Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Method

1. 1Heat the oven to 150 °C (conventional, top and bottom heat) and line a rimmed baking tray of about 30 × 40 cm with baking paper. The oven heats while you clean the seeds. A low oven dries the seeds through before they start to colour.
2. 2Use a pumpkin sold for eating, never an ornamental gourd. Before you scoop, taste a small raw piece of the flesh: if it is clearly bitter, spit it out and throw away the whole pumpkin, seeds included, because cooking does not destroy the bitter substances. Scoop the seeds and stringy pulp into a large bowl (about 3 litres) of cold water and rub them between your hands. The seeds come loose and float to the top, so you can skim them into a sieve. Throw out any cut, mouldy or darkened seeds. A few threads left on the seeds do no harm.
3. 3Tip the seeds onto a clean kitchen towel and pat them dry on both sides, until there are no water drops left and the seeds no longer feel slippery. Water left on the seeds has to steam off before they can crisp.
4. 4Weigh the dried seeds (115 g is about 1 cup) and put them in a medium bowl. Add 1 tbsp olive oil and ½ tsp salt for every 115 g, and toss until every seed looks shiny with oil.
5. 5Spread the seeds on the tray in a single layer, with no seed lying on another. Roast for 30 to 40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes so they colour evenly. Each time, pull the tray out with oven gloves, stir with a spatula and slide it back. Start checking at 30 minutes: they are done when they have turned from cream-white to golden, look dry and rattle crisply when you stir them. A few will be browner than the rest, which is fine. Take them out before they turn dark brown: by then they are over-roasted.
6. 6Leave the seeds on the tray until completely cool, then store them in an airtight jar. The hull is edible. If it is too tough for you, crack it with your teeth and eat the green kernel inside.