real, thanks to the Bear for an early Christmas present!) of Kona coffee for a quick out-the-door breakfast? You can prep all the ingredients the night before. Putting the Pumpkin Cheesecake in your serving bowl and making your tea or coffee is what takes the five minutes in the A.M. Here’s how:
1. Assemble the ingredients (coffee optional and used as an accompaniment for this dish in the A.M.)
Ingredients: pre-baked pumpkin chunks, strained or regular plain yogurt, agave syrup or stevia, half-and-half, grated fresh ginger, pumpkin pie spice & cinnamon to taste.
2. For one serving, place a cup of pumpkin cubes in glass bowl and pour half-n-half to cover halfway. Microwave uncovered for 2 minutes on high, or simmer on stovetop until half-n-half is boiling.
3. Remove pumpkin mix from heat, add yogurt, spices and sweetener to taste, mash with fork or puree with hand blender. I favor Blue Agave syrup or Truvia sweetener made from stevia, as both of these are low to no-gycemic and don’t metabolize in the body as sugar, which makes all the dishes I cook great for diabetics as well.
Additions: If you’re super-bulking your fiber, you can also add a tablespoon of ground flaxseed. If you’d like more high-quality protein, add the same amount of soaked crumbled walnuts or hempseed.
4. Though I have this “crustless”, you can line a bowl with gluten-free cracker crumbs – I use Glutino’s “wholemeal” crackers, with a teaspoon or two of agave syrup or honey and a drop or two of lemon juice just to hold the crumb together. Press into bottom of bowl.
5. Spoon the rich pumpkin mixture over the crust, or place in bowl just as it is.
Jack o’ Lantern Pumpkin Cheesecake
This is a breakfast yogurt that you can amp up the nutritional complexity of as described above if you wish. It’s also something you might find at a swanky spa or gourmet restaurant. You can serve this for an after-dinner dessert. If so, spoon mix over crust in a glass pie plate and make enough to cover the crust. Freeze until 1o minutes before serving. Thaw very slightly on the countertop, slice and serve. This dish is better scooped out though, a la cobbler.
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