Sweet Tender Pumpkin in Coconut Sauce(Parangikottai Paal Kootu)

Think Pumpkin people think the ripe orange color, but the young tender pumpkin is green in color with very tender seeds. I don't know how many of you have used it in your cooking, I rarely find that kind of young tenders ones in the grocery stores or farmers market here. This dish was made almost year and half before when my parents visited us. I love this young tender pumpkin and my sister who was in the west coast at that time, packed off couple of them from the farmers market there. The tender pumpkins have slight green color skin and the skin is also pretty edible because they are not thick like the yellow ones. A very simple dish made by adding jaggery(panela) & coconut, this dish absolutely tastes divine. So if you happen to see the young green pumpkin next time, do pick them up and try it out and let me know how you liked it. You can also do this with the yellow pumpkin if doing so, adjust the quantity of jaggery.



Preparation Time - 10 Minutes

Cooking Time - 15 Minutes

Serves - 4



Ingredients



Chopped Pumpkin pieces - 4 Cups

Powdered Jaggery(Panela) - 1/3 Cup or according to your sweet tooth

Grated coconut - 1/2 Cup

Rice flour - 1 Tsp

Salt - 1/4 Tsp

Ghee(clarified butter) - 1 Tsp



Method



1) Boil the chopped pumpkin pieces adding little bit of water and salt. Stir in between to cook evenly and add more water if required.



2) Grind the coconut and rice flour adding little bit of water into a fine paste and add this to boiled pumpkin pieces and simmer on low heat for around 5 minutes.



3) Now add the jaggery and simmer for 3-5 minutes till it completely dissolves and add the clarified butter and serve.



Note - Even though this is called paal kootu(paal meaning milk in my language) this version which we do in our house hold just uses coconut and no milk is involved.

Sending this to Halloween fiesta hosted by Vardhini of Vardhini's Kitchen.



Now to the answer of my previous post riddle, who carved the pumpkin. Check out the following pictures. I thoroughly enjoyed this carving and had to hide and click these photos.

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