Pumpkin Preserve

Morabah-e-Kadoo Tanbal or Pumpkin Preserve

It’s pumpkin season people! The last vestiges of summer fun and grilling were stamped out by the pumpkin brigade that comes around every fall. The pumpkin spice folks take a sledgehammer to summer flavors and pronounce their arrival with each and every pumpkin or pumpkin spice flavored dish that comes onto the grocery shelves.

The whole pumpkin spice craze is a mystery to me and I only even knew about it once I met Mrs. Unmanly Chef.

One of the first dates Mrs. Unmanly Chef and I went on was to a local Afghan restaurant (Helmand) where they served one of her favorite dishes. It’s basically a sweetened piece of pumpkin with a yogurt sauce. This isn’t quite that, but it always reminds me of that dish that she loved. If you want to make the dish she loves, which is Kaddo Borwani, click here.

This is morabah kadoo tanbal (or just kadoo). Technically kadoo means squash or gourd, but a lot of people call this preserve morabah kadoo too.

But the technical term for pumpkin in farsi is kadoo tanbal or lazy squash. Iranians, always judging.

My grandmother would always make this for us and she would use pickling lime to really firm up the pumpkin so it would be kind of crunchy. It was so good. I couldn’t find pickling lime and didn’t feel like ordering it off of Amazon so I just made it without it.

This works so well with so many things, it’s perfect on toast or if you want to make something with actual pumpkin in it rather than just the pie spice mix.

With pumpkin season upon us, this is the best way to make use of all those pumpkin patch excursion pumpkins. The hardest part of this dish is just cubing the pumpkin meat. But other than that it’s a piece of pie. PUMPKIN PIE! sorry.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 lb of cubed skinned pumpkin

5 Cups of Sugar

8 to 10 Cups of Water

2 Tsp. Salt

2 Tsp. Orange Blossom Water

2 Tsp. Cinnamon

Method

Either buy pre-cut pumpkin or use a real pumpkin. Start buy cutting the top off and scooping out the seeds and stringy parts.

Then first cut longitudinally down the lines of the pumpkin to give yourself a bunch of pumpkin crescents. Then with a sharp knife cut the pumpkin crescent into parts to ease skinning the meat. This is a long process, I had a friend over and he helped me with this prep.

Once all the meat is skinned and ready, place them in a large pot. Then add your sugar, water, salt, orange blossom water, and cinnamon. Simmer for 3 to 4 hour. You want the pumpkin to have a slight crunch to it and the water to be syrupy.

This keeps for about 1 to 2 months in a jar in the fridge.

Enjoy!