With autumn upon us once again, it’s time for pumpkin to make a return to the table. This versatile memeber of the squash family makes for perfect comfort food for the longer, chillier nights. KCC’s back catalogue features a number of pumpkin dishes – try this cousin of lasagne made with chickpeas and mixed greens and this roasted pumpkin with halloumi for starters.
A nutty chickpea and pumpkin fritter served with a lettuce, pear, pomegranate and walnut salad
This time, we’re using the pumpkin in a fritter made with chickpeas and fine bulgur wheat. Recently, we recieved some walnuts from a friend of a friend’s dacha outside Almaty, here in Kazakhstan, which are ideal for adding a nutty edge to these chickpea and pumpkin fritters. We also added some walnuts to a fruity salad made with lettuce, pear and pomegranate seeds to accompany the fritters. Dress it with equal parts of balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil.
This year’s walnuts fresh from the dacha in Almaty, Kazakhstan
This year is flying by, I can’t believe it’s already Halloween and the time for Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. The transition into winter is gaining pace with the leaves falling and the nights closing in. The summer veg has given way to pumpkins and squash – an ideal base for comfort food as the colder months approach in the northern hemisphere.
Pumpkin and white cheese pasta
Over the last month, my Insta feed has been full of variations on baked pumpkin and white cheese dishes. Many of these dishes use sprigs of rosemary but I think that the more woodsy flavour of sage makes a better partner for pumpkin.
Oven-baked pumpkin goodness
For this recipe, I used a cheese called adygeisky, a white cheese with a slightly sour taste, that originates in the mountains of the Caucasus between the Caspian and Black Seas. Feta or any other crumbly white cheese that is available in your area that holds itself together under heat will work just as well.
Ingredients (serves two)
300 g pumpkin or butternut squash
100 g white cheese (Feta, halloumi or similar)
140 g dried pasta (of your choice)
25 ml pasta cooking water
Dried sage
Drizzle of olive oil
two teaspoons pumpkin seeds
Method
Line a baking dish with baking paper. Cut the pumpkin into 1 cm cubes. Place the cheese in the middle of the dish and arrange the pumpkin cubes around it. Sprinkle with crumbled sage leaves and drizzle with olive oil.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200 c for 30 minutes covered with tin foil and then bake for another 10 minutes uncovered. While it’s baking, prepare the pasta (according to the packet instructions).
Mash the pumpkin with a potato masher and mix with the cheese. Add the drained pasta and 25 ml of cooking water. Stir well and serve straight away with a garnish of pumpkin seeds.
To celebrate Navruz this year, KCC has gone for a Kazakh mashup with a loose variation on Kazakhstan’s national dish, Beshbarmak. Lurking at the back of the cupboard was a pack of zhaima, the pasta sheets used in the dish.
Beshbarmak refers to the method of eating this meat and pasta dish, using your hand, or “five fingers.” There are iterations such as “Fishbarmak,” so we decided it was time for a variation on the theme of “Vegbarmak.”
Pasta sheets (zhaima) for Beshbarmak from Kazakhstan
On closer inspection, the pasta sheets looked good for a lasagne-style dish, but the dish that eventually emerged was closer to Turkey’s su böreği. This consists of layers of boiled pastry sheets with a cheesy filling. We used different layers of vegetables and pulses to achieve something between a veg barmak and a su böreği.
Put a layer of mixed greens on top of the chickpeas that have been covered with pasta sheetsPut another layer of pasta sheets and then top with mashed pumpkin and decorate with pumpkin seeds
Ingredients (serves 3-4)
300 g cooked chickpeas
400 g roasted pumpkin
50 g spinach
50 g rocket
50 g tahini
50 ml chickpea water (aquafaba)
16 pasta sheets (the ones used were 6 cm x 11cm)
Sprinkling of pumpkin seeds
Three teaspoons dried oregano
One teaspoon dried sage
One teaspoon cumin seeds
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 180 c. Put 150 g of chickpeas in a blender with the tahini, aquafaba and one teaspoon of oregano and blend until smooth. Mix with the remaining chickpeas and then put this mixture into the bottom of an ovenproof dish. Place the pasta sheets in hot water for a minute and then arrange over the chickpea mixture.
Put the washed greens on top of the pasta, sprinkle another teaspoon of oregano over the greens and then put another layer of sheets on top of the greens. Mash the pumpkin and mix with the sage and cumin seeds and oregano. Smooth this over the pasta sheets and decorate with pumpkin seeds.
