MORE PLEASE - PUMPKIN
Stuffed, roasted, shoved into a cheesy tart - she is the moment.
Autumn is here and it’s time to address the seasons most ubiquitous vegetable - the glorious pumpkin. I like my pumpkin dishes punchy, savoury and wholesome. It’s creamy and nutty flesh is great with spicy, salty, rich, cheesy; basically all comforting things that we start to crave at this time of year. It’s kind of a unicorn in fact as it is sweet enough to be used desserts as well, but I personally prefer it in a starter or main.
Firstly it’s worth saying the pumpkin and squash are the same, pumpkin is just more mature, meaning it refers to older plants rather than younger, more tender squash. Pumpkins often have thicker skin than squashes for example. I find on the whole that pumpkin is more fibrous and more juicy than squash, but this does depend on the type. For example delica pumpkin (the darkest one below) has a flesh that is almost mallowy and doesn’t release much liquid, as opposed to the large orange pumpkin that contains lots of water.
Pumpkin contains lots of sugar so it caramelises really well. I find it is best when roasted, either in a pan slowly with lots of butter, or in a lovely hot oven. I did try something different the other day while on holiday in Portugal that is basically what inspired this episode - a whole baked pumpkin stuffed with rice. I was staying on a farm and our kind hosts offered us up a homegrown pumpkin to cook with. They had a great BBQ so I decided to cook it whole in there and then stuff it with a tomatoey rice. It worked beautifully and the soft, tender pumpkin fresh stirred into the rice was magical. I decided to recreate this for this episode and make it a fabulous Vegan centrepiece - Stuffed Pumpkin with Saffron Rice.
As I mentioned before, pumpkin and cheese go hand in hand. It’s a lovely vegetable to use in baked things too as it stays moist and tender through cooking. I thought about making a quiche but I simply could not be arsed to hunt around for the right tin in my unit, so I went for the freeform option instead - Pumpkin, Shallot and Cheddar Galette. The problem with galettes is that they can’t hold a liquid filling; enter cheese sauce. A cooked and cooled béchamel enriched with cheddar (a Mornay sauce for the cookery school pedants reading) and a couple of super softly cooked shallots is spreadable and therefore the perfect way to create a galette that is as luscious as a quiche without worrying about spillage or leakage.
Finally I felt called to make a dish that is almost always on my mind - Roast Pumpkin with Sausage, Sage and Polenta. Chunks of meaty, roasty toasty pumpkin are dressed with frazzled Italian sausage, chilli and crispy sage and nestled into a pool of cheesy, soft polenta. It is an ultra comforting meal that has so many of my favourite flavours and I love it very much.