Dinner in a Pumpkin ‘brings fall into perspective’
Autumn takes Sheila Vitulli back in time to the shores of Sacheen Lake, where her grandparents had a cabin.
When she was growing up in 1950s Spokane, her grandmother would prepare one of her garden-grown pumpkins at home, then pack it up and take it to the lake to be baked in an old wood stove. The scent of roasted pumpkin would linger in the crisp, woodsmoke-filled air while the hearty dish warmed and filled her belly.
Some 60 years later, Vitulli, 67 and a grandmother herself, prepares Dinner in a Pumpkin a few times every fall, especially if she’s expecting company. The old family favorite always serves up a sense of nostalgia alongside a helping – or two – of moist, meaty squash.
“It just brings fall into perspective,” Vitulli said. “It brings back warm memories. On a cold night when it’s snowing or raining and you’ve got a fire in the fireplace, it’s the perfect meal.”
Plus, she said, “It travels nicely.”
The stick-to-your-ribs ground-beef filling is presented like a gift, wrapped in a bright orange, lidded bowl.
In her submission to “In the Kitchen with … ” Vitulli wrote, “We have a great recipe for fall that has been in our family for more years than anyone knows.”
While her grandmother grew her own pumpkins and onions in her garden in Spokane’s South Perry neighborhood, Vitulli, who lives in the Garland District, gets most of her ingredients at Costco.
Vitulli uses frozen beef patties because they make it easier for her to measure the meat. She also uses canned button mushrooms, but fresh ones would work, too. So would crimini or shitake mushrooms.
The recipe calls for cream of chicken soup, but cream of mushroom or cream of celery soup could be used instead.
At some point, water chestnuts were added, but Vitulli isn’t sure when. She doesn’t remember her grandma using them, but she likes their crunch.
When she lived in Hawaii, Vitulli used Hawaiian sweet rice in the dish, which she continued to make in autumn, even in tropical temperatures.
She also said she thinks a pumpkin is a great place to pack Thanksgiving leftovers, such as turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes – maybe cranberries, too.
Overall, the dish is easy to make and very versatile. Home cooks can place almost anything they want inside a pumpkin.
“You could use chicken,” Vitilli said. “You could adapt it to however you want it. You can make it your own. Our daughter is vegan.” She makes Dinner in a Pumpkin with tofu and vegetables.
“I think you could put white beans in here,” Vitulli said. “If you wanted color, I would say add carrots or bell peppers.”
Otherwise, “As far as presentation, it’s not really pretty. It’s very hearty.”
Vitulli might garnish the dish with cilantro or parsley or edible flowers. But she doesn’t add salt or pepper. She lets diners season it to taste at the table.
And she lets her husband Bruce, 59, serve as the designated pumpkin carver.
“That’s all I do,” he said. “Then I eat it. She always does the cooking.”
Vitulli, a retired police officer, left Spokane in 1965 after graduating from high school. She met her husband in Southern California, and they moved to the Big Island sight unseen after their honeymoon in Fiji. Vitulli said she called the State Department, asking, “What’s like Fiji, but in the U.S.?”
They’ve been married 21 years, settling in Spokane about six years ago after looking for an affordable place to spend their retirement.
The last time she made the dish, she roasted the seeds at the same time as the pumpkin. The seeds were done first, and Vitulli offered them to her husband as a snack while they waited for their Dinner in a Pumpkin.
“Because you have all this other stuff in there, it seems like the pumpkin is more moist,” he said. “And it’s fun.”
Vitulli used to serve it to her kids before they went out trick-or-treating.
These days, “It’s really fun to serve it to the grandkids,” she said, noting they particularly like to have their own, individual pumpkins and scoop out pumpkin flesh along with meat and mushrooms.
Before baking, they can draw faces on their little gourds, customizing their dinners. They don’t, Vitulli assured, eat the drawn-on skins.
“It’s comfort food, definitely. It tastes real good, and it’s easy,” she said. And, “It’s really good leftovers the next day.”
Dinner in a Pumpkin
From Sheila Vitulli
1 medium pumpkin
1 onion, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds ground beef
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 (4-ounce) can sliced mushrooms, drained
1 (10 1/2-ounce) can cream of chicken soup
2 cups cooked rice
1 (8-ounce) can water chestnuts, sliced
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut off top of pumpkin and clean out seeds and pulp. Reserve seeds for roasting.
In a skillet, sauté onions in oil until tender. Add meat and brown, then drain. Add soy sauce, brown sugar, mushrooms, and soup. Simmer 10 minutes. Add cooked rice and water chestnuts.
Spoon mixture into pumpkin shell, leaving about 1 inch from the top of the pumpkin. Replace pumpkin top. Place stuffed pumpkin on a baking sheet and bake 1 hour, or until pumpkin is cooked through and tender.
Remove pumpkin top and serve from the pumpkin, cutting slices of the pumpkin to serve along with the filling.
Yield: about 6 servings
Note: Small pumpkins can be used for individual servings. Larger pumpkins might need a longer baking time.
Nutella Brownies
From Sheila Vitulli
Here’s another favorite from Sheila Vitulli. Serve this with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or chopped hazelnuts on a chilly autumn night after Dinner in a Pumpkin.
1 1/4 cups Nutella or other chocolate-hazelnut spread
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
3 eggs
Baking spray or butter, for greasing the pan
Combine first three ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Pour batter into greased baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
Note: For more fudgy brownies, use only 2 eggs.