Cheesy Butternut Bake in Creamy Sauce with Quince Paste

This is an unusual dish of butternut pumpkin, roasted, then cooked in a creamy cheese sauce with quince paste (membrillo) for a great festive dish.

It is a twist on a quiche in Ottolenghi‘s Plenty More. As we do not cook with eggs, I made this into a dish that is simply the roasted pumpkin baked with cheese and quince paste in a rich creamy sauce. It has been cooked until the top is bubbling and golden. The original recipe is here if you want to make the original.

Similar dishes include: Congee with Butternut, Butternut Tataki with Udon Noodles, and Pumpkin Soup with Lentils.

Or browse all of our Butternut dishes.

Easy Pumpkin and Coconut Curry

This Curry can be made with either Butternut Pumpkin or Kent Pumpkin (previously called Jap pumpkin). It is delicious, so flavoursome, and incredibly easy to make. I have paired it with coriander rice and scattered toasted peanuts and crispy onions over the top.

Similar dishes include Sri Lankan Pumpkin and Roasted Coconut Curry, Sri Lankan Coconut Curry, and Pumpkin Milk Kootu.

Browse all of our Pumpkin dishes and all of our  S. E. Asian recipes.

Narangi Shorba

Blended soups often turn out frothy in our house, due to the high speed blender. A soup cappuccino. I could use a stick blender, but I love the smoothness of our high speed one, and it has a soup function – it heats the soup as it blends! Got to love such a blender in Winter.

Narangi soup, an orange vegetable soup from the North of India, is loved because of its beautiful colour and its sweet-green-chilli flavour. It is light and lovely – the perfect precursor or accompaniment to a meal.

Red Pumpkin is traditionally used but I haven’t seen one here in Adelaide for years. So I substitute with either butternut or kent pumpkin.

Similar dishes include Goan Vegetable Soup, and Tamatar Shorba.

Browse all of our Pumpkin Soups and Shorbas. All Indian Soups are here. All of our Indian recipes are here, and our Indian Essentials are here.

Sweetcorn and Butternut Fritters with Spicy Peppers

Sweetcorn fritters have a special place in my heart – they are quite divine, despite the fact that fresh kernels will explode if the heat is too high! (Be careful!) Often this property of sweet corn is not mentioned in recipes, leading to disastrous or painful results. Pulse fresh corn kernels very briefly in a small blender or chopper to lessen this property, steam them (altho I’ve also had problems with steamed ones) or use tinned corn kernels.

Ottolenghi is in the group of recipe authors that do not mention the potential of vigorous explosions when cooking sweetcorn kernels over heat. This recipe is from Plenty More and is made absolutely delightful with the inclusion of a small chilli (as mild or as hot as you like) in each one. Use one with a little heat if you like.

You could put a whole chilli into each fritter, but that is pretty brutal unless you have an exceptional tolerance for heat. I also found that strips of the chilli cooked much better. A compromise is to use small padron or similar capsicum that is mostly innocuous. You can also leave out the chilli altogether – the fritters will still be very tasty.

Note that we feel free to play with Ottolenghi’s recipe to suit what is in our garden, pantry and fridge or to suit our dietary preferences. We have made over 200 of Ottolenghi’s recipes, so we feel we have earned this right. In this recipe, as we don’t cook with eggs, we’ve replaced them with our usual fritter egg replacement mix – cream and chickpea flour. For his original recipes check out his books and Guardian column.

Similar recipes include Sweet Potato Fritters, Spinach Fritters, and Chickpea Fries with Tomato Salsa.

Browse all of our Sweetcorn recipes and all of our Fritters. Our Ottolenghi dishes from Plenty More are here. We have written about our experiences cooking through this book. Or explore our Early Autumn recipes.

Congee with Crispy Garlic Shallots, Crispy Ginger and Butternut Pumpkin

Although the first inhabitants of our country in some locations call the second half of Winter as Pre-Spring, here in Adelaide it still feels like Deep Winter. There is nothing better than congee when Winter blues hit.

Today we make congee cooked with butternut pumpkin and ginger, and topped with king oyster mushrooms, chilli jam, yoghurt, crispy fried garlic shallots and crispy fried ginger. The butternut melts into the congee as it cooks. We describe the best way to cook congee and make congee bowls here, so have a look before you make today’s recipe.

A word about Butternut – we call it Butternut Pumpkin, in the US they call it Butternut Squash. In Australia it is one of our most loved pumpkins and we use it almost exclusively at our place. The pumpkin I grew up with – the Queensland Blue – is so hard it almost needs an axe to cut and is less popular these days.

Similar dishes include Easy Pumpkin and Coconut Curry, Congee with Ginger, Mushrooms and Chilli-Black Bean Sauce, Barley, Millet and Mung Congee, How to Make Congee Bowls, and Black Glutinous Rice Congee.

Browse all of our Congee recipes, and our Butternut/Pumpkin dishes. Or browse our Mid Winter recipes.

Saffron Couscous with Dried Apricots and Butternut Pumpkin

Lately dishes have been coming together nicely – like this one. I had half a butternut left over from making Sweetcorn and Butternut Fritters, and some beautiful but very hard dried apricots from the Afghan shop that needed to be used up. What better way to do that but with couscous. Those dried apricots, by the way, are such a surprise. They look like nothing when dried, so hard and dark in colour, yet they plump up to flavoursome soft apricots when soaked. I love them.

