Pumpkin Juice

I Love Harry Potter, I can't stress that enough.  I mean I have a golden snitch tattoo for god's sakes. That's my elder wand in the picture.  I''ll spare you my rant about how Harry should have ended up with Draco, not Ginny.  Anyhoo, obviously I was gonna try to recreate the food from the book.  This is my take on pumpkin juice.  Most of the recipes out there are not so much pumpkin juice but apple juice flavored with pumpkin.  My other problem with recipes out there is that they use canned pumpkin; I'm not a huge fan of juices from anything cooked, it tends to dull the flavors.  I use fresh pumpkin; eating pumpkins are sorta hard to find, so if you can't find any, just use butternut squash it tastes exactly the same.

makes about 2 1/2-3 cups of juice

700 gm peeled, seeded, chopped pumpkin*
1/2 cup demerara sugar
1 1/2 inch ginger, sliced and smashed
1 stick of cinnamon, snapped into several pieces
juice of 2 lemons
juice of 2 oranges
small pinch of salt

also you'll need some cheese cloth

*how finely you chop it depends on how good a blender you have.  I use my mom's vitamix and got away with 1 1/4 inch cubes. The worse the blender, the smaller the cubes.

1. combine the sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and 1 cup of water into a small saucepan. bring to a boil over medium/ medium low heat. Take off of the heat, cover and let steep for at least 1 hour
2. remove the ginger and cinnamon, discard. Move the syrup to a blender along with the pumpkin, lemon and orange juices and a small pinch of salt. blend until fairly smooth
3. strain threw a fine mesh strainer lined with a double layer of cheese cloth. You'll need to use the cheese cloth to wring out the juice from the pulp. Serve chilled.