What the Pumpkin Becomes: Cavatelli, a Fresh Pumpkin Cocktail & Wood-Fired Pie

I posted three pumpkin transformations this fall: into pasta, into a glass, and finally into pie. Taken together, they make a better argument for pumpkin than almost anything labeled pumpkin spice. The point was simply to treat the pumpkin as an ingredient and see what else it could become.

The Reels were process films, not measured recipe cards. I went back through the archive and the working recipe files and tightened the methods into repeatable home-scale versions here. Where the archive already gave me a clear technique, I kept it. Where it did not give exact quantities, I have made the home adaptation explicit instead of pretending the old film was something it was not.

Before Pumpkin Was a Flavor

Long before pumpkin became shorthand for October, squashes in the genus Cucurbita were being shaped by people in the Americas. The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History traces squash domestication in Mexico to roughly 10,000 years ago. Squash was among the earliest domesticated plants in the Americas, with evidence that predates domesticated maize by about a thousand years.

Those early squashes were not the sweet, dense pumpkins we know now. Wild forms could be hard, bitter, and far less pleasant to eat. Generations of Indigenous growers selected, cultivated, and carried useful forms across the Americas. Squash became food, seed, vessel, storage crop, and eventually part of agricultural systems such as the Three Sisters, where squash, corn, and beans supported one another in the field.

When Europeans arrived, they encountered squash already cultivated widely and cooked in many forms. Historical accounts describe Indigenous cooks roasting squash by fire, stewing it, drying it in strips, and pounding dried flesh for later use. Smithsonian's history of the pumpkin as an American icon follows the crop from that everyday usefulness into the nineteenth century, when the pumpkin became a symbol of rural abundance for an increasingly urban country.

A recognizable American pumpkin pie appears in Amelia Simmons's American Cookery, published in 1796, the first cookbook by an American published in the United States. That history is worth keeping visible. Fire-roasting pumpkin, turning it into dough, or pressing it for juice is not about inventing a new ingredient. It is about paying better attention to an old one.

Choosing a Pumpkin for Cooking

For the cavatelli and pie, use a small, dense sugar or pie pumpkin if you can get one. Kabocha or another dense winter squash also works well when the goal is concentrated flesh rather than a particular shape. Large carving pumpkins tend to carry more water and less flavor, which makes both pasta dough and custard harder to control.

For the cocktail, start with a very fresh, firm pumpkin because it is going through the juicer raw. The flavor should read clean and vegetal-sweet, not like a spice mix.

Recipe 1: Fire-Roasted Pumpkin Cavatelli with Mushroom Conserva

The original archive film followed the making rather than recording a grammed recipe. This is the home-scale ratio I tightened from that method: pumpkin in the dough, pumpkin again in the sauce, and mushroom conserva at the finish.

Yield: 4 servings

For the Cavatelli

• 300 g fine semolina flour, plus more for dusting

• 180 g very well-drained fire-roasted pumpkin puree

• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

• 1 to 3 tablespoons water, only if the dough needs it

For the Pumpkin Sauce

• 1 cup fire-roasted pumpkin puree

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

• 1/3 to 1/2 cup reserved pasta water

• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

• Kosher salt and black pepper, to taste

• About 1/2 cup mushroom conserva, plus a little of its oil for finishing

Method

1. Roast the pumpkin. With a live fire, place a small whole pumpkin near a mature bed of hardwood coals and turn it as the skin blackens. Cook until the pumpkin feels completely soft when pressed. Depending on the fire and the size of the pumpkin, this may take 45 to 75 minutes. For an oven adaptation, halve and seed the pumpkin and roast cut-side down at 400°F until very soft, about 35 to 50 minutes.

2. Cool just enough to handle, scoop the flesh from the skin, and drain it in a fine-mesh strainer for at least 20 minutes. Cavatelli wants concentrated pumpkin, not watery puree. Mash or blend until smooth.

3. Mix the semolina and salt. Work in 180 g pumpkin puree until a shaggy dough forms, then knead for 8 to 10 minutes. The dough should feel firm and elastic, not sticky. Add water a teaspoon at a time only if dry flour refuses to incorporate.

4. Cover and rest the dough for 30 to 45 minutes. Divide into ropes about 1/2 inch thick, cut into short pieces, then drag each piece across a cavatelli board or the back of a fork to create a hollow and ridges.

5. Bring a pot of well-salted water to a boil. In a wide pan, warm the remaining pumpkin puree with the butter. Add enough pasta water to make a loose sauce, then season with cider vinegar, salt, and black pepper.

6. Boil the cavatelli until they rise and are tender with a little bite, usually 2 to 4 minutes depending on size and dryness. Transfer directly to the pumpkin sauce and toss hard enough for the starch and butter to tighten around the pasta.

7. Fold in the mushroom conserva at the end so the mushrooms keep their identity. Finish with a little conserva oil and black pepper.

If you want to take the mushroom side of the dish farther, I already wrote a second cavatelli built around it: Duck Confit Cavatelli with Mushroom Conserva and Apples. It is a useful companion recipe because it shows how the conserva behaves with pasta, fat, fruit, and acid.

