Jack's Food Blog

This whole roasted pumpkin recipe is another filling, satisfying winter warmer. It’s a lot of fun to cook, as well as easy to assemble and a great centrepiece for a shared meal.

The end result is a weighty, juicy, sweet roast pumpkin, full to the brim with quinoa and beef, spiced with a few familiar – and some more interesting – spices. A nice touch of chilli and the nutty, clean taste of quinoa tops it off just right.

Ingredients

• 1 small pumpkin
• 1 red pepper
• 1 onion
• 1 small carrott
• 2 cloves garlic
• 300g beef mince
• 1 beef stock cube
• 1 tbsp curry powder
• 2 tsp fennel seeds (crushed)
• 1tsp black pepper
• 1 red chilli
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp zaatar
• 1 tsp sumac
• 2tsp thyme
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 beef stock cube
• 1bsp sesame seeds, crushed

Method

1. First, set the oven to 180 degrees celsius, then it’s time to prepare your pumpkin. Chop off the top (but retain it), then scoop out all of the mush and seeds from the inside.
2. Now pop the pumpkin in the oven, with the “lid” off, but sat next to it, the pupkin will be in there for at least an hour and a half overall.
3. At this point, start cooking your quinoa, which should take about 15-20 minutes (check the packaging).
4. Now, whilst the pumpkin is softening up and quinoa is cooking, fry your onion, garlic, chilli, carrot and red pepper for around 5 minutes.
5. Next, add the beef mince & stock cube to your veg. After a couple of minutes, when it starts getting a bit of colour, add all of your spices at once, along with the sesame seeds, salt and pepper and stir continuously at a high heat.
6. Once the beef is cooked, along with the quinoa, mix it together whilst still on the heat. You want this to all coagulate together into a thick sort of paste.
7. At this point, take your pumpkin out of the oven. It should have softened up a nice bit by now. Scoop all of the spiced beef filling up from your pan, and stuff the pumpkin as much as you can.
8. Re-add the lid to the pumpkin (don’t worry that it’s smaller now), and pop in the over for another half an hour.
9. You’ll know the roasted pumpkin is ready when it’s very soft, and starting to sag under its own weight. With it full of carbs, veg and meat, there is no real need to serve this with anything else. If you do, a little kale goes very well on the side.