Have more pumpkin than you have time? Rye-bread it.

There I was, standing in front of the fridge with an empty stomach and quite an empty mind, too. An empty stomach couldn't wait for meat stew, an empty stomach couldn't even wait for a half an hour for a lovely soup. So this stomach of mine, together with the mind, produced the idea of breaded pumpkin. A nice one.


I used quite thick slices of pumpkin, but a bit thinner ones would have been better for the seasonings to have an influence on the insides of them too. Although I used quite fresh rye bread, it would be easier to use some that is a few days old or even dried.


Rye-breaded pumpkin

Some pumpkin slices
Shredded rye bread
Flour
1 egg
Salt, pepper

1. Season the flour with salt and pepper, beat the egg, heat butter or oil in a frying pan.
2. One by one, roll the pumpkin slices in flour, in the beaten egg and finally in shredded rye bread (try to press as much bread on them as you can), then fry them.
3. When you have removed the pumpkin slices from the frying pan, you can add some salt to the egg and cook an omelette to go with them.

I ate the whole thing with garlic cream cheese and sweet apple puree. The rye bread coating was nicely crispy and kind of made me feel Estonian. Don't worry about browning it too much, it won't happen that fast. Simple, yet...simple. Again, a glass of cold milk is a must-have.

Jolly brussels sprouts in pumpkin puree

Colourful food does lighten the mood and vegetables do lighten a meal. So a hoorah to this summer-coloured lighten-everything dish. Brussels sprouts are still quite a new discovery for me and seem fun to cook with. As I was popping them into pumpking puree, I couldn't help feeling glad it was really food in the saucepan. Well, because...it did look really good.


The recipe was adapted from a cookbook, I made it for two people as a side dish to go with grilled chicken breasts. I substituted heavy cream with milk and didn't add onion (or else I could have put...well, a lot of onion in there. I did want it to be about pumpkin).


Brussels sprouts in pumpkin puree

100 g pumpkin, minced
1 tbsp butter
1 garlic clove, minced
salt, pepper
a bit of sugar
turmeric
1 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp mild mustard
140 g brussels sprouts

1. Melt butter in a saucepan and cook the pumpkin in it, covered.
2. Add garlic, season with salt, pepper, sugar and turmeric. Then add milk and cook, covered, for about 10-15 minutes.
3. Puree the mixture, add mustard and pour back into the saucepan.
4. Make crosswise cuts into the stem ends of the brussels sprouts (so that they cook through better) and add them to the puree. Cook at low heat for about 15 minutes.

I didn't really imagine how the flavours of pumpkin and brussels sprouts would match together before making this dish, but they really completed each other. The puree with its sweetness surrounded the slightly bitter brussels sprouts and when bitten, these flavours melted together. The textures were really harmonious and when eaten together with meat, the creamy pumpkin also took the place of sauce.

All in all, a really nice and uplifting side dish. Although, when my mother tried to serve some three remaining brussels sprouts to my father (she had left them for him to try), the jolly vegetables were sadly left onto the plate with only some pumpkin puree eaten from around them. But that's just dad.