Colombian Mashed Pumpkin with Hogao (Poteca de Auyama)

No ratings yet

Pumpkin boiled, mashed and finished with butter, milk, broth and a spoonful of hogao, the Colombian sofrito of onion, garlic and tomato. That last ingredient is what separates it from every other pumpkin mash. Twenty-five minutes, four servings.

Prep Time5

Cook Time20

Total Time25

Course: Side Dish

Cuisine: Colombian

Keyword: Mashed pumpkin

Servings:

Calories: 248kcal

Author: Angela Giraldo

Ingredients

2 medium ahuyama Colombian pumpkin, peeled and seeded
3 tablespoons butter
½ cup chicken, beef or vegetable broth or water
¼ cup milk
Salt and black pepper

For the hogao

2 tomatoes diced
1 onion chopped
2 scallions chopped
2 cloves garlic finely chopped
A little oil for the pan

Instructions

Peel the ahuyama, scrape out the seeds and cut the flesh into chunks.
Put the chunks in a pot with water and a little salt and cook over medium-high heat until a knife slides into them without resistance.
While the pumpkin cooks, make the hogao. Heat a little oil in a skillet and cook the chopped onion and scallions with the garlic until the onion turns translucent. Add the diced tomato and cook, stirring now and then, until it collapses and the whole thing looks like a loose sauce rather than chopped vegetables.
When the pumpkin is soft, lift it out of the water, drain it well and mash it with a fork. Season with salt and pepper.
Stir in the butter, the broth, the milk and the hogao, adding the liquid a little at a time until the mash loosens to the texture you want, and cook for 5 minutes, stirring often.
Serve hot.

Notes

Hogao is the Colombian sofrito: onion, scallion, garlic and tomato cooked slowly in oil until the tomato collapses into a sauce. It is what makes this a Colombian mash rather than a plain one, and it is worth making properly rather than rushing, because undercooked hogao tastes of raw tomato. Add the liquid gradually. Pumpkin holds very different amounts of water depending on how ripe it is and how long it boiled, so the milk and broth are a guide rather than a measurement: stop when the mash falls slowly off the spoon. If it does go too loose, put it back over low heat and let some of the water steam off.

Nutrition