Happy Halloween! How to Bake a Pumpkin - No. 161

Full of good stuff like Gruyere, French bread, sweet onions and cream

MY GRANDDAUGHTER CAME TO VISIT RECENTLY, and by the time she left I was singing ‘’Five Little Pumpkins’’ in my sleep.

The song followed me into the kitchen, too, so today’s post is how to bake one of those pumpkins.

In the early 1980s, a well-known Atlanta architect named Henri Jova, who had designed Colony Square and was credited with saving Midtown Atlanta from development, threw a Halloween party each year. I interviewed him once about his party food.

This pumpkin recipe was his pride and joy and something he had picked up in France. It was native to Burgundy, he said. I hadn’t baked his recipe in a while, and I remember when there weren’t many pumpkin buying options. You had the big jack-o-lanterns for carving and maybe you saw a few smaller pie pumpkins intended for baking.

Today, it’s pumpkins galore! I bought this 5-pound fat, round pumpkin from Trader Joe’s, rinsed it off, and started cooking.

In two hours time, I had dinner ready. Add a green salad and a glass of something else they produce in Burgundy, and you’ve got one heck of a Halloween!