Two dishes not usually made with pumpkin
Recipes for canonical dishes adapted for squash and pumpkins, cooked recently
Hello! My name is Rebecca May Johnson, I am a writer and cook and this is my Substack. This week’s newsletter is about two dishes made with squash and pumpkin.
Here are two dishes that can be made with squash or pumpkin that are riffs on canonical dishes usually made with different ingredients. The first is the Sicilian sweet sour vegetable dish caponata, often made with aubergine and celery. The second is Turkish eggs usually made with… eggs. Both were dinners made without planning ahead – the joy of thinking in the moment, responding to what I had – tins of chickpeas appearing in both as sides. The squash I used for the caponata had been sitting on the kitchen table for around three months when I finally decided, with no other vegetables in the fridge, that this was the day to use it. I grew the pumpkin on the allotment in my best ever year - I planted them where there had been an old pile of compost so the earth was rich for them and it was an unusually wet summer for where I live, too. It’s a sweet, rich nutty Delica variety, and I bought the seeds from Franchi Seeds of Italy.
Agrodolce squash (or pumpkin)
This dish was inspired by Sicilian caponata and uses similar flavours but fewer vegetables – it’s focussed on the squash, and I really liked it. The natural sweetness of the squash worked well with the acidic components.
We ate it with a thick pork chop, seasoned with salt and pepper and cooked first on the hob in a tablespoon of hot oil to give it colour on each side, then with butter the oven, before being rested and cut into slices and shared between two, and a little chard from a pot in the yard, blanched then cooked with chickpeas in olive oil.
The squash would also be good with nice bread and a green salad. You could also garnish it with hard boiled eggs and toasted almonds.
Ingredients
1 butternut squash peeled and cut into max 1x1inch pieces
2 roughly chopped small/medium size tomatoes
1 medium-large onion, finely sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely sliced
1 small dried chilli
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
1 heaped tablespoon of sugar
2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar (or more to taste)
1 heaped tablespoon of capers
2 tablespoons of green olives
How to make
First, roast the butternut squash tossed in 1 tablespoon of olive oil until just tender. You could also steam/boil but I roasted it for a more intense flavour. Remove from the oven / pan and set aside.
Then, put the sliced onion and sliced garlic into a pan with the chilli and 3 tablespoons of olive oil and cook on a low-medium heat until the onion is softened but not browned. Stir, and keep an eye on the heat to make sure the onion and garlic are not catching. Add in the tomato paste and stir.
Then, add in the tomatoes and stir and cook for 3-4 minutes, then add in the butternut squash and 100ml of water and stir to coat the squash in the onion mixture. Cook on a low-medium heat for 4-5 minutes, add more water if it dries out.
Then, push the ingredients to one side of the pan to clear a space to add the vinegar and sugar on the clear side. Lift the pan a little and add the vinegar so it pools at the lower end. Then stir the sugar into the vinegar so it dissolves. Then stir to coat everything in the pan in the sugar and vinegar. Allow to cook on a low heat for 1-2 minutes.
Then, stir in the capers and season with salt to taste. Add more vinegar and/or sugar if desired to your preference. Stir in the olives and leave to rest for at least 30 minutes before serving.
Pumpkin in yogurt sauce with chilli butter
Sides of rice and chickpeas
The central aspect of this dish – pumpkin in yogurt sauce, is inspired by Nigella Lawson’s Turkish Eggs Recipe, in place of eggs, there is roasted pumpkin dressed with warm garlic yogurt and chilli butter. It goes very well with rice and chickpeas.
Ingredients
500g pumpkin – a rich, nutty variety – cut into 2 inch chunks (I left the skin on)
350g thick, full fat Greek yogurt
2 garlic cloves, crushed or finely diced with a pinch of salt
1 tomato, diced quite finely, to garnish (optional)
50g butter
1 teaspoon of chilli flakes or chilli paste (on this occasion I used pepperoncino)
Accompaniments
1 tin chickpeas
1 heaped teaspoon cumin seeds
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 tablespoons olive oil
Basmati rice
around 75g p/p
How to make
Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Toss the pumpkin chunks in a tablespoon of olive oil and a pinch of salt and cook in the oven until tender.
Meanwhile:
Rice: Rinse the basmati rice at least twice in fresh water and drain. Put the drained rice into a saucepan with water coming around an inch above the rice, or as I do, up to my first finger joint when I place the tip of my finger on the surface of the rice in the pan. Add ½ teaspoon of salt and put on a lid that fits tightly. Turn on the heat to cook and when all the water is evaporated from the surface, turn off the heat and allow the rice to rest.
Yogurt: Put the yogurt in a wide bowl with two crushed cloves and a generous pinch of salt. Put the bowl over a pan of gently simmering water. Stir gently as it heats until the thick yogurt is warm to the touch and liquid in texture. Then take the bowl off the heat and set aside.
Chickpeas: In a small frying pan, heat two tablespoons of olive oil, sizzle the cumin seeds in there for 30 seconds, then add the tomato paste and stir around in the oil then add the chickpeas and heat through, coating in the cumin and tomato paste. Season with salt.
Assembling: In a serving dish or the cooking pan, which ever you prefer, cover the pumpkin with the yogurt, then garnish with the diced tomato. Melt the butter in a small saucepan until frothing. Add the chilli flakes or chilli paste and shake. Immediately pour over the yogurt.
Serve the pumpkin and yogurt with the rice and chickpeas.
Eating Notes
Pasta with tomato sauce at Ciao Bella which was just superb. Before going to see Emily Wilson speak about her new translation of the Iliad at the Conway Hall in London.
Heinz tomato soup, toast, butter, cheese, an apple, on a tray.
A mortadella roll, water and apricot nectar. Roll eaten for lunch at c. 4.30pm after I travelled to Bologna, found all my electronics including my laptop had got soaked in water from my water bottle, then spent the one afternoon I had in the city in the Apple store charging my phone and buying a new charger.
A custard filled doughnut in Bolgona, with apricot juice and coffee.
A small burger with cheese, pickles and raw onion with fries in a shopping centre in Reading; these are my leftover fries.
An arrangement of potato cakes that I made with leftover white sauce containing leeks, with smoked Japanese sausages. Eaten with Dutch mustard and ketchup. Then the next day, I made an egg muffin with a potato cake in.
