Seasonal Cooking – Halloween Special
Instead of thinking about sweets with Halloween and hollowing out a pumpkin, I’m celebrating this seasonal veg as a tasty, nutritious and versatile ingredient. You can’t really get away from the fact that to have and sustain a healthy diet, loving food and loving to cook is pretty important. Keeping meals interesting is half the battle so experimenting with new recipes can be something to do when you have a bit of time on your hands. Having said that this pumpkin gnocchi (after roasting the pumpkin) is quite a quick thing to make, once you have the knack. Also, the roasting of the pumpkin could be done on a Sunday so the mix is ready for a quick mid-week meal. Apart from the pumpkin we are using pantry staples that can be thrown on all kinds of dishes to make them yummy.
Recipe
500g of roast pumpkin
100g flour
50g pine nuts
50g capers
50g black olives
100g fresh basil
drizzle virgin olive oil
Method
This is quite a relaxed method, use your instinct a bit with this recipe. If you love pine nuts add more! If you don’t like olives or capers, what else would work well? You could also turn the basil into a pesto to serve with it. Sage would also work well with this recipe instead of basil. You could also roast off some aubergine to serve with this – when you start to think about recipes and experimenting, that’s when cooking becomes fun and creative rather than something that’s boring and a chore.
- Deseed and roast the pumpkin (the seeds can be cleaned and roasted to eat as a snack – keep an eye on my instagram for roasting tips and facts on them). When it’s roasted, peel the skin off and make a smooth mash when it’s still warm. It’s important to eliminate the moisture out of the pumpkin so you can also put the mash back into the oven to drive more moisture out for another 10 minutes or so.
- Add the flour to the mash and gently work through so it resembles a dough. When it has come together roll out into a long sausage shape using a bit more flour. The dough will be quite sticky so be careful to not over handle.
- Cut into little pillows about an inch long. Then pop into some salted boiling water to cook for a few minutes. They are done when the rise to the top.
- Whilst they are in the water put on a pan and heat up some butter or oil and pan fry the gnocchi. Add in the pine nuts to toast, capers and chopped olives.
- Chop up some basil, season to taste.
- Grate on some parmesan and serve with a salad.
Experiment, eat, enjoy.