Pan Roasted Pumpkin

Ingredients

• 1
  
  pie pumpkin
  
• 1
  
  tablespoon chili powder (I used New Mexico sundriied chili powder from Chimayo – use your favorite)
  
• 2
  
  teaspoons salt
  
• 1
  
  tablespoon olive oil
  
• 6
  
  tablespoons unsalted butter
  
• 16
  
  sage leafs
  
• 1/4
  
  cup dark brown sugar (loosely packed)
  
• 1
  
  tablespoon adobo from chipotle in adobo
  
• 1/2
  
  cup low salt vegetable broth
  
• 
  
  juice from 1/2 a lemon
  

Directions

1. Prep the pumpkin. I won’t lie – this is a pain in the ass. But it’s worth it! Cut the top and the bottom off of the pumpkin. Using a sturdy peeler, go ahead an peel that thing. That is the PITA part. When it’s peeled, cut it in half and remove the seeds. Clean those of all of the goo and stringy stuff and save them. Scrape the rest of the stringy goo out of the pumpkin.
2. Heat the oven to 350. Spread the seeds on a baking sheet, and toss with 1 tbs olive oil, the chili powder, and 1 tsp salt. Roast these in the oven until they are crunchy, stirring every few minutes.
3. Cut you cleaned pumpkin into 16 even slices. Heat 4 tbs butter in your biggest pan – I have a 24″ cast iron that I used. It’s gigantic and heavy as hell and I love it. Arrange the pumpkin slices on their sides in the pan – if it’s not big enough you will need to work in batches. Sprinkle the pumpkin with a tsp of salt and let it get nice and brown on the under side. While they are browning you will want to move them around and keep an eye on them so everyone is even. Once one side is deeply browned, flip them and after a minute or two add the broth, sugar and adobo. Flip the slices twice so the are completely coated and that deep brown side is up again. Now let them cook / simmer over lower heat until they are tender. Remove them to a platter. Squeeze the lemon over them.
4. Don’t burn the seeds!
5. Add the remaining butter to the pan as well as the sage leaves and stir until the sage is just cooked. Scoop the leaves and sticky goodness over your plated pumpkin. Sprinkle the whole thing with toasted seeds (you won’t need all of them) and serve it up. Yum!