French fries don't have to be potato at all. During the war, they were made, for example, from ... pumpkins. But today this recipe is worth checking out for one purpose only. To find out for yourself why the substitute from the times of the worst famine did not catch on in Polish cuisine.
It is true that the season for discussing whether to organize Halloween, Dziady or all saints' marches in Poland is behind us, but pumpkins are still on top. Huge orange balls are flaunting in our gardens and on supermarket shelves. In popular cafe chains, you can drink pumpkin and spice coffee, and pumpkin cream soup with curry and ginger is perfect for warming you up on a cool autumn evening. What can I say, the pumpkin is conquering our cuisine and palates again.
Looking for an idea for another orange ball brought home, I looked at books from the war period and I was not disappointed. Most collections contain some kind of pumpkin variation. There are recipes for pumpkin marmalade with cranberries, or pumpkin casserole with millet. There is even a recipe for pumpkin marmalade enriched with ... benzoate pills (an unpopular preservative with sodium benzoate).
I decided on something simpler, i.e. a fried pumpkin, which - as I suspected - should look a bit like fries after preparation ...
Ingredients:
60 dkg of pumpkin
4 dkg of flour
4 dkg of lard or 3 tablespoons of oil
salt
a glass of milk
The female art of survival in Aleksandra Zaprutko-Janicka's book "Occupation from the kitchen".
Preparation method:
Cut the pumpkin into equal, one and a half centimeter thick pieces, salt a little, and rub in flour. When it becomes soft, put it on a dish. Pour a glass of milk into the pan and boil it a few times. Sprinkle the pumpkin with the sauce that forms in the pan (recipe from Elżbieta Kiewnarska's book "100 saving dishes of today").
Impressions:
I tried to prepare the fried pumpkin twice. The first time everything… went up in smoke. During frying, you have to be very careful, because a pumpkin dipped in flour is extremely easy to burn. I literally left the pan for a moment to set the tea and there was nothing to collect.
On the second attempt I did not leave the pan a step and this time nothing burned. At first, I thought that after frying, the pumpkin pieces would resemble potato fries. Meanwhile, after taking them out of the pan and draining the fat on a paper towel, it turned out that they are not crispy, but soft. As I carefully shifted them from the paper towel to the plate, some of them just fell apart in my hands.
The sauce from Kiewnarska's recipe is quite original. In order for the content of the pan to change its consistency, it must be reduced for quite a long time on low heat. Milk in combination with oil and fried flour tastes specific. When we pour this sauce over a pumpkin, in my opinion it does not add any flavor to it.
Unfortunately, the whole thing is bland, and after a while the pumpkin and sauce on the plate turn into an orange dough. The fried pumpkin from the military recipe is definitely lacking in spices and additives that would give it a distinctive flavor. One thing has to be admitted, the dish is surprisingly very filling, which means it fulfills its basic task during the occupation. Pumpkin in this form is unlikely to stay in my kitchen permanently, I prefer it in the form of cream soup with curry and ginger.