Yes pepitas and pumpkin seeds are the same thing
"it’s one of the great foodie crimes that so many thousands are discarded like yesterday’s coffee grounds, year after year."
Merlin Jobst
Basically my title says it all. This will be brief.
We were in the supermarket today and my husband bought some bread. He likes to have more than one kind of bread for his breakfast. Well we all have our little quirks. And this reminded him that he needed to buy some pepitas (he didn't know that's what they were called) to put in his home-baked bread. So we searched - and, as an aside, and much to our surprise - the macro organic ones were cheaper than Woolworths own. So we bought a packet of the ones shown on the left. Pepitas.
We could also have bought some pumpkin seeds like the ones on the right or a seed mix which was largely pepitas but also had pine nuts and some other things in there too. There was also a packet of pepitas that was called pumpkin seeds, so it suddenly dawned on us that they must be the same thing. And indeed they are. They may be from different kinds of pumpkin and therefore slightly different from each other, but basically they are all pumpkin seeds.
It seems some pumpkins are grown just for their seeds, because these varieties don't have the white casing on the outside. Therefore easier to process for we humans. You can, of course eat the husk but David was looking for the husked ones. They are softer. More the texture of pine nuts - and so can be used just like them too.
I thought I might also look at what you can do with them - and the answer is endless things - just google it - but I will give you three examples. One for you to give as a gift and two to eat sometime.
First of all - for the gift. This comes from Merlin Jobst who provided our title quote today and who is one of Jamie Oliver's helpers. The recipe is on the Jamie website.
It's actually quite complicated because it involves getting out the pumpkin seeds and cleaning them before roasting them with spices. I guess you could skip the harvesting of actual seeds and buy a packet of already cleaned ones - not the green inside bit though - the whole thing. And, it certainly appeals to the 'waste not, want not' view of the world. And it also makes a very attractive gift, as well as affording lots of opportunity to make the recipe your own.
Roasting, by the way, is highly recommended by most of the cooks I found.
I also should say that it is one of those much touted superfoods, which is why it was in the health food aisle as well as the baking section, and can cure just about everything - but particularly prostate cancer and depression I seem to remember. I don't know about all that but they are rich in magnesium and zinc as well as proteins and vitamins as well as countless other things. So add them to your granola or anything else you fancy. Pesto was one Idea I saw - with horseradish
My other recipe is for pasta from Nigel Slater. Yes I know. Nigel Slater again - but he always has something good, simple and interesting. He also has a jar in his larder.
"I have a jar of pumpkin seeds in the kitchen which I constantly pick at, and they often get added to food that will benefit from something nutty and crunchy, such as pasta."
The last one is for Herby avocado hummus - now how trendy is that? And this site - bon appétit - has lots of other rather tasty looking things.
Autumn is technically here so the pumpkins will be prolific before long. Next time you have one consider doing something with the seeds other than throwing them in the compost. Mind you, you might then get a huge pumpkin plant, like I have, which has taken over my veggie patch, provides shelter for the mint which is thriving because of it but is so far providing, perhaps, just one pumpkin.
