Ute cooks: ROASTED PUMPKIN WITH CARDAMON AND LIME

the best pumpkin recipe ever

After all the Christmas gluttony with plenty of meat and alcohol, I was in dire need of some detox. Luckily, I bought my mum Plenty by the famous London restaurateur Yotam Ottolenghi for Christmas and so we tried some of his recipes to cleanse our bodies and enjoy the pleasures of vegetables, herbs and spices.

I absolutely love Ottolenghi’s roasted pumpkin recipe – the comforting pumpkin, the fresh yoghurt, the zesty lime and the aromatic spices result in a dish that is  absolutely addictive and that you can gorge on with a good conscience after too many Christmas biscuits.

It is not easy to get all the fancy ingredients in Austria, so we left a few out (for example we did not have Tahini), replaced some with others (we used pumpkin instead of butternut squash) and added some other ones in (for example cumin seeds  to the mixture of spices).

(see the original recipe published on the Guardian website here)

ROASTED PUMPKIN WITH CARDAMON AND LIME

Amount: For 3-4 people (or one Ute)

Cooking Time: 40 min

Ingredients:

• 1 pumpkin or butternut squash
• 1 lime
• good quality olive oil, about 3-4 tablespoons
• sea salt
• 1 tablespoon cardamon pods
• 1 tablespoon pimento seeds (allspice)
• 1 tablespoon cumin seeds
• fresh chili if you have, chili powder works too
• 150g of Greek yoghurt
• fresh coriander leaves

herbs and spices

more ingredients

1.  Preheat oven to 200 degrees

2.  Skin the limes by removing top and bottom with a sharp knife. Then stand lime on a chopping board and remove the skin following the natural curve of the lime trying not leaving any white parts behind.  Once skin is removed, quarter the lime and then cut into thin slices.  Place the slices in a bowl, add a pinch of salt and 1 tablespoon of olive oil, stir and leave standing for a while.  Safe the juice.

Skin and slice the lime

3. Prepare the spice mixture:  add the cardamon pods, the cumin seeds and the pimento into a mortar and work with pestle to produce a rough spice powder.  Remove skin of cardamom pods during this process.

cumin, pimento and cardamon...

...smaller

4. Skin and deseed pumpkin, cut into 1 cm slices and place into a roasting dish.  Sprinkle with spice mixture, salt and chili powder and drizzle with olive oil.

on the way to the oven

5. Roast pumpkin for approximantely 20 minutes on 200 degrees Celsius.

6. Leave to cool and then arrange on a serving platter.  (It is nice if the pumpkin is still a bit warm, so doesn’t need to cool completely.)

7. Whisk yogurt with salt, pepper and a some juice and a splash of water (so that it’s thin enough to drizzle over pumpkin,  the original recipe in ‘Plenty’ suggests to add buttermilk, which is omnipresent in Austrian supermarkets, but I have no idea where to get this in Britain).

8. Drizzle yogurt sauce generously over pumpkin, followed by the lime slices.  Finally sprinkle fresh coriander leaves on top before serving.

You may also like:

• Ute cooks: HALOUMI AND ASPARAGUS SALAD
• Ute cooks: ROASTED BUTTERNUT SQUASH WITH CARDAMON AND NIGELLA SEEDS (Ottolenghi)
• Ute cooks: BULGUR WITH AVOCADO AND POMEGRANATE