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Pumpkin or “Garaa” as pronounced by Morrocan, is one of the most important vegetables in Morocco.
It is available in Moroccan markets all over the year and is a mandatory element to prepare the Moroccan Couscous, all other vegetables can be dispensed to prepare couscous except the pumpkin 
More Morrocan recipes can be found here!
Pumpkin benefits
Pumpkin has a lot of impressive health benefits:
- It is very rich in Vitamin A that certainly help protect our eyesight.
- It contains about 94 percent of its weight in water, which makes very low in calories. A good option for weight loss diets.
- It contains many vitamins and minerals that help boost our immunity.
- …
What I like the most about pumpkin is its versatility. It is delicious and easy to use in many vegetarian or vegan recipes.
Due to its sweetness, you can use it in many sweet recipes, with cakes, pancakes… As you can use it too in a savory recipe. The limit is the sky for what you can make using this incredible vegetable.
Moroccan CARAMELIZED pumpkin
Ingredients
In this caramelized pumkin recipe, you will need the following ingredients:
- 1kilo fresh pumpkin
- 3 table spoons of brown sugar (or honey)
- 50g of butter
- 1 tea spoon of cinnamon
- some cinnamon sticks for more flavor (Optional)
- 1 small tea spoon of orange flower water (Optional)
- Almond and white sesame seeds for decoration
Instructions
- Peel the pumpkin and cut it immediately, then steam it. In the boiling water used for steaming you can add some cinnamon sticks for more flavors.
- Using a knife, check if the pumpkin has become tender, then smash it gently and put it in a non-stick pan.
- Add the sugar or honey, butter, cinnamon powder, and orange flower water.
- Put the pan on low heat for 40 minutes while stirring occasionally.
Blanched fried almonds for decoration
In a bowl put the raw almonds, cover it with hot water and let it aside for 10 minutes until soften.
Drain it from the water and place it in a kitchen towel. Rub the almonds with the towel until its skin is removed, if there are still some almonds with skin you can remove it gently using your fingers.
Now your almonds are blanched and ready to be used. You can use them this way as you can also fry them for more crunchiness. In Morocco we usually use fried almonds for decoration.
To fry blanched almonds, all you need, is some vegetable oil and a pan. Put the oil on a medium heat until ready to fry.
Add carefully the blanched almond and keep stirring until the almonds get a beautifull golden brown color.
Remove the almonds and dry them using a paper towel. Let them cool until serving time.
Dress up your caramelized pumpkin!
Put the pumkin in a serving dish. Decorate it using fried almond or nuts, put a bit of white sesame seeds in the middle.
Here is my final result:
This is one of the most delicious Morrocan side dishes. Moroccans serve it with usually with all meat based meals: Tangia, the famous meat tagine with dried plum or with Moroccan roasted meat dish.
You can also serve it as a dessert with dried fruits. I love it with Caramelized fig 
Do you love Moroccan food?
If you are a Moroccan cuisine lover like me, you will love the following recipes:
2 thoughts on “Moroccan Caramelized Pumpkin”
Great content! Super high-quality! Keep it up! 🙂
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to create my own blog and would like to find out where u got this from.
thanks a lot