Fall into Fall with Pumpkin and… Seafood!

By Rebecca Gardon

Between pumpkin lattes, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pasta and pumpkin carving, we’ve got a pretty good idea you celebrate fall like we do.

Would a bath of pumpkin puree be totally inappropriate?

Rather than digress down that drain, let’s cozy up to cooler weather with a few pumpkin-and-seafood dishes sure to warm your belly from here ’till Thanksgiving.

• Robust Thai Yellow Pumpkin and Seafood Curry from Food Network’s Nigella Lawson brims with pumpkin, salmon and shrimp swathed in a creamy coconut curry. One bite and you just may find you’ve been whisked away to India.

• Festive and fun! For one Halloween with Siegfried and Roy, our friend Chef Wolfgang Puck decorated individual servings of his finished Pumpkin Risotto by drizzling on reduced beet juice that looked like deep red blood. To wow your guests further, serve this dish alongside pan seared scallops, colossal wild Mexican shrimp or a lobster tail.

• Speaking of impressing your guests, the Barefoot Contessa’s Squash Soup in Pumpkin Bowls (pictured) looks almost too pretty to eat. We think we can manage it though. Mainly because we think this soup would taste even better alongside a toasty Baja rock crab melt!

• Alternatively you could put crab meat in the soup like John Besh does with his Pumpkin Soup with Crabmeat. The recipe is a favorite of his, and part of his holiday collection.

• We figure if something is good enough for the Ritz-Carlton, it’s definitely worth a try. The Palm Beach-based hotel’s restaurant, Temple Orange, features a decadent-sounding dish of Seared Scallops with Pumpkin Puree complete with crispy pork belly. Yes, please.

• Pumpkin may seem like a grown-up ingredient but you can get the kids in on it, too. Tortellini with Pumpkin Alfredo Sauce from Food Network Magazine aims to please the pickiest of palates. While the kids devour a bowl of it, you can enjoy it as a side dish to a nice piece of broiled fish such as tuna or salmon.