You can also go straight to The Forager's Pantry for the current mushroom conserva. One important distinction: our service-style mushroom conserva is a refrigerated preparation. This is not a shelf-stable canning formula.

Recipe 2: Fresh Pumpkin Bourbon Cocktail

The newer pumpkin cocktail Reel starts with the pumpkin itself: cut open, seeds removed, peeled, and run through the juicer. An older house version used pumpkin puree, maple, bourbon, and Grand Marnier. For this version, the fresh juice is the better move. It keeps the drink lighter and lets pumpkin taste like pumpkin instead of pie filling.

Yield: 1 cocktail

Ingredients

• 2 oz bourbon

• 3/4 oz fresh pumpkin juice

• 1/4 oz Grand Marnier

• 1/4 oz dark maple syrup

• 2 dashes orange bitters

• 1 small pinch fine sea salt

• Orange peel, for finishing

Method

1. Cut a fresh pumpkin into manageable pieces, scoop out the seeds, peel away the skin, and pass the raw flesh through a juicer. Make only what you need and keep the juice cold.

2. Add bourbon, pumpkin juice, Grand Marnier, maple syrup, bitters, and salt to a shaker with ice.

3. Shake briefly but hard. The fresh juice needs the aeration and dilution that an Old Fashioned-style stirred drink does not.

4. Double strain over one large cube in a rocks glass. Express an orange peel over the surface and drop it in.

There is no cinnamon stick and no pumpkin-spice syrup hiding the vegetable. The pumpkin is the ingredient. That is the whole point.

Recipe 3: Wood-Fired Pumpkin Pie

The pie begins where the cavatelli begins: with the pumpkin taking the fire directly. The outside can go black. What matters is what happens inside, where the flesh steams, concentrates, and picks up a little smoke before it ever becomes filling.

This is a home-scale formula reviewed around the method in the posted pie film. The biggest control is moisture: drain the fire-roasted pumpkin before you measure it, and the custard sets far more cleanly.

Yield: one 9-inch pie, 8 slices

All-Butter Crust

• 160 g all-purpose flour

• 1 tablespoon sugar

• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

• 113 g cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

• 3 to 5 tablespoons ice water

Pumpkin Filling

• 450 g fire-roasted pumpkin puree, about 2 cups, drained well

• 150 g dark brown sugar, about 3/4 cup packed

• 3 large eggs

• 300 g heavy cream, about 1 1/4 cups

• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

• 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method

1. Make the crust. Mix flour, sugar, and salt. Cut in the cold butter until you have a mix of flat flakes and pea-size pieces. Add ice water a tablespoon at a time just until the dough holds together when squeezed. Form into a disk, wrap, and chill for at least 1 hour.

2. Roll the dough into a roughly 12-inch circle and fit it into a 9-inch pie plate. Trim and crimp the edge, then chill for another 20 minutes.

3. Blind bake the crust at 375°F with parchment and pie weights for 15 minutes. Remove the weights and parchment and bake another 5 minutes, just until the base looks dry. Set aside.

4. Roast the pumpkin. For live fire, cook a small whole pumpkin near a mature coal bed, turning as the skin blisters and blackens, until the flesh is completely soft. Cool, split, scoop, and drain the flesh. For an oven, roast halved and seeded pumpkin cut-side down at 400°F until very soft.

5. Blend or mash the drained pumpkin until smooth, then measure 450 g. Whisk with brown sugar, eggs, cream, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and vanilla until completely combined.

6. Pour the filling into the warm crust. Bake at 350°F for 45 to 55 minutes, until the outer few inches are set and the center still has a gentle wobble. Do not wait for the middle to become rigid; the custard continues to set as it cools.

7. For a wood-fired oven, work with a settled, indirect fire and a steady chamber temperature in the 350 to 375°F range. Keep the pie away from direct flame and rotate it as needed. The goal is even custard heat, not a scorched top.

8. Cool the pie completely, at least 3 hours, before slicing.

Same pumpkin pie. Just a different place to begin.

A Few Pumpkin Questions

What is the best pumpkin for pumpkin pie or pasta?

Dense, small sugar or pie pumpkins are easier to control than large carving pumpkins. Kabocha and other dense winter squashes also work beautifully when flavor and low moisture matter more than the label on the bin.

Can I use canned pumpkin?

For the cavatelli and pie, yes. Use plain pumpkin puree, not pie filling. For the cavatelli, drain it if it seems loose. For the cocktail, canned puree changes the drink completely; the fresh-juice version depends on raw pumpkin juice.

Do I need a wood fire?

No. The fire adds smoke, char, and a little unpredictability, but the recipes are written with oven adaptations where they make sense. If you do have a live fire, use it as a source of controlled heat and seasoning, not as a reason to burn the food.

The Useful Part of the Season

Pumpkin has spent thousands of years becoming more useful under human hands. That is more interesting to me than the idea that it belongs to one flavor, one dessert, or one month.

Turn it into dough. Press it into a glass. Put the whole thing close enough to the fire that the skin goes black, then make pie from what is waiting inside. The recipes change, but the question stays the same: what else can the ingredient become?