Darina Allen: how to use up your autumn pumpkins and squash

Some of Darina Allen's recipes for pumpkin and squash.

For the past few weeks, the table in the hall at the Ballymaloe Cookery School has been piled high with pumpkins and squash. At least 15 different varieties…

Pumpkin varieties:

• Tiana
• Orange Summer
• Amish Pie
• Jack o Lantern
• Queensland Blue
• Pottimason

Squash varieties:

• Crookneck
• Uchiki Kuri
• Sweet Dumpling
• Tromboncino
• Fictor
• Butternut
• Green Hokkaido
• Waltham Butternut
• Futsu Black

Halloween is well over, but we still have lots of these beauties to enjoy and keep us going for the winter. They come in all shapes, sizes and colours. 

Some like Crown Prince and Turks Turban and butternut squash will keep for months, but be careful as they are frost sensitive, others like Delicata should be used up within the next few weeks. 

It’s now become a tradition for children from the local schools to come to the vegetable patch every year to harvest the pumpkins and to take some home to carve. But herein lies a properly scary fact, I couldn’t find any figures for Ireland, but it’s estimated that in Britain over 15m pumpkins ended up in the bin after Halloween. 

That’s an estimated £27m worth of edible food, enough to make 95m meals which ultimately make it to landfill, emitting methane. 

So, remember the flesh of those carving pumpkins is edible, not super tasty but of course can be jazzed up with lots of herbs, spices and toppings. 

If you don’t have time to use within a day, maybe steam, purée or freeze for another day. 

We grow a wide variety every year, principally for flavour, but on a recent visit to the Malvern Autumn County Show in Britain, I found a whole tent, full of ginormous vegetables including some giant pumpkins and squash, many weighing more than a sack of flour. 

I loved listening to the nerdy growers, earnestly discussing their entries. 

Opinions vary about the best variety of pumpkin for carving. The ghostly White Polar Bear is definitely the most spooktacular and despite the colour of the rind, the insides are bright orange, and are particularly good roasted and made into a pumpkin mash. 

Believe it or not, it can grow to be up to 15kg, but the larger it is, the less flavour it has. 

The green and cream striped Dumpling squash makes a perfect-sized soup bowl. 

Oval-shaped spaghetti squash is fun to roast. The texture of the insides resembles spaghetti or noodles. 

The flavour is mild so I love to serve it with a ragu, a feisty herb butter or a spicy olive oil. 

The warty ones like goosebumps are, despite their appearance still sweet and delicious, and also great for window, mantelpiece or table decorations. 

The beautiful orange and stripey green Turks Turban is actually a squash, and looks rather more dramatic than it tastes, but nonetheless, it has a mild, slightly nutty, flavour and it too benefits from lots of spices and fresh herbs.

Acorn squash looks like a giant acorn: halve and scoop out the seeds, then it’s perfect for roasting and stuffing. 

Then there’s the long slender and sometimes curly Trombochino, also known as Zucchetta, that can grow up to 3 feet plus. We use their tender flesh to spin out vegetable stews or a casserole, pan-fried or grilled in slices and also roasted. 

It’s super versatile and of course partners brilliantly with tomato fondue or a peperonata.

There are literally hundreds of varieties of summer and winter squashes and pumpkins, a brilliant standby and a perfect opportunity to get creative. 

What other vegetable keeps the kids happy for hours, can decorate the house both inside and out and provides a nourishing ingredient for a variety of yummy dishes from soup to stews, tagines, risottos, purées pickles, jams, pies, candid pumpkin and toasted pumpkin seeds?

The ingredient that keeps on giving, long after the ghouls and ghosts are forgotten.

Pumpkin Soup with Rosemary Oil

recipe by:Darina Allen

Virtually all soups freeze perfectly. A brilliant standby for lunch or supper is to defrost soup that has been frozen in a small container. Use Crown Prince or Uchiki Kuri varieties of pumpkin if possible.

Servings

6

Preparation Time

 30 mins

Cooking Time

 30 mins

Total Time

 60 mins

Course

 Main

Ingredients

• 50g butter

• 150g chopped potatoes, 7mm dice

• 110g peeled diced onions, 7mm dice

• salt and freshly ground black pepper

• 350g chopped well-flavoured pumpkin, 7mm dice

• 1.2 litres homemade chicken stock or 1 litre stock and 150ml creamy milk

• 3 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped

• Rosemary Oil:

• 110ml extra virgin olive oil

• 2 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped

Method

1. Melt the butter in a heavy bottomed saucepan. When it foams, add potatoes and onions and turn them until well coated. Sprinkle with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Cover and sweat on a gentle heat for 10 minutes.

2. Meanwhile make the rosemary oil. Heat the chopped rosemary with the oil until hot but not smoking. Cool and strain.

3. Add the pumpkin and stock to the saucepan with the potatoes and onions. Boil until soft, do not overcook or the vegetables will lose their flavour. Liquidise with the chopped rosemary. Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

4. To Serve: Drizzle a little rosemary oil over each bowl of soup before serving.

Jeremy Lee's Marinated Chicken with Roast Pumpkin Salad

Jeremy loves this recipe which he says was inspired by Hamersley’s Bistro in Boston, USA. The salad makes excellent use of the great many varieties of onion, pumpkin and squash around.

