Now in winter we are proud to have stored our own pumpkins from our garden. You can also buy regional pumpkins in supermarkets. Since we had a good harvest, there was enough pumpkin soup, pumpkin as oven vegetables, pumpkin goulash and much more …

While gossiping in the village, I offered my neighbor pumpkin, she still has enough of her own, but told me her favorite pumpkin dish! Sounded great and in addition, she promised that there are no child-deterrent pieces of vegetables in it :-). And indeed, our children love the creamy risotto too!

To give the whole thing our personal touch and to make it even richer in spermidine, there is a sophisticated topping with mushrooms and pumpkin seeds.

😉 Dear neighbor, thank you very much for the recipe, it is included in the hit list of particularly family-friendly dishes!

A pumpkin with a crumbly consistency and little water content is suitable for this dish. The most common would be a Hokkaido. We personally love pumpkins with gray, firm skin and orange flesh, such as Crown Prince, Muscade de Provence or Blauer from Hungary, they grow well in our gardens and can be stored for a long time in a cool, dark place.

---

Ingredients (4 people)

Risotto

• 500-800 g pumpkin (crumbly variety like Hokkaido)
• 100 g butter
• 1 onion
• 400 g risotto rice
• 1/8 l white wine
• 1 l vegetable or beef soup
• 60 g parmesan cheese
• olive oil
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 2-3 pinches of cinnamon
• 1 pinch of ground nutmeg
• Salt pepper
• Chilli (chopped pod or powder)

Topping

• 100 g mushrooms
• 1 handful of pumpkin seeds
• 30 g sugar
• 30 g butter
• 3 sprigs of thyme
• salt

---

Preparation

Slice and core the pumpkin. If you have a Hokkaido pumpkin, you can fry the halves whole with the skin on. Process other varieties into larger cubes without a shell. Then you make a marinade from approx. 5 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 teaspoon of honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, chilli, salt and pepper, which you brush with the pumpkin pieces and then fry in the oven at 180 ° until they are very soft . This takes about 30 minutes.You can now start with the risotto.

• 

• 

Finely chop the onion and sauté with half of the butter (50 g) until translucent. Add the rice and sauté briefly until it too is translucent. Deglaze with wine and add soup. If you don’t have fresh soup, you can use soup powder and water. Let the rice simmer for about 18 minutes and stir again and again so that nothing gets stuck. Finally stir in the remaining butter.

In the meantime, clean the mushrooms and cut into 5 mm thick slices. Prepare all ingredients for the topping.

Take the soft, cooked pumpkin out of the oven. In Hokkaido, scrape the soft pulp out of the skin with a fork and discard the skin. If the peel has already been removed, mash the pumpkin pieces with a fork until you get a puree without pieces. First stir the pumpkin puree and then the parmesan into the finished risotto.

• 

Prepare the topping just before serving. To do this, heat the sugar in a saucepan until it becomes liquid, quickly add the butter and 2 sprigs of thyme and stir, then immediately add the pumpkin seeds and mushroom pieces and, if necessary, take the saucepan off the heat for a short time so that the sugar does not burn. Salt a little. The mushrooms let some water through the salt and the caramel remains liquid.

• 

Briefly toss on the warm stove and arrange everything quickly before the caramel cools down and sets. Garnish with a sprig of fresh thyme.

---