Pumpkin Dessert (Turkish Style)

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Ingredients :

3 kg. pumpkin (peeled and 1 to 2 finger-thick sliced)
1 kg. sugar

For decoration : walnut crunchs

Instructions :

1. Settle the pumpkin slices side by side as a layer in a wide pot, and over one more layer if necessary, and sprinkle all of the sugar over pumpkins.

2. Put the lid over the pot and keep it aside for a night (or 12 hours).

3. The next day (or 12 hours later) you will see that the pumpkins exuded and swimming in their own juices (nearly 1 litre).

4. Now put on the oven and high level of heat to get it boil vigoriously, just for a couple of seconds, then get the heat to a low level to keep the pumpkins boiling, but not vigoriously.

5. Depending on the type of the pumpkin, it gets softened approximately in an hour. But still you must check with a fork time to time.

6. Wait for it to cool, then get out of the pot gently.

7. Sprinkle walnut crunchs for decoration, if you like.
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Tips :

* The pumpkin in my location, Turkey, is a typical fat pumpkin :) The pumpkin/sugar proportion is for that classical pumpkin. But there are a lot of variety of squashes, of which I can’t know the proportions with sugar.

* Pumpkin is e very juicy fruit. When we blanket it with a sugar layer, from low concentration in pumpkins to high concentration of sugar covering them, its juice exudes and approximately in 12 hours (or roughly an overnight), amazingly you can see that the pumpkins are shrunk and floating in its own juice. Every drop of extra water you add will dilute the taste. Its always better to be a little bit patient, wait for an overnight for it to exude its own juice and cook the pumpkins in their own juice.

* Don't wait for all of the juice to dry. There will be some juice left in the pot at the end and as the dessert gets cooled, you will see that the juice will get concentrated as well. If you dry it all at cooking phase, the pumpkins will be too dry, sticky and hardened as they cool.    

* At the beginning its better to chose a wide pot, for all of the pumpkins should be cooked in the boiling juice. You can settle the pumpkins in two layers, but no more. Otherwise the topmost third layer cant be cooked.

* After cooking the pumpkins, some uses them to prepare other kinds of desserts, and some (as it’s done classically in Turkish cuisine) sprinkles a lot of walnut crunchs over and services as is.
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For questions : bidi@isnet.net.tr