Cooking
Delicious creamed pumpkin leaves(muboora) with caramelised onion and mushrooms.
When we in school we always used to joke about how embarrassing it would be be to write in English about some of the food we ate at home. The perception was that the affordable food would make us look bad. We did not have any books, magazines or tv shows that showed our food as something to be celebrated. It was like how could you write about having sadza with curdled milk, pumpkin leaves or okra. This is food that is for the most time dirt cheap or free. In other words, poor people food and no one wants to be associated with that.
It makes me so happy to see so many blogs people posting food that is accessible to a lot of Zimbabweans and lets us celebrate that. I like to also see the creativity that comes through it. Re-imagining and reinventing our food as well as tell our own stories.
Most of all I hope I create food and other things that my son will be proud of. I want to go to school and not be ashamed that last night he had muboora just like a Italian would say about their lasagna.
Now to todays recipe. I made creamed muboora with mushrooms and caramelised. My aunt(mom’s older sister) makes a delicious creamed muboora with fresh(like straight from the cow) cream. She uses the same recipe I use for muboora and then adds cream at the end. Yum!
I adapted Julia’s Album recipe for sauteed spinach, caramelised onions and mushrooms for this recipe.
Muboora and parmesan cheese. Yum! That is all I can tell you. This recipe has many steps and you will need to use all your pots!
- Prepare pumpkin leaves and cook them.
- Caramelise onions in a separate pan for about 30 minutes.
- Cook mushrooms and garlic in another pan.
- Add the pumpkin leaves and mushrooms to the onion.
- Make the sauce.
- ENJOY!!!!
I know but it is so worth it I promise you! Here is the recipe:
Creamed pumpkin leaves(muboora) with caramelised onions and mushrooms
Ingredients
Caramelised onions
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 3 onions sliced
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
Mushrooms and pumpkin leaves
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 10 or 15 small mushrooms sliced
- 3 garlic cloves minced
- pinch of salt
- 3 cups pumpkin leaves
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
Cream sauce
- 1/3 cup heavy cream
- 1/4 cup milk
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Instructions
Pumpkin leaves
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Boil half a cup of water in saucepan. Remove the bark from the pumpkin leaves and chop roughly. Add the baking soda to the water and add the pumpkin leaves, reduce heat to medium and cook for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and drain.
Caramelized onions
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Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil on high heat in a large skillet, when oil is heated, add sliced onions and cook on high heat for about 10 minutes, constantly stirring with spatula. The onions should start to brown, but without burning (a couple of onions may be burnt here and there, but overall they should not be charred).
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Reduce heat to medium and continue cooking onions for 10 more minutes, continuing to stir, as onions brown even more without burning. At this point add just a pinch of salt over onions.
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Continue cooking for 10 more minutes on medium or low heat, stirring occasionally to make sure onions don’t stick to the bottom of the pan or burn. Total you should have cooked onions for 30 minutes.
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Remove from heat and sprinkle onions with a small amount of balsamic vinegar to deglaze the pan. Using spatula, mix the onions, scraping the bottom of the pan and coating onions with a pinch of balsamic vinegar you just added.
Mushrooms
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After you have started cooking onions, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in another pan, and add sliced mushrooms and minced garlic. Add just a pinch of salt. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook mushrooms and garlic covered for about 20 minutes, occasionally stirring.
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Add cooked mushrooms to the pan with caramelized onions, add pumpkin leaves and stir on low heat.
Cream sauce
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Add heavy cream, milk, Parmesan cheese and 1/4 teaspoon salt to the mushroom-onions-pumpkin leaves mixture on medium-low heat and mix. Stir to coat on low heat for about 5-10 minutes until Parmesan cheese melts and starts to coat the vegetables.
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Serve with sadza.