Roast the pumpkin the evening before if you are looking to save time. This is a very easy dish, and it makes a great salad or side dish. It is from Ottolenghi’s Ottolenghi, the first of his books. It is interesting to go back and browse through Ottolenghi – you can see the journey that Yotham has been on, and the journey that we have been on along with him.

Similar recipes include Couscous Salad with Orange, Couscous with Pinenuts and Sultanas, and Couscous Lunches.

Browse all of our Couscous recipes and all of our Butternut dishes. Or explore our Early Autumn feasts.

Pumpkin Soup with Lentils

I have numerous Pumpkin Soups that I love, including this definite favourite. But today, as I am on a Clean-out-the-pantry drive, and because I am restricting shopping trips because of COVID-19 (as I write this), and because there are lentils wanting to be used up – it is a day for a soup with pumpkin and lentils.

Use any lentils in this soup. Toor dal, channa dal, chickpeas and split peas are all good candidates. You could use the small split fava beans too. Brown lentils, puy lentils, beluga lentils, whole red lentils (masoor dal), horsegram, matki beans – all are good. I am using some end-of-the-packet beluga today. They make for a dark soup – if this is difficult for you, just add plenty of chopped herbs as a garnish.

Some lentil types will break down and make a thick broth for the soup, others are more likely to hold their shape. Either will work well with this soup.

In the recipe I specify chopped tomatoes – but more often than not I use a tomato puree from the freezer. In Autumn I usually stock up with a variety of cooked and raw tomato purees, pastes etc, for use over Winter when tomatoes are at their least flavoursome. Feel free to use good quality tinned, chopped tomatoes too.

Similar recipes includeEasy Pumpkin and Coconut Curry,  a Lemony, Tomato Lentil Soup, French Pumpkin Soup, Pumpkin Soup with Red Peppers, and a Special Pumpkin Soup.

Browse all of our Soups, Pumpkin Soups, and Tomato recipes.

Pumpkin Milk Kootu

Today we have another of the rare Indian recipes that use milk. This recipe is one that can substitute the milk for coconut milk if that is more to your taste.

In India, milk is usually reserved for desserts, and in Ayurveda the consumption of milk with vegetables is not encouraged. In this recipe, I imagine that home cooks would use milk thickened with rice flour in place of coconut milk if that was not available.

It is best made with Indian tender pumpkin, but I have also made it with a number of our pumpkin varieties and quite love it. It is a very simple dish – pumpkin, seasoned, in milk with a simple tadka. But simple is best, no?

The recipe is one of Meenakshi Ammal’s from her cook books Cook and See – very traditional Tamil recipes. You can find all of Ammal’s dishes that we have made here. Most of them are from Vol 1 so far.

Similar dishes include Cluster Beans Kootu, Green Bean Kootu, and Brinjal Asadu.

Browse all of our Kootu recipes and all of our Pumpkin dishes. All of our Indian recipes are here, and our Indian Essentials are here. Or explore our Late Autumn recipes.

Puy Lentils with Roasted Pumpkin, Sage and Feta

Don’t you love pumpkins especially as they appear with their gorgeous colours in Autumn? For me, they are the very best decoration for the table. Autumn colours, beautiful shapes, a reminder of the delights that Autumn brings.

But eventually it has to be cooked. What is better than a salad or warm dish based on lentils and roasted pumpkin? Butternut can be used.

This is also a very excellent Xmas dish.

This is a recipe from Ottolenghi’s Simple, but I played with it a bit. He recommends butternut, I used pumpkin; he uses dolcelatte, I used feta (as I keep an amazing creamy feta in stock almost constantly), he used Puy lentils, I used a similar one that is deep and delicious in taste – stocked by my whole foods store but unlabelled. It shows how Ottolenghi’s recipes are versatile, so flexible with the ingredients that you have at hand.

The salad can be served warm or at room temperature. It can be made in advance, up to 6 hours. If you want to use tinned lentils, go for it – just skip the cooking step.

Similar recipes include Salad of Butternut and Noodles, Grilled Butternut with Walnut Salsa, and Roast Pumpkin Couscous Salad.

Browse all of our Pumpkin Salads and our Puy Lentil recipes. Our Ottolenghi dishes from Simple are here. We have written about our experiences cooking through Plenty More. Or explore our Late Autumn recipes.

Sri Lankan Pumpkin Curry with Roasted Coconut

Sri Lanka cuisine includes beautiful curries cooked in coconut milk, showing off the abundance of coconuts on this beautiful isle. This is another version of the Sri Lankan Pumpkin Curry, and in this one the flavours of coconut are layered with both roasted coconut and coconut milk. The recipe is adapted from Flavours of Sri Lanka.

Similar recipes include Sri Lankan Pineapple Curry, Green Mango in Coconut Milk, Sri Lankan Okra Curry with Coconut Milk, and Aubergines in Coconut Milk.

Or browse our Pumpkin recipes and all of our Sri Lankan dishes. Our Indian recipes are here, and Indian Essentials here. Otherwise, explore our Late Winter collection of recipes.