Pumpkin in Halogen Oven

The Introduction

Hello everyone, I hope that you are all doing just fine.

Now I want to tell you about this thing called pumpkin and the day that we prepared it in our convection oven or halogen oven or whatever you can call it, because they call it a lot of things and I just call it an aerogrill and people in Georgia call it aerogrill, if you want to know the truth.

So, I have already written an article about some pumpkins and how they are prepared and stuff like that, however, now I want to tell you about this pumpkin, which I prepared this way and this is the newest way, well, to be honest, I hadn't heard about it until I came up with that idea of preparing this pumpkin in this halogen oven.

So that I don't know whether you have heard about this recipe or not, but I assure you, that it's worth trying and that pumpkin prepared in this halogen oven is pretty delicious. Well, of course, it also depends on the type of pumpkin, you know, however, I think, that every pumpkin tastes great. Of course, there are some pumpkins which are sweeter than the other ones and I mostly eat pumpkin as a dessert, however, I know, that many recipes are for the main dishes and stuff like that and there are pumpkin soups and things like that and they are pretty good, too. Once I made this pumpkin puree, which was pretty good, however, it was like a dessert for me and not like a potato pie. They kind of are the same in a matter of consistency and stuff like that. Well, anyways, I will tell you about these pumpkin pieces here that we now have and the preparation process from the very beginning to the very end.

First of all, I must tell you that we have pumpkins planted in our yard and we take them and pick them and have them stored in a cellar or somewhere in a dry and cool place, and then we eat them whenever we want. That is just great, because you don't have to go out and search for pumpkins in the supermarkets and do some things, which you are too lazy to do. When you have pumpkins at home, you can just go to your cellar and take one and prepare it and you won't need to go out and walk and walk and choose and decide and then come back exhausted and start preparing the dish yourself. And maybe then you won't even be feeling eating the pumpkin because of all that walking and choosing and everything.

Though, it's good when you buy pumpkin at the supermarket, because you can choose that cut piece of pumpkin and choose just thatt piece, that you can eat and that will be enough for you, and when you are taking the whole pumpkin and you don't need the whole one, first of all, you just have to cut it and then choose a piece or some pieces and store the other ones in the fridge or somewhere, but mostly, you should store them in the fridge, if you want to know the truth.

Well, you may know these dark orange pumpkins with like a cylinder shape and that they are sold everywhere and they cost pretty cheap and are very delicious and easy to prepare. They are very easy to cut. Then there are those pumpkins, which are round and they are pretty popular around October, when it’s Halloween and people buy those pumpkins and cut the faces and have them in front of their houses and things like that -I haven’t really tasted them. I have cut the faces and celebrated Halloween with my host family in Germany and we had much fun then.

Anyways, there are other types of pumpkins too, and those ones have white thick skin and they are kind of like those round yellow ones, but they can be like an American football ball and they can be pretty large ones too, so that it’s not that easy to have them and cut them and do stuff like that with them. I thought that cutting them would be a problem and we would need some special gadgets for that and people usually cut them with that large sharp knives and things like that. I didn’t have anything like that at home in Tbilisi, however, we had something like that at home in Kakheti and we planned on taking them to Tbilisi, so that we could cut that pumpkin and eat it, or store it, because otherwise it would get spoiled some time later, because it was not in a dry or cool place in that room.

Well, those are the types of pumpkin, that we have planted in our garden and it’s a very common type of pumpkin there and everyone has planted it, who wants to have some pumpkin for themselves. They grow pretty large and then we pick them and take them home and store them in our cellar. My grandparents love pumpkin very much and I remember, when my grandmother used to make some pumpkin, she would boil them and when they were soft, she would take them out and have them beautifully put on that large plate. She would sprinkle some sugar on them, so that it was like a dessert and, besides, everyone there loved eating pumpkin with sugar and that’s why I always thought that pumpkin was a fruit and a dessert. I didn’t think about it as a dish or something like that. I was pretty surprised when I first heard of pumpkin puree or pumpkin soup or pumpkin in some cooking and things like that.

Preparation Process

Well, the preparation process doesn't need much of the things. In fact, it only needs to have some pumpkin pieces and that's just it. You don't need anything else. However, my grandmother used to prepare some pumpkin and she would sprinkle some sugar on those pieces on top of them and it was like a dessert and everyone loved eating it. However, I remember, my sister would take that piece, which didn't have sugar on it or she would take that topping off or suggest it to someone else and then she would eat the inside part of that piece.

So, this other day we decided that we would take that large pumpkin out and cut it and prepare it, though it was pretty large and it would be more than enough for us. We needed to think of something that we would do to other pieces of that pumpkin, because we were just going to prepare just a small part of it. We knew that it would be just for three of us, I guess, because others didn't like eating pumpkin and they wouldn't eat it, of course. So that we wouldn't need to consider them in that pumpkin preparation, you know.

