Roasted Pumpkins
Roasted Pumpkins
Ingredients
Instructions
  1. Pre heat oven to 200°C.
  2. Slice pumpkin in half and remove seeds and fibrous filling. The seeds can be oven dried then roasted and salted as a snack.
  3. Dig out sufficient pumpkin flesh to reduce the thickness of the shell by half. Chop up and place in a bowl.
  4. Take each empty shell and score the inside flesh lightly with a sharp knife (not through the skin) to reduce cooking time. Season with salt, pepper and herbs, drizzle with a little oil and place in oven in a tray or in a dish to roast.
  5. Meanwhile, heat dripping in a wok or frying pan – if you don’t have dripping use a generous drizzle of the rapeseed oil. Fry bacon until crispy – or as you like it.
  6. Add prepared onion and potato to pan and sauté until the edges start to colour then add pumpkin flesh.
  7. Season again and cook for a further 5 minutes. Stir in nasturtium seeds.
  8. Remove semi-roasted shells from the oven and divide the filling between the two halves. Sprinkle spoonfuls of breadcrumbs on each and return to oven for a further 15 minutes until thoroughly cooked through and toasted on the top.
  9. Shake chilli sauce over the finished dish, leaving the bottle on the table for those who like it hotter.
  10. Serve with a sprinkling of chives and maybe a side salad or a dollop of crème fraiche if you wish.
Recipe Notes

Video of Pumpkin recipe here

Producers: Skea organics for tatties, Allan’s Chilli Products for chilli sauce, Ramsay bacon, Blackthorn salt & Summer Harvest rapeseed oil.

This recipe can of course be vegetarian with more veggies & removing bacon & dripping.

In winter fresh chives are less available unless you buy a pot from a supermarket. Instead I pick them when we have a summer glut: sort, rinse, air-dry, chop & work into a pat of softened butter. Roll into mini sausages wrapped in clingfilm & chill in fridge. When solid again, freeze in batches & defrost when ready to use. By placing a slice of this chive butter on a hot dish, the butter melts adding flavour and the chives are left as a garnish, as fresh as the day they were cut. That’s what I did here.