In honor of the holiday and the coming of fall, I wanted to take a trip to a pumpkin patch I had heard of on one of my favorite sites for ideas on things to do: Time Out London. The patch was at an old estate named Osterley House which is conveniently accessible by tube on the Picadilly line. To get there, take a West bound tube towards Heathrow and get off at Osterley. Exit the Osterley stop. Turn right, and follow the signs toward Osterley Park. You can't miss it.
The entrance to the property takes you down a long wooded driveway. Cows and horses graze in the pastures that line either side of the path, and the air is cool and clean. It smells of earth and fallen leaves. About halfway down, on the right side, there's a small flower and vegetable market where products that are grown on the farm are sold.
Continuing along the pathway brings you to a beautiful pond full of geese, swans and other waterfowl.
While beautiful trees line the south side of the pond, to the north, the trees open up onto a pristine lawn. The neo-classical mansion Osterley house sits regally above the plush green.
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To the right of the house is a beautiful little garden. Well, I'm sure its beautiful in spring and summer when things are flourishing and flowering in it. Today though, the leaves were the stars. Everything was on fire - a garden of phoenixes blazing in vibrant death.
When I finally came to the pumpkin patch, it had clearly been picked over and wasn't even worth a photo shot, but not to worry. I found some gorgeous pumpkins to satisfy my holiday craving framing the door to the garden greenhouse.
Mission accomplished, I made my way home making sure to stop and buy a pumpkin of my own from the farm market. All in all, a lovely Halloween treat.
To continue my Halloween festivities, I decided to go home and roast some pumpkin seeds. Inspired by a recipe from one of my new favorite blogs, The Passionate Cook, I set out to make some pumpkin magic.
First, I followed The Passionate Cook's recipe ... loosely.
I started with 100 grams of pumpkin seeds. Her recipe calls for unhulled seeds, but I could only fined the hulled version in Sainsbury's which turned out just fine.
I dumped the seeds in a mixing bowl, melted some butter - just enough to coat the seeds but not drown them - and poured the butter over the seeds and stirred making sure that they were all evenly coated.
Next, I threw in some sea salt to taste, I recommend at least two big pinches, and shook some Garam Masala on top - also to taste. I mixed this all together and then put the seeds on a baking sheet and into the oven at 150C (about 300F) for 40 minutes or so - until the seeds were crisp.
Once the seeds were good and roasted, I removed them from the oven and mixed in one clove of chopped garlic.
Serve warm or let cool completely and store in a glass jar for later snacking!
These savory seeds turned out great, but then I wanted to get a little creative. Some of my favorite fall flavors include cinnamon, chocolate and brown sugar. I thought I might throw these flavors in with some of my extra seeds.
Following the same loose recipe as above, I mixed two batches of seeds with a bit of brown sugar and cinnamon.
Next, I melted some dark chocolate and sprinkled it over half of the brown sugar and cinnamon seeds.
Finally, I took the remaining 100 grams of pumpkin seeds, which were still plain, and completely covered them in chocolate. **Note - when you take the chocolate seeds out of the oven, be sure to let them cool completely before trying to move them from the baking sheet otherwise they loose some of their chocolate coating**
I put all three of these roasted seed recipes in the oven separately each for about 40 minutes on 150C.
Viola! I ended up with four lovely batches of roasted pumpkin seeds to share with my flat mates, and a very festive Halloween day.
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