Well, to tell you the truth, the halogen oven was not that large either to contain many pieces of that pumpkin, but it was just perfect size for the normal portion because if there were more pieces there, it would just get spoiled. It is because when it gets a little bit old, no one likes to eat it, so that it has to be thrown into the trash and you shouldn't do that. If you have some resources you shouldn't prepare more than enough of something and if there's some occasion, then you can prepare some other ones and that will just be it. There's always a better thing to prepare new dishes than to have some old ones. I mean, something that you prepared two days ago or something like that. That's why it's recommended to have things in small portions, so that you won't have to throw them away when you don't eat them anymore or something happened and you were not at home and you had all those dishes prepared some time ago and then they get old and stuff like that. You will just have to throw them away and that's pretty sad, especially if they are prepared by you and you put some effort, energy, time and money in preparing them.

Anyways, we had to think about how we could cut that large pumpkin into pieces. We thought that it's skin would be pretty much thick and hard to cut, so that we even had an axe brought here to get it cut. However, when my father took the pumpkin and tried to cut it first with the knife, it was cut pretty easily and then he realized that he didn't need an axe or anything just to cut that pumpkin. He cut it into two halves and then started cutting the one half into some small pieces and then, when he asked me whether those pieces were good in size or not, I told him to cut them into even some smaller ones. Well, now that we had all those things done, it is time to wash those pumpkin pieces and place them into the halogen oven and just turn it on and wait for the pumpkins to get ready.

I took those pieces of pumpkin and put the low rack into that halogen oven and placed those pumpkins on it and turned the oven for 60 minutes on 180 degrees Celsius. You know, at first, I wanted to have those pieces on the high rack, nevertheless, it was too close to the heater and I guess the pumpkin pieces would get burned on the top while leaving the bottom raw. That's why I decided to have them on the low rack and have them cooked for some time, one hour is not a little time and if you want to prepare them quickly, you should turn the heat up. But not that high either, because then it will get burned and the inside will be raw, I guess. However, some people like when it's kind of hard and not very soft. For example, my sister likes that raw feeling of pumpkin and she prefers it like that than the very soft one comparing to my father, who just loves the soft one and he says that it's not cooked if it's kind of hard.

Well, after some time of being cooked, I looked at those pumpkin pieces and they were kind of brownish on the edges. They still were not even halfway done then and if the edges are kind of brown it doesn't really mean that they are already cooked. I must say that the other larger pumpkin gets cooked faster than this one. This time we had this pumpkin and we had to prepare it, you know. Well, to be honest, I guess this kind of pumpkin is more delicious than that one. It still depends on the person and how they like pumpkins.

Anyways, after forty minutes or so I had another look at those pumpkins and they were kind of cooked already and they had some white things on them and I don't really know what that was, but it was not something bad. I guess that it was because it was being cooked. And it had this great smell of pumpkin that would make you want to eat them at once. Until then, they had to be cooked, you know. Well, I know some people who just eat pumpkin raw and they love it and I guess you could eat it raw just like you eat carrots or some other vegetables. I haven't tried that.

So, I decided that 50 minutes was enough and I didn't wait for one hour to pass and I just turned the halogen oven off and waited for the pumpkin pieces to get cooled down, so that I would taste them. In fact, that wouldn't be called tasting, because I would just eat that pumpkin piece, of course, that was just pretty obvious. I didn't know how the pumpkin would taste. Since it was my first time using halogen oven for baking pumpkin, it was pretty interesting how that pumpkin would taste and whether it was cooked well or not. And when I tasted it, it was just great. I mean, the taste was great, it was perfectly cooked and the bottoms were kind of hard and that was a great thing too. I didn't want the whole piece of pumpkin to be soft.

Well, as you see, everything was just fine and I was pretty satisfied with my machine and its cooking techniques and, to be honest, this halogen oven is one of the greatest things and everyone should have something like that in their homes, because it makes everything be prepared very easily and without much action, doing or whatever. You just place something in it and that's it. You can just do some other things in that time that it needs to cook those things that you placed in there, so that it's really convenient and efficient piece for your kitchen.

Anyways, if you don't want to boil the water and then put those pumpkin pieces into it and let them be cooked like that, you can just have your halogen oven turned on and put those pumpkin pieces into it and let them be cooked. They will be moist and delicious and just in perfect condition after that 50 minutes or so, and you can really enjoy your pumpkins.

There's another thing too. We had all those pieces of pumpkin left and, at first, we didn't really know where to take them and we had this hard time deciding,. We thought that we would keep them in the fridge and do something else. I had them wrapped in that plastic wrap and they were just perfect and they were pretty beautiful too, you know. It's like that you just bought in the supermarket those pieces of pumpkin or something like that and besides, I was pretty satisfied with my work done with wrapping those pieces. And I could then take any piece out and have it cooked if I want to, you know.

Well, that was about me preparing some pumpkin pieces into the halogen oven. I realized that it doesn't need anything else, you just place them into it and turn the heat on and that's it. And wrapping those raw pieces is a good idea because if you leave that pumpkin like that, it might not fit into your fridge -it can be pretty large-, so that you have to cut pieces and then you could wrap it with the wrapping paper and place them into the fridge that way.

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