Pumpkin season is on full on now, and there are lots of gorgeous pumpkins in the stores. However, pumpkin in Bangladesh are little sweeter than what I actually get here. I always wanted to make the classic Bangladeshi dish with pumpkin, its called Kumror Chchokka (কুমড়োর ছক্কা). I always read about the dish in many Bengali literature and curious about what the dish is. Turns out there are many ways to do it but basically its with pumpkin with chickpeas.

I have seen many recipes using peanuts which adds an extra flavor. I wanted to make the simplest version of it so I have used only the basic ingredients. There’s overnight soaked chickpeas, cumin and basic spices like turmeric, cumin and coriander powder and half of pumpkin (almost 800grams).

I soaked 100grams of dry chickpeas overnight. It’s great to soak any dry beans before boiling them then it gets equal amount of water content and become soft easier. The more you soak, the more soft it gets, so always better if you can soak them overnight. Then I washed them couple of times and start boiling them with some salt, while I prepare the veggies.

Look how beautiful it is inside! The whole pumpkin was too big for one dish so I took only half of it, which was more than 800gram. I peeled and cut them in big dice, as Chchokka means DICE, like rolling dice, mostly due to the big square shape of the cut.

Next step would be to heat up some vegetable oil in a deep pan. I have used white vegetable oil because I did not want to overpower with flavor of mustard oil, which I love to use in my cooking. Then I added half teaspoon of cumin seeds, a bay leaf and a dried red chili. If you want, you can avoid dry chili but these are just for flavor, not heat. So once the cumin starts to pop, I added diced pumpkin cubes to the pan.

I stirred pumpkin dices very well to coat with cumin and oil. Then I fried them for a few minutes, to enhance the flavor. I added some salt too in this step to make the pumpkins bit soften. In fact I did not add any extra water, although it seems like pumpkins are very hard and won’t get cooked easily. Well, you can always add some water, but truly speaking it would taste much better if you cook without any extra water.

I have added one quarter of turmeric powder now, to add the colors. I stirred cooked them again for two minutes. The goal is to stir cook them in low flame so no extra water is needed.

As you can see, the edges of pumpkin dices look already soft, which means its half cooked already. At this point I added rest of the ingredients.

I added the boiled chickpeas, few green chili, cumin and coriander powder and then gave them a very good stir. I kept stir fry them in low heat, so they don’t get burned from the bottom.

Actually I have added an extra ingredient in this dish, which is sugar. Many people from older generation in Bangladesh used to add pinch of sugar to the dish, to enhance the flavor. However this practice is almost gone in Bangladesh over time, but since today’s dish is decade old, I am following the old recipe. So I added quarter spoon of sugar to the veggie and stirred again in the same way. As you can see in the photo, pumpkin look almost cooked even though I did not add single drop of water!

My pumpkin with chickpeas are almost done. I checked the salt before putting off the flame. Since pumpkin tends to be little sweeter and I also added some sugar to the dish, so it is better if you add salt little less than usual. You can always adjust the salt later according to your taste.

I am happy how the century old recipe of Pumpkin with Chickpeas turned out! It was so delicious that I had it finished in one sitting. So why don’t you try yourself and let me know how it taste?

Recipe: 3-4 Servings Prep time: 10 minutes, Cooking time: 25 minutes

Ingredients: 1kilo of Pumpkin 100g Chickpea (dried and soaked or canned) Spices and condiments: 2 Green Chili 1 Dry red Chili 1 Bay leaf 1/2 teaspoon cumin seed 1/4 teaspoon of Turmeric powder 1/2 teaspoon Coriander powder 1/2 teaspoon Cumin Powder 1/4 teaspoon of sugar 10ml Mustard oil/Vegetable oil 1teaspoon Salt

Instruction: 1. Soak dry chickpea overnight. Wash and then boil them with little salt. 2. Peel and dice the pumpkins in big square chunks. 3. Take a medium deep pan and heat oil. Add cumin seed, bay leaf and dry chili. Let them pop for few seconds and release flavor. Then add pumpkin chunks. Stir and coat them well with cumin and oil and cook for five minutes. 4. Add turmeric and salt and cook in low heat for five more minutes. 5. After five minutes of stir cooking, add cumin, coriander powder, green chili and boiled chickpeas and give a good stir. 6. Add sugar and continue cooking and stirring in low flame until pumpkins get soften and cooked. Check salt and add more if needed. When ready, serve with rice or hand made bread!