Bake in the oven for one hour at 180 c – cover with tinfoil for the first 40 minutes and then cook uncovered for the last 20 minutes. Cut into four slices – it can be served either hot or cold.
With Halloween and Thanksgiving, the two times in the year when pumpkins take centre stage, now behind us, we’ve got a simple idea to use up any leftover pumpkin you may have with this quick and easy spinach and pumpkin fritter recipe.
Spicy Spinach and Pumpkin Fritters
These fritters are totally vegan – there’s no need to add an egg to bind them together as chickpea flour and rolled oats do a great job of soaking up any extra moisture from the spinach and pumpkin and help the fritters hold their shape. They can be shallow fried on both sides in a little oil or baked in the oven for 30 minutes at 180 c. These spicy fritters taste good served with a side salad and chips or in a burger bun or pita with your choice of toppings.
Grate the pumpkinAdd the chopped spinachAdd the herbs and spices then mix Add the rolled oats and chickpea flour Mix it all together, then put it in the fridge for two hoursForm into balls, fry on both sides, then eat!
Ingredients (Makes 6-8 fritters)
175 g grated pumpkin
50 g chopped spinach
50 g chickpea flour
25 g rolled oats
One teaspoon each of cumin seeds, coriander seeds, oregano, sumac and turmeric.
Half a teaspoon cinnamon
25 ml oil for frying
Method
Grate the pumpkin into a large bowl, add the chopped spinach and herbs and spices and combine all the ingredients. Now add the rolled oats and chickpea flour and mix well. Leave the mixture to rest for two hours in the fridge, so that any excess moisture is absorbed.
Form the mixture into small balls (about the size of a golf ball) in your hands. Heat the oil in a frying pan then turn the heat down low and add as many of the balls as will fit in the pan. Flatten them with a fish slice and after a few minutes turn them over. Cook until golden brown on both sides and then serve straight away.
Here in the northern hemisphere we’re moving into the “darker half” of the year with the nights growing longer and the mercury dropping rapidly. Halloween is just around the corner so it’s that pumpkin time once again. Here at KCC we’re always looking cut down food waste so this year we’ve got another idea of how to use up your excess squash – a vegan variant on Shepherd’s pie.
Pumpkin-topped Beany Bake a.k.a. Halloweenish Shepherd’s Pie
Halloween has its origins in the Celtic pagan festival of Samhain that marked the end of the harvest period and the onset on the dark months of winter. It was an excuse for a wild party with feasting and drinking at a time when the boundary between our world and the spiritual world was held to be at its thinnest.
Halloween, which is the evening before All Saints’ Day, 1 November, in the Christian calendar, is still the time when many remember the souls of the dead. Many Halloween traditions in North America were influenced by Irish and Scottish immigrants, harking back to the festival’s pagan roots.
The pumpkin, the round, oversized orange vegetable, native to the New World, has become a symbol of the festival. This has led to millions of pumpkins going to waste so here’s a reminder of some more of our pumpkin recipes to try and reduce the scale of this problem.
Ingredients (serves four)
500 g pumpkin
One medium onion
One stick of celery
One medium carrot
One medium green pepper
One medium courgette
Two medium tomatoes
One tablespoon tomato paste (or Turkish hot pepper paste if you can find it)
300 g cooked beans (cannellini or kidney beans 0r a mix of the two)
75 g red lentils
200 ml vegetable stock
50 ml olive oil
One teaspoon chilli flakes
One teaspoon turmeric
Method
Clean the pumpkin by removing the hard outer skin and the seeds (if there are any) and then chop into small cubes, put into a baking dish and drizzle with olive oil and mix well. Roast in a pre-heated oven at 180 c for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
While the pumpkin is roasting, heat the oil in a heavy-based pan and then cook the finely chopped onion over a medium heat for five minutes. Add the diced celery, green pepper and carrots and cook for another five minutes.
Mix in the cooked beans, vegetable stock and tomato paste, chilli flakes and turmeric and stir well. When it boils, add the lentils, stir and then cook for 20 minutes or so until all the liquid is absorbed. While this is cooking, top and tail the courgettes and cut into 1cm thick rounds. Thinly slice the tomato.
Remove the pumpkin and mash with a fork or a potato masher. Put the bean mixture into the bottom of the baking dish and cover with courgette rounds. Cover the courgette with tomato slices and then pack the mashed pumpkin on top of the tomatoes. Decorate with pumpkin seeds and bake at 180 c for 30 minutes or until the top of the pie begins to char.
