The Ingredients in Raw Meals - Pumpkin Seeds (Pepita)

Pepita

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin_seeds

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For the ship formerly named Pepita, see Maria Asumpta.

Roasted and salted pepitas

A pepita (from Spanish pepita de calabaza, "little seed of squash") is an edible seed of a pumpkin or othercultivar of squash (genus Cucurbita), typically rather flat and asymmetrically oval, and light green in color inside a white hull. The word can refer either to the hulled kernel or unhulled whole seed, and most commonly refers to the roasted end product. The pressed oil of the roasted seeds of a specific pumpkin variety is also used in Central and Eastern European cuisine.

They are a popular ingredient in Mexican cooking and are also roasted and served as a snack.^[1] They are often simply called pumpkin seeds in English, and (marinated and roasted) are an autumn seasonal favorite in the rural United States, as well as a commercially produced and distributed packaged snack, likesunflower seeds, available year-round. Pepitas are known by their Spanish name (usually shortened), and typically salted and sometimes spiced after roasting (and today also available as a packaged product), inMexico and other Latin American countries, and the American Southwest. In these parts of the world, they have been eaten since at least the time of the Aztecs^{[citation needed]} and probably much earlier, since squash was one of the three earliest plant domesticates in the Western Hemisphere, along with maize (corn) and common beans (collectively the Native American agricultural "Three Sisters", originating in Mexico).

As an ingredient in mole dishes, they are known in Spanish as pipian. These seeds can be found in speciality and Mexican food stores.

Lightly roasted, salted, unhulled pumpkin seeds are popular in Greece with the descriptive Italian name, passatempo ("pastime").

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