This is a guest post from Gen at North Coast Gardening

This year for Halloween I tried something a little different. Instead of carving a cheap, fibrous jack-o-lantern pumpkin, I opted for a medium size sugar pumpkin instead so I could re-use it after carving for pumpkin curry!

This required that I carve my pumpkin on Halloween itself, and that I only leave it outside for the duration of trick-or-treating. Once the raiding marauders went home to eat candy, I brought my pumpkin inside and made curry.

This is one of the simplest dishes to make, and could totally be done in a slow-cooker if you prefer. The hardest part is carving the hard outer skin or shell off your pumpkin, the rest is just checking and tasting every so often.

You need:

a six-pound sugar pumpkin

2 cans coconut milk

Yellow curry (powder, paste, or fresh, to taste. If you want to make one from scratch, use the freshest (preferably whole) ingredients you can find. It goes something like this:

• 9 part turmeric
• 3 parts cumin
• 3 parts ginger
• 6 parts coriander
• 3 parts black pepper
• 1 part Cardamon
• 1 part nutmeg
• 1 part cinnamon (cassia)
• habanero to taste

Optional ingredients: (I love the simplicity of pumpkin curry with just pumpkins, but if you like a more chunky curry, go for it)

potatoes, carrots, Fresno peppers

What you do:

Get about a six-pound sugar pumpkin or other eating pumpkin (not the jack-o-lantern types that sit outside Safeway in huge boxes – they are fibrous and watery) and scrape out the guts just like you would if you were carving it for Halloween.

Then hack it in half so you can set the flat ends on your cutting board, and carefully cut the shiny outer shell off your pumpkin.  Take off the top and bottom stemmy bits, too, then cut it into chunks about 1-1.5 inches around. Don’t be too precise because it’s fun to have some of the pumpkin incorporate into the sauce and some stay chunky, so variety in size is great.

Put two cans of coconut milk into your pot or slow-cooker with half the spices.

If you want to add potatoes to your curry, add them now, and don’t add your pumpkin till you can slide a fork a tiny way into your potatoes.

Otherwise, add your pumpkin now along with any peppers you wish to use. When your pumpkin is still chunky but you can put a fork through the chunks, add sliced carrots if you want them. (If you’re using baby carrots instead of sliced, then add them earlier as they’ll need to cook longer.)

When everything’s generally soft and the pumpkin has fallen apart a bit, add the rest of your spices and simmer on low just a few more minutes.

I eat this dish on its own, no rice needed, but if you like rice with your curry, add some extra peppers or spices to the curry, so it will be bold next to the rice.

Gen is a landscape designer who loves to write about her favorite plants and the best organic gardening methods. Visit her website to learn how to control weeds organically and how to prune your garden plants with video tutorials.