Happy Nauryz – the day of the Spring Equinox that marks the start of the new year in some parts of Asia. it’s a big celebration in Central Asia with a focus on things coming back to life after the long winter months. This year we’ve made some green noodles inspired by shivit oshi – dill noodles from Khiva, Uzbekistan, to mark the coming of spring.
Rolling out the noodlesReady for the potNauryz noodle stir fry
As you may recall, here on KCC we’re not huge fans of dill, aka the devil’s weed, so we replaced it with spinach to give our noodles their distinctive green colour. We served our noodles with an orange and green stir fry made from pumpkin, carrots, spring onions, beansprouts and broccoli.
Shivit Oshi – dill noodles in Khiva, Uzbekistan
We washed our Nauryz noodles down with some Turan Tiger beer as a nod to the year of the tiger.
Ingredients (makes four servings)
For the noodles
300 g plain flour
100 ml water
40 ml olive oil
120 g spinach
For the stir fry
100 g spring onion
300 g pumpkin
200 g carrot
300 g broccoli
200 g beansprouts
50 ml olive oil
20 ml soy sauce
Two teaspoons cumin seeds
Method
For the noodles
Pour boiling hot water over the washed spinach leaves and leave for one minute. Drain and then cover with cold water. Drain again and put in a blender with the water and blend to a smooth paste.
Stir the oil into the flour and then add the blended spinach. Mix well and knead the dough. Make sure it is neither too sticky (add more flour if so) or too crumbly (add more liquid if so). Cover with cling film and leave in the fridge until you are ready to use it.
Roll the dough to 1 mm thickness on a lightly floured surface. Fold the dough over three or four times and then cut off 2 mm slices and pull out the noodles by hand.
Cook in a pot of boiling water for five minutes – taste to check that the noodles have the texture that you prefer (e.g. al dente or softer). Drain and serve immediately.
For the stir fry
Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan and add the cumin seeds. When the seed begin to pop, add the chopped spring onions and stir fry over a medium heat. Add the pumpkin, cut into 1 cm cubes and stir fry for five minutes.
Next add the broccoli and stir fry for another five minutes over a medium heat. Add the grated carrot and beansprouts along with the soy sauce and cook for a few more minutes. Serve on a bed of noodles.
This time round on KCC we’ve been inspired to take on a curry house favourite of ours, matar paneer, cubes of fresh white cheese cooked with peas in a spicy tomato-rich gravy.
Spicy peas ‘n’ cheese aka matar paneer
We’ve been in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan for the last two weeks to polish off the final chapter in a gruelling two-year run of Central Asian elections. While browsing around the supermarket, we came across a pack of locally made Ricotta cheese. Its dry, crumbly texture immediately reminded us of fresh paneer cheese from the Indian sub-continent, bringing to mind matar paneer.
Spicy peas and cheese with pumpkin dhal and rice
This white cheese does not taste of much on its own so it needs to soak up some flavour. We prepared a tomato gravy and then marinated the cubes of cheese and the peas in the sauce overnight before heating it through just before serving. For any vegans reading, substitute chunks of plain tofu for the paneer cheese – tofu is another ingredient that benefits from being marinated for a while. Serve with our pumpkin dhal and rice or flat bread.
Ingredients (makes 4 servings)
3 medium tomatoes (approx 250 g)
1 medium onion
1 clove of garlic
200 g paneer cheese or tofu
250 g peas (tinned, frozen or fresh if you can get them)
25 ml olive oil or other vegetable oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 cm knob of chopped ginger
1 small bunch fresh coriander
Method
Finely chop the onion and cook for five minutes in the oil over a medium heat in a heavy-based pan. Turn down to a low heat and add the spices and the minced garlic and stir well. Cook for another two minutes and then add the chopped, peeled tomatoes. Cook for 20-30 minutes over a low heat until the tomatoes have formed a smooth gravy with the onions.
Allow the sauce to cool and then add the white cheese (paneer) or tofu, cut into 1 cm cubes, and the peas and mix well. Leave to marinate for an hour or two at least – overnight in the fridge is better, and then heat through. Sprinkle with fresh coriander before serving with our pumpkin dhal and rice. Also goes well with a flat bread of your choice.
