Pumpkin Salad

I came to love pumpkin only at much later part of my life, in fact just about three years ago. This is after a friend introduced me to the roasted pumpkin salad at Soup Spoon. I was so disappointed when they took the item off their menu.

So I decided to make it myself :)

And I love it to bits! It is easy to make and it looks pretty before I start eating it, haha! This is what I would have for lunch at least 2, 3 times a week when I am in KL. I would buy half a pumpkin during the weekend, slice everything up into big cubes and cook them over the next five days starting from the first day of the working week. It is easy for me because lunch is just me, and I like to keep it simple and fuss free so that I do not need to do too much of cleaning since I am working. Yes, even though I work from home when I am in KL, I am still working. 

The steps are really simple, and the below portion should be good for three servings:

• Skin half a pumpkin, de-seed it and cut it up into big cubes. Keep the cubes big, at least 3cm all around cube would be good. I sometimes cut it slightly bigger. If it is too small, you would run into the problem of soggy pumpkin, which I feel doesn't work well for this salad. 

• Boil half a pot of water and decide how much of pumpkin cubes you would like to have, and place the rest into a air tight container and leave it into the fridge for another day. 

• When the water boils, dump the cubes in. Once the water starts to boil again, leave it boiling for another two minutes. Use a fork to test the softness of the pumpkin. The fork should face just a tiny bit of resistance, going in and coming out easily. 

• Ladle out the pumpkin. Thereafter, this is the part that I do for myself and the environment - I leave the water one side and wash up the rice I need for the evening, and pour in the amount of pumpkin water that I need to cook the rice, which is usually pretty much everything. If there is still left over after the rice, I use the rest of the pumpkin water to cook my vege dishes. The rice tastes sweeter and has a slight fragrance that hubby and I both like. 

• This step is not a must, it is optional. You can roast the pumpkin for about 20 minutes to have that roasted taste. Usually I would throw something that is meant for the dinner into the oven too just so that I maximise out the electricity. If it is something that has a strong smell, I would usually wrap it up in a foil first before throwing it into the oven. The foil is good to keep the moist in the food. 

• If you prefer not to roast the pumpkin, you can go straight to setting up the salad. Throw in the salad leaves you like, fresh spinach or those salad boxes that you can get from the supermarket. Throw in some seeds, like pumpkin and sunflower seeds, goji berries, cherry tomatoes, corns. I sometimes pluck some of the basil leaves from our tiny garden to stir up some taste buds. I had once threw in those super thin strips of salted fish after the dressing, and mind you, it went well too, haha! You can use any dressing you like, but I always take it with balsamic vinegar. You can throw in some toast if you like, but make sure you do that only after the dressing. 

I would usually have a big bowl of this salad, which is the size of the bowl that is used to serve soup. This portion is generally good to keep my stomach happy for about 4, 5 hours. If I am especially hungry that day, I would throw in a few more cubes just to make sure I can last till dinner. 

I have never add fruits to my salad, because fruits and vegetables together at the same time usually gives me gas. If you do not have this problem, I think pineapple would be a great item to add in :)

Enjoy!