Pumpkin and Apple Fry Up

Sometimes I think I shouldn't be allowed out in markets. I went to do my shopping to make pumpkin butter, apple-onion chutney and cranberry-ginger relish. I carefully wrote out the amounts of ingredients I needed and I still got it wrong. I needed 11 pounds of apples, 8 pounds of pumpkins and 1 package of fresh cranberries. I ended up with about 16 pounds of apples, 12 pounds of pumpkins, 3 packages of cranberries and a basket of pears that I didn't need at all.

The upside of this is that I have lots of pumpkin to eat up and a copy of Tender by Nigel Slater which has a whole section on fantastic sounding pumpkin recipes. Happily there is a recipe which includes apple, so that is the one I tried first. For such a simple little recipe the taste really jumps out at you. You get a wonderful mixture of sweet, salty and a bit of sour finish from the lemon. I used a double smoked bacon, so the flavour of the bacon was really apparent. If you want a vegetarian version of this, leave out the bacon and caramelize the onions rather than just cooking them until they are translucent. It will take about 1/2 an hour longer. It took a while to cook as it is. Slater doesn't give you a cooking time, but it was about an hour before my pumpkin was really tender.

You can eat this as a side dish, but we ate it as a main course. Add a bit of crusty bread and maybe a green salad and you have a fantastic harvest meal.

source

Pumpkin Apple Fry Up

Butter
3 oz bacon
1 medium onion
1 1/2 lbs pumpkin, peeled and seeded
1 lb apples, a dessert variety
1 lemon
Pinch caraway seeds (optional)
Salt to taste

1. Melt a slice of butter in a shallow pan, cut the bacon into short strips and let them colour lightly in the butter. Peel and roughly chop the onion, add to the pan and allow to cook with the bacon until translucent but not browned. Cut the pumpkin flesh into manageable pieces and add to the pan, turning from time to time till golden in patches and almost tneder.

2. Core and roughly chop the apples, but don't peel them. Stir them into the pan and leave to putter gently until they are on the verge of collapse. Avoid stirring too much, which is likely to mash the softening pumpkin. Finely grate the zest from the lemon and add it to the pan with the juice, the caraway seeds and a little salt.