It’s that time of year again when millions of pumpkins will be turned into jack o’ lanterns for Halloween — in the UK alone the environmental charity Hubbub estimates that some 24 million pumpkins will be carved this year but more than half, around 12.8 million, will go uneaten.
A scary 58% of the people surveyed by Hubbub were unaware that you can eat pumpkins. This October, we’ve been highlighting squash recipes on Knidos Cookery Club in the hope that more pumpkin ends up on our plates rather than on the rubbish tip.
Mix the flour and oil together and then slowly add the cold water and knead until you have a smooth, elastic dough. Wrap in clingfilm and leave in the fridge while preparing the filling.
Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the cumin seeds. When they start to sizzle add the finely chopped onion. Peel the pumpkin, remove the seeds (save these to put on the samsa) and cut into 1 cm cubes.
Fry the onion for five minutes and then add the pumpkin cubes. Stir fry for five more minutes and then add the stock and simmer for 20 minutes until the pumpkin is cooked. Allow to cool and then mash to a smooth paste with a fork or a potato masher.
Roll the dough to a 2 mm thickness and then fold it over to produce a cylinder of dough. Break this dough into six pieces. Flatten the dough ball into a disc with the palm of your hand until you have a 1 mm thick circle.
Put a triangle of filling in the middle of the circle and then fold over the edges to make a triangle shape. Brush with olive oil and arrange the pumpkin, sesame and poppy seeds on top of the samsa. Bake in the oven at 200 c for 25 -30 minute until the samsa turns a darker brown colour.
The Knidos Cookery Club kitchen was forced to decamp to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan this week as an unfolding political crisis rocked this Central Asian state that neighbours Kazakhstan.
Making a meal out of it…
In the spirit of the recently revived 90s TV cookery show, Ready Steady Cook, we grabbed a selection of items after a quick dash around the nearest supermarket and came up with a red bean and pumpkin chilli, continuing our October Squashfest theme.
Hasty tasty pumpkin chilli with Kyrgyz naan
We had to opt for a bit of convenience this time as it’s hard cooking in a strange kitchen, so we bought a jar of a spicy tomato sauce called Cobra, and used ready cooked red beans. If you have more time on your hands, then substitute the Cobra with KCC’s very own spicy tomato sauce and soak some dried beans overnight.
Ingredients (Makes 3-4 servings)
500 g pumpkin
250 g spicy tomato sauce
250 g cooked red beans
50 ml olive oil
Method
Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and then add the pumpkin, chopped into 2 cm x 1 cm cubes, and stir fry for five minutes over a medium heat.
Add the spicy tomato sauce, stir well and simmer for 20 minutes or so until the pumpkin is cooked but firm.
Add the red beans and stir well and heat through. Serve with boiled rice and some crusty bread.
With the temperatures tumbling in the second half of September, thoughts turned to the opening of the pumpkin season, which traditionally starts on 1 October in the world of Knidos Cookery Club.
Those autumn hues – Roast butternut squash with courgette, halloumi and tomato
There’s a definite chill in the air and we’ve even got the heating coming on two weeks ahead of schedule here in Almaty, Kazakhstan. So, it’s certainly time for some autumn comfort food.
Almaty in all its autumnal splendour, Kazakhstan
We’ve combined the first butternut squash of the season with the summer’s last stand of courgettes and tomatoes and some minty halloumi cheese to come up with a roast that conjures up the pale green, orange and red hues of the falling leaves synonymous with this time of year.
Ingredients (serves 3-4 people)
300 g Butternut squash
300 g Courgettes (Zuchinni)
Three plum (Roma) tomatoes
200 g halloumi
One teaspoon cumin seeds
50 ml olive oil
Method
Cut the butternut squash into 2 cm cubes – you can peel the butternut or leave the skin on if you wish. Cut the courgette into 1 cm slices and cut in half to make semi-circles.
Put them in an ovenproof dish, sprinkle the cumin seeds and pour the olive oil over the vegetables and mix well. Cover the dish with tin foil and cook in the oven at 150 c for one hour. Give the veggies a stir after 30 minutes
Remove the foil and stir well. Add the tomatoes, sliced into six wedges and the halloumi, cut into 2 cm cubes. Place these on top of the squash and courgettes and bake at 150 c for another 30 minutes or until the cheese starts to look charred.
Serve with a flat bread such as pita or chapati. You can bake some jacket potatoes in the oven with the roast veggies to make the meal more substantial or serve with pasta, rice, bulgur wheat or pearl barley.
Knidos Cookery Club 