Baked whole pumpkins with gooey cheesy wonderfulness

Baked whole pumpkins with gooey cheesy wonderfulness

Firstly I would like to start off by apologising for things being a bit quiet here at ‘twicebitten’ towers over the last month. I’ve been backpacking around Northern India and had rather hoped to come back with lots of awesome curry recipes to share with you. Sadly I’ve come back empty handed. None of the recipes from a day at an Udaipur cookschool have met my exacting standards so I thought I would honour the freezing late Autumn weekend with a real comfort food warmer; whole baked pumpkin with lots of lovely cream and gooey cheese. Cholesterol, what cholesterol. This is eating in the danger zone!

pumpkins

Since we got back it feels like one massive Christmas explosion, everywhere I look is party dresses, wreaths and discounted alcohol. I’ve caught the Crimbo bug and boy have I got it bad. It’s certainly more enjoyable than that bout of Delhi-belly I inevitably had (groan).  I guess the reason for my excitement is because it’s the time of year when all my favourite people in the whole world come back to Scotland and I get a fortnight full of long boozy lunches, side splitting evenings and the best hugs around. I can’t wait, roll out the turkey. 4 weeks and counting…

Baked whole pumpkins

This baked whole pumpkin recipe is so simple, it’s great to just pop in the oven, grab the Sunday papers and curl up for an hour before pulling it out and tucking in. It’s lazy weekend perfection. This dish works great like a fondue, dunking your bread into the gooey cheesy wonderfulness or alternatively you can scoop the pumpkin flesh into the cheesy mixture and then smear it on top of something like thick slices of sourdough toast.

Baked whole pumpkin with cream and gooey cheese – serves 2

Oven preheated to 180°

2 small pumpkins or squash such as acorn squash

175g of melty alpine cheese such as comte

125ml double cream

1/4tsp freshly grated nutmeg

salt and pepper to season

Take off the tops of the pumpkins and scoop out the seeds with a spoon.

Add the nutmeg, cheese and cream to the pumpkin cavity and pop the top of the pumpkin back on.

Bake in the oven for an hour to an hour to an hour and a quarter depending on the size of your pumpkins.

You may need to cover with tinfoil if they are beginning to look a bit burnt after 20-30 mins.

You can tell when your pumpkins are cooked if you are able to easily stick a knife into the flesh.

Season to taste.

Enjoy.

Baked whole pumpkins with gooey cheesy wonderfulness

Suck it up – Worcester berry and marzipan crumble

Worcester berry and marzipan crumble

I remember being told as a young child, “sometimes we need to do things we don’t necessarily want to do”. Tough love. I think the next few months are going to fall under that heading. I’m just going to have to “suck it up”  (and comfort eat).

An ex-boyfriend once told me my food wasn’t “sexy”. Perhaps he was right but frankly I couldn’t care less, on a good day it is pretty darn tasty. This recipe is a perfect example of that; not sexy but great comfort food.

Worcester berries

I hadn’t come across Worcester berries before last Saturday when I spotted them at the farmer's market. If you are interested they are a cross between a red gooseberry and a blueberry and make excellent jam apparently. If you can’t find them most stone fruit such as plums or berries such as brambles would work well.

Worcester berry crumble filling

Worcester and marzipan crumble

Makes 4 pots

Oven set to 180 degrees c

For the topping –

100g plain flour

80g of butter at room temperature

20g demerara sugar

35g marzipan chopped into ½ cm cubes

For the filling -

600g Worcester berries, topped and tailed

80 - 100g approx of caster sugar

Add the filling ingredients to a pan over a moderate heat.

Maybe add a tiny splash of water if you think it will stick.

Cook for approx 5 minutes or until soft.

Have a taste you may need to add more sugar.

To make the topping add the flour and butter together by rubbing the mixture between your fingers until it resembles rough sand.

Stir in the sugar and half of the marzipan.

To assemble the crumble add some of the filling to a wee pot or ramekin if you are being posh.

You may want to add the fruit and just a little of juice as it would be a bit of a watery crumble if you add the whole of the filling mixture.

Scatter the remaining half of the marzipan onto the filling and then add the topping mix.

To make a crisp crumble make sure the top is completely covered and compress slightly.

Bake in the oven for 20 minutes until crisp and lovely.

Serve with cream, custard, yogurt or whatever you fancy. Personally I think some elderflower ice cream would be pretty amazing with this.

Enjoy.

Worcester berry and marzipan crumble - tucking in

6 hour slow roast shoulder of pork with dauphinoise potatoes - comfort food personified

6 hour slow roast shoulder of pork

Every lazy weekend deserves a lazy roast dinner – this week 6 hour slow roast shoulder of pork with dauphinoise potatoes and green beans. This is possibly the ultimate lazy roast, a beginner’s roast if you will. The reason it makes such a good beginners roast is due to the fact that there are only 3 components to get right and I can vouch that the slow cooking method is very forgiving with the timings. This was particularly helpful when I ended up having an impromptu mid afternoon nap. Ma bad. Again.

I am aware that a roast dinner isn’t very seasonal for Saturday in mid June but when the weather is behaving like a day in mid January (dreich and cold but with none of the excitement of a yet to come Christmas) it seemed appropriate. We ended up huddled around the open fire with the Saturday papers and in that moment I wanted to eat dauphinoise potatoes more than any other food in the whole world. Oh creamy, carby, garlicky wonderfulness…

One good looking piece of meat

One dauphinoise looking a little burnt

6 hour roast pork - the final product

6 hour slow roast shoulder of pork with dauphinoise potatoes and green beans

6 hour slow roast shoulder of pork

Serves 4 plus leftovers

Oven 200 degrees celsius

1.5kg – 2kg shoulder of pork (skin scored)

1dsp sea salt

Pour boiling water over the pork skin, and then pat dry with kitchen towel.

This helps to open up the scores, which makes for wonderful crackling.

Rub salt into the scores.

Pop in the oven for 30 minutes until the skin has all browned and puffed up.

Put a double layer of tinfoil over the top of the roast and then turn the oven down to 160 degrees.

Cook for 5 and half hours.

It does help it if you baste it with the rendered fat every so often, maybe every hour or so.

Depending how fatty your joint is you may want to take the crackling off the joint about 30 minutes before the end of cooking; roasting it separately fatty side up allows it to get really crispy.

When it is ready the pork should be able to be pulled apart, all succulent and lovely.

No need to rest this joint, which is just as well as it hard to resist.

Dauphinoise potatoes

serves 4-6

700g floury potatoes, peeled and cut into slices 2-3mm think (get yer ruler out - jokes)

400-500g of double cream

4 cloves of garlic, grated or finely chopped

2 bay leaves
a few strokes of nutmeg

a couple of pinches of sea salt

good pinch of black pepper

Arrange the potatoes in an ovenproof dish

Mix all the other ingredients in a mixing jug and pour over the potatoes.

Cook in the oven at about 160 degrees celsius for 1hr and 15 minutes.

Mine were in for an hour and a half a got a little burnt.

Check the potatoes after 15 minutes, if the oven is too hot the cream can split, adjust the temperature as necessary.

After an hour check it isn't looking too burnt, it may need a tinfoil hat.

Enjoy.