Servings

6

Course

 Main

Ingredients

• For the chicken:

• 6 chicken breasts, wings still attached

• 1 soup spoon extra virgin olive oil

• For the marinade:

• 4 sprigs of thyme

• 8 cloves of garlic, peeled

• 4 branches of rosemary

• 1 small onion, peeled and chopped

• ½ tsp freshly ground black pepper

• a large bunch of flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked

• 100ml extra virgin olive oil

• juice of 1 lemon

• 100g Dijon mustard

• For the salad:

• 1kg pumpkin

• 30ml extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for the onions and dressing

• 3 red onions, peeled and sliced into rounds 5mm in thickness

• 2 soup spoons red wine vinegar, plus extra for the onions and dressing

• a small bundle of thyme

• a small bunch of sage

• 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

• grated zest of 1 unwaxed lemon

• a big pinch of dried chilli flakes

• salt and black pepper

• salad leaves, a handful of each, e.g., large-leaf rocket, young spinach, watercress, wild cress, land cress, picked and washed

• a bunch of flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked and chopped

• a bunch of mint, leaves picked and torn

• 75g blanched almonds, roasted at 150°C for 8 minutes or so until golden, then coarsely sliced

Method

1. For the chicken/marinade:

2. Place the thyme, garlic, rosemary, onion and black pepper in a food processor and grind to a coarse purée. To this add a handful of parsley leaves at a time, adding a few spoonfuls of olive oil as you go, until you have made a thick green paste. Add the lemon juice and the rest of the olive oil. Stir in the mustard. Evenly spread the marinade over the chicken, cover well and leave to marinate at least overnight.

3. Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6.

4. Heat a large roasting tin in the oven and, when hot, remove, strew with sea salt and a spoonful of oil and lay the chicken skin side down on the salt. Place in the oven and cook for 45 minutes. With care, lift the chicken from the oven, check for doneness, then cover and rest for 20-25 minutes.

5. Return the chicken to the oven to ensure it is heated thoroughly before serving with the roast pumpkin salad.

6. Roughly 30-40m preparation time, not counting overnight marinading, and 70m cooking time.

7. For the salad:

8. Preheat the oven to 220°C/Gas Mark 7.

9. Split the pumpkin, remove the seeds and cut into wedges. Heat a large roasting tin in the oven for a few minutes, add the extra virgin olive oil and the slices of pumpkin and return to the oven. Cook for 20 minutes, checking from time to time that the slices are not colouring too fast and may need turning. Add a little more oil if necessary.

10. Meanwhile, place a wide griddle or frying pan on a moderate heat, and lay the red onions in the heated pan to colour well. Cook for 5-8 minutes, then turn and repeat for a further 3-4 minutes. Remove the onions to a dish, cover and set aside for 5 minutes. Remove the cover and discard any burnt pieces of onion. Lightly dress with 1 soup spoon of vinegar and 2 soup spoons of extra virgin olive oil.

11. Pick the thyme and sage leaves and chop small, then mix with the garlic, lemon zest and chilli flakes. Season with salt and black pepper. Remove the pumpkin from the oven and insert a knife into the slices, which should offer no resistance. If still firm, return to the oven for a further 5-10 minutes.

12. Strew the herb seasoning over the roast pumpkin. Pour over 1 soup spoon of vinegar. To assemble the dish, carve each chicken breast in three and keep warm. Tumble all the leaves onto a big dish. Lay the pumpkin on the leaves, along with any juices still in the tin, and scatter the onion over the pumpkin. Tumble on the slices of chicken. Strew the mint leaves, parsley and sliced almonds over the salad, finishing with one last fluffy of vinegar and olive oil.

13. Roughly 30m preparation time and 45m cooking time.

14. Recipe from ‘Cooking Simply and Well, For One or Many’ by Jeremy Lee published by 4th Estate

Butternut Squash and Coconut Curry

recipe by:Darina Allen

This will definitely become a favourite, make twice the recipe if you can.

Servings

6

Preparation Time

 25 mins

Cooking Time

 50 mins

Total Time

 1 hours 15 mins

Course

 Main

Ingredients

• 225g onion, peeled and finely chopped

• 25g butter

• 1 tbsp olive oil

• 700g butternut squash, peeled and cut into 2cm dice

• 2 tsp black mustard seeds

• 1 tsp cumin seeds

• 1 tsp fennel seeds

• 1 tsp ground turmeric

• 1 tsp ground coriander

• seeds from 8 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed

• 20g fresh root ginger, peeled and finely chopped

• 3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped

• 2 green chillies, deseeded and finely chopped

• sea salt and black pepper

• 1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes

• 400ml vegetable stock or water

• 200ml coconut milk

• handful fresh coriander leaves

• rice

• Mint or Coriander Yoghurt

Method

1. Melt the butter and the oil in a wok, add the onion and sweat over a gentle heat until soft and translucent. Meanwhile, prepare the butternut squash, add to the onion and cook uncovered for 3-4 minutes.

2. Stir in the mustard, cumin and fennel seeds and cook for 2 minutes, careful not to brown the seeds or they will become bitter. Add the ground turmeric, coriander, crushed cardamom seeds, ginger, garlic and chillies and cook for 30 seconds. Season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, add the chopped tomatoes, stock or water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes, then add the coconut milk and cook for a further 20 minutes or until the vegetable is tender. Taste and correct seasoning if necessary. Pour into a hot serving bowl, scatter with coriander and serve with rice, naan bread and yoghurt.