Chicken Pumpkin Curry

Pumpkin? For Fall? Groundbreaking......

All Devil Wears Prada jokes aside -I get it—the first week of October and I’m rolling out a pumpkin recipe. It’s almost too predictable, right? But hear me out for just a second.

This isn’t the pumpkin you’re probably picturing. We’re talking about Thai pumpkin—better known as kabocha squash here in the U.S. See? Not so clichéd after all.

Now, this particular recipe is one people have been asking me for, for well over 15 years. And until now, I’ve never shared it—not because it’s some closely-guarded, top-secret formula, but because I always told myself, “I’ll save it for my cookbook.” You know, whenever I get around to writing one (...right after “bank, Costco, pick up the kids, write a cookbook”). But since that hasn't quite happened yet, this newsletter has become my “living cookbook”—a creative outlet that lets me share recipes like this one in the meantime. So, I thought, why not? I’ll give the people what they’ve been waiting for: my pumpkin curry recipe. Don’t worry, I can still write my cookbook someday, and all will not be lost.

So here we are.

So, what makes this Chicken Pumpkin Curry so special? Honestly, I don’t even know if it’s so special. It’s just that a long time ago, I got fed up with two things:

1. Paying too much money for a tiny deli container of Thai pumpkin curry.

2. Always running out of the good stuff—you know, the pumpkin, the chicken, the veggies—while half a container of sauce was still sitting there. I wanted a curry with more substance, not just sauce.

So, I made my own. A big batch that lasts for days, packed with plenty of chicken, veggies, and kabocha squash in every bite. Basically, I created the Thai pumpkin curry of my dreams—delicious, plentiful, and a lot more economical than the restaurant version.

Trust me, you’re going to want this recipe in the months ahead (even if my West Coast friends are still waiting for sweater weather to make its debut). It’s the perfect dish for when you’re craving something special and festive. It’s one of those ‘always a hit, always a good idea’ recipes that you’ll keep coming back to.

And not to oversell it (though I do tend to do that with all my Kitchen Counter recipes), but this really is one of those dishes that, once I make it for someone, they can’t stop talking about it for weeks.

So if being cliche means making this Chicken Pumpkin Curry the first week of October, I will happily embrace that. Even Miranda Presley herself couldn’t argue with that.