In the photograph you can see I’ve served this with papaya ice cream, I’ll do the recipe for this icecream tomorrow. The balls are also served with a syrup, so it’s not strictly necessary to serve with ice cream.

Ingredients
120 gms Pumpkin
6 Tablespoons Sticky Rice Flour
1 Tablespoon Cassava Starch
50 ml Bi tua Juice
100 ml Sugar Syrup
50 ml Coconut Milk

Preparation
1. Clean and peel the pumpkin, steam for 20 minutes and leave to cool.
2. Mash the pumkin, add the sticky rice flour, cassava and mix together until thick. If the mixture if not a thick dough, add a little more rice flour.
3. Pinch off pieces and make small balls, approximately 1cm in diameter.
4. Boil a pan of water and cook the balls in the water for 3 minutes, remove and drop into cool water for 5 minutes.
5. To make the syrup, into a saucepan, take the bi-tua leaf juice, coconut milk and sugar syrup and heat to bring to the boil for 2 minutes.
6. Spoon over the pumpkin balls.

The pumpkin for this recipe is soaked overnight in a solution of dissolved limestone, it makes the outside crunchy when the pumpkin is boiled and the pumpkin won’t discolour so quickly as untreated pumpkin.

Ingredients
50 gms Chopped Pumpkin
4-5 Tablespoons Limestone Dissolved in Water
300 ml Water
150 gms Sugar
50 gms Crunshed Ice

Preparation
1. Cut the pumpkin into pieces.
2. Soak the pumpkin pieces in the limestone water, top up with just enough water to cover the pumpkin pieces. If there is some limestone powder in the bottom of the bowl it helps keep dissolved limestone in the water.
3. Boil 300 ml water with the sugar until dissolved.
4. Boil the pumpkin in this sugar syrup for 10 minutes to just cook it through, leave in the liquid to cool.
5. Serve the pumpkin with some of the syrup mixed with crushed ice

Another way to use up left over pumpkin, the pumpkin is cut into pieces and cooked in a coconut sauce and topped off with sugar syrup. This is typical Thai flavours.

Ingredients  for 2 People
100 gms Pumpkin
200 ml Coconut Milk
300 gms Sugar
200 ml Water
1/4 Teaspoon Salt

Preparation
1. Peel the skin off the pumpkin and cut into bite sized pieces.
2. Mix the sugar with the water and boil until the sugar dissolves. Add the pumpkin and cook for 10 minutes.
3. In a separate saucepan, simmer the coconut milk with salt for 1 minute and set aside to cool.
4. To serve place the pumpkin & a little syrup in a bowl and top off the coconut milk.

This simple fried dish of yellow curried pumpkins with pork is the last dish we’ll make from pumpkin for a while, now that all our halloween pumpkin has been used up! When I was young my sister and I would fight over who got to eat this pumpkin dish, but after a week of pumpkin dishes, I won’t be fighting over it now!

Ingredients
100 gms Pumpkin
70 gms Pork Mince
2 Tablespoons Thai Yellow Curry Paste
150 ml Coconut Milk
100 ml Water
1 Tablespoon Sugar
2 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
2 Garlic Cloves
2 Tablespoons Oil

Preparation
1. Clean and chop the pumpkin into a bite sized pieces.
2. Put the oil into a frying pan over a medium heat. Chop the garlic and fry with oil for a few seconds.
3. Add the curry paste and coconut milk, stir it until the curry is mixed with coconut milk.
4. Roll pieces of pork mince into small balls and add to the pan.
5. Add the sugar, light soy sauce and water, and fry for 1 minute. It’s better to put a lid on the pan so it doesn’t dry out.

Serve With
Thai Fragrant Rice