roast pumpkin with cheese fondue

OCTOBER IS FOR PUMPKINS. The beautiful, symmetrical, bright orange squash evokes images of red orange brown maple leaves swirling along dirt paths, big puffed-up tom turkeys strutting outside a fenced-in garden, and kitchen tables spread with newspaper for pumpkin-carving.

Would we enjoy our pumpkins so much if we had them for more than a month or two? Or does their scarcity a luxury make?

The longer you think about the question, the less time you have to make delicious recipes with pumpkins while they are here.

Roast Pumpkin with Cheese Fondue, from Gourmet

Because I follow the simple, delicious recipe to the letter without adapting it, I am linking to its original online iteration. The basic premise of the “fondue” is that you hollow out a pumpkin which acts both as baking container and vegetable concoction. Once the pumpkin is emptied of its stringy contents and the seeds cleaned, seasoned, and popped into the oven to bake for their own fun snack, you layer toasted baguette slices, shredded Gruyere and Emmental cheese, and a cream/nutmeg/salt/pepper/broth concoction inside of the pumpkin until it is full.

Then, you place the top of the pumpkin back on, brush the outside of the pumpkin with oil, and bake it until the pumpkin flesh is soft and the bread and cheese inside is puffy and delightfully gooey.

Go sit upon the lofty hill,
and turn your eyes around,
where waving woods and waters wild
do hymn an autumn sound…
“The Autumn,” Elizabeth Barrett Browning