Pumpkin pasta

A rainy day at home.
Mark’s out tonight.
I’m out tonight.
Thought I’d front load all food prep instead of amplifying the noise of the witching hour this evening. We’re heading abroad on Friday so I need to empty the fridge.
Found half a pumpkin.
Skinned it. Diced it. Roasted it with olive oil and some salt.
For about 40mins to an hour. Forgot it was in the oven.
Mashed it up.
Then, boiled up some spaghetti.
Would have liked to use risoni, but had run out.
Drained it, having reserved some of the pasta water.
Put the mashed pumpkin in the now empty pasta saucepan and stirred it around with five heaped tablespoons of cream cheese and the zest of a lemon.
Would have preferred mascarpone but didn’t have any.
Waistline is grateful.
Then, returned the spaghetti to the same pan, stirred around so the pumpkin /cream cheese mixture coated the pasta.
Chopped it up very finely for gutsy Lexi and into smaller pieces of Zach.
Sprinkle grated cheese on top. Ideally parmesan, but cheddar will do just fine.

The verdict:
Zach refused to eat his lunch.
Was sent to his room for being difficult.
Had the same plate presented to him for dinner.
He ate ALL of it.
Every last mouthful.
(NB: He was having a carpet picnic whilst watching The Incredibles for a rainy day treat).

Lexi ate hers up.
All of it.
And when she rejected her dinner that same evening she recognised it on Zach’s plate and tried to steal it.

I squeezed some lemon juice through my portion and ground some black pepper on top to cut through the sweetness of the pumpkin.
Very nice indeed.
Will definitely make this as a starter for a dinner party, albeit with mascarpone.

Mark will be having leftovers tomorrow. Will see what he makes of it.