Disposition of commodities to prevent waste (7USC1431)

The way I hate to let things go to waste, you'd think I was a Depression-era baby. I manage to stop myself from reusing wrapping paper and aluminum foil, but I do get a sense of pride from having the least-full pile while volunteering at Wind Willow Farm because I knew they had a higher purpose, as part of pumpkin ale.

Little did I know, only one of the gourds is needed to make 5 gallons of pumpkin ale, and even worse, it is only boiled alongside the hops, leaving a whole mess of leftover meat. (The seeds, by the way, were tossed in our backyard, in the hopes that we'll have a little patch of pumpkins in time for the next beer batch.) Sadly, we don't have a compost pile, so what's a resourceful home brewer to do?

The obvious choice was pie filling, but it was already past the season for holiday desserts. And I knew I could never compete with my mother-in-law's and sister-in-law's skills in the sweet sector, especially with pumpkin bread. So I opted for the savory. First, I made a spicy pumpkin soup, but that used up only half of the roasted remains. In hunting for more recipes, I found risottos and pasta, but I opted for yet another ethnic dish, one that I hadn't planned on making because TJ is the expert in Mediterranean dips; in the end, I decided this roasted pumpkin hummus was unique enough for me to co-opt.

With the pumpkin already pre-roasted, I only had to toast a head of garlic. Perhaps the best part of this cooking session was learning how easy this is with just a bit of oil and aluminum foil (fresh from the roll, mind you). I plan on doing this more often for meals, considering roasted garlic adds a tad more flavor than the raw form.

With the garlic done, all the ingredients were ready to toss in the food processor. TJ is so die-hard that he makes his own tahini from raw sesame seeds, but I chose the canned stuff. (By the way, because we like spicy food, I added a glub of buffalo-wing sauce.) With so much pumpkin and so small a processor, I had to mix up the hummus in two rounds.

 

The hardest part about hummus, to me, is the consistency, and I was particularly worried with this recipe because pumpkin is watery (and even more so after boiling for an hour). The end result was only slightly grainier than the homemade hummus I get at the farmer's market (it did lack the thick smoothness of the packaged-with-preservatives stuff, though).

That last picture doesn't do justice to the amount of hummus this recipe created. We're still finishing off the soup, so we'll surely be noshing on pumpkin into 2012. And that doesn't even count the other two gourds sitting in our backyard, which don't have a home in any quaff soon, since all of our fermenters are full. I might end up making that risotto and pasta after all. But in the meantime, does anybody know any recipes that call for pumpkin hummus?