Not just pie – how to cook pumpkin in different cuisines: chefs share their favourite dishes, from soups to curries, just in time for Halloween and Thanksgiving
- In Hong Kong, Karys Plaxe, group pastry chef for Black Sheep Restaurants, and Manav Tuli, chef and owner of contemporary Indian restaurant Leela, are both fans of the fruit – yes, it’s technically a fruit
- Chinese executive chef Li Chi-wai at The Legacy House at Rosewood Hong Kong likes to use pumpkin in desserts, but also cooks it with pork and chicken
Although typically thought of as orange in colour, pumpkin’s 200 edible varieties range in colour from yellow to green, blue, purple, black and even white. Beyond its tough skin, the flesh of this fruit – yes, botanically it is a fruit – contains nutrients including vitamins A and C that boost the immune system, potassium to lower blood pressure, and antioxidants to guard against disease.
In addition, the versatility of pumpkin makes it easy to incorporate into all kinds of dishes, from salads and soups, to curries, side dishes and desserts. It’s no wonder many chefs enjoy cooking with pumpkin as it pairs well with numerous spices, herbs and other ingredients.
For Karys Plaxe, group pastry chef for Hong Kong’s Black Sheep Restaurants, and her team, autumn means making some 800 pumpkin pies for the group’s cake shop Butter and its casual American diner Burger Circus. Her tips for doing it yourself at home? Use canned pumpkin purée to ensure a smooth texture and consistency, combine it with pre-blended eggs – mixing spices like cinnamon and nutmeg with some sugar so they dissolve evenly – and bake the shells first so that they are flaky.
“When we add the filling and bake the pie, it’s low and slow; a pumpkin pie must not be rushed. Never baking on a high temperature, never baking with a high fan, always baking low and slow – so our pumpkin pies take an hour to bake,” she explains. “And ours take particularly long because I’m a big believer •in that deep-dish style of pie. Our pies will have around 1kg of filling, so it’s quite thick, and that just takes time, patience and love.”
The team makes pumpkin pies from early November until December, as there are customers who want to eat pumpkin pie for Christmas, not just for American Thanksgiving in late November.
For Plaxe, making pumpkin pies evokes memories of Thanksgiving at home in Arizona with her family. While they didn’t always eat the traditional turkey – sometimes it was ham or chilli-pulled pork – pie was the constant.
“My brother loves banana cream, and I was always a pumpkin girl. So we would always pick up a couple of pies from a local bakery until I got old enough to bake. I started making our Thanksgiving pies when I was around 14 or 15 years old. So we went from buying them to baking them.”
The restaurant group even makes pumpkin cakes and biscuits for dogs. The fibre in pumpkin is good for canine digestion, with the cakes’ and cookies’ ingredients also including peanut butter, flour, oats and a little oil and honey.