Honeyed Glazed Pumpkin

Hey Everyone! 

I love trying out new recipes with different vegetables to try mix things up a bit.

It can actually be so easy to enhance flavours of vegetables to make them not only taste amazing but so you can still get all the important nutrients from them.

It's well into spring here now (not that the weather is showing us that at the moment!) but we still had a couple of pumpkins to use up. 

I love pumpkin because it is so versatile. It can be sweet or savoury. Baked, roasted, boiled or steamed. You can eat it in pieces or it can make a really yummy puree. 

This recipe is inspired from a recipe I found in the My petite kitchen cookbook. She is a blogger from NZ who comes up with the most amazing nutritious, wholefood recipes! My copy of the book has post it notes in nearly every page for recipes that I want to try! Check out her blog here 

Honey Glazed Pumpkin

( Serves 3-4 side dishes )

Ingredients

1/4 pumpkin

1T Runny honey

Small handful of chopped coriander and Italian Parsley 

1/4 cup Chopped Olives( I wanted to use black olives but we only had stuffed green olives but they still tasted great!)

1T coconut oil melted

Salt and pepper

Method

Pre heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius 

Carefully slice the skin off the pumpkin. Using a sharp knife and a chopping board that is not wobbling around ( place a wet cloth underneath your board to help ).

Cut pumpkin into thin slices, roughly 10 - 5 mm thick.

Place pumpkin into a roasting dish.

Drizzle honey and coconut oil onto pumpkin.

 Season with salt and pepper.

Bake for 20-30 minutes or until pumpkin is cooked right through.

Place into a serving dish and sprinkle with chopped herbs and olives.

Serve while still warm.

Even my cat was trying to get in on this!

Enjoy!

Brit xo

Queenstown NZ

I am very fortunate that I live just a short 2 hour drive away from one of the most beautiful places in the world. Queenstown is located in the South Island of New Zealand. It is often known as the "adventurer capital" and is a very popular place to visit. It is a small town with beautiful lake Wakatipu and is surrounded by the lovely Remarkables - which is a popular place to ski in the winter, Celil Peak and Walter Peak - which you can travel to on an old coal fired steam boat called the TSS Earnslaw. 

On the left is when we were driving to Queenstown, sheep being moved on the road - Only in NZ!

On the right is a well known part of the road to queenstown when you are travelling from the south called the "Devils staircase". It is a windy tight road but has amazing views of Lake Wakatipu.

Eat

My favourite place to eat in Queenstown is a cafe' called Vudu cafe. There is actually two of them in queenstown because the first one was so popular! They always have really creative yummy and healthy food and drinks! Definitely my kind of food!
 

Pumpkin roll , vegetarian version of the sausage roll. This had pinenuts in it as well which was super yummy!

Strawberry smoothie - my fav!

Let me know if you've ever been to Queenstown or you would like to visit and want to know more!
I would be more than happy to recommend places to stay or things to do!

Brit xx

What's for dinner!? - Warm Pumpkin and Chickpea Curry

Warm Pumpkin and Chickpea Curry

This Curry is so easy and quick to make with very little ingredients!

Lately it has been getting pretty cold here! Autumn is here and winter feels like it is not long around the corner!

I have a few pumpkins so thought I would use some for dinner!
You can make this curry as hot or as mild as you like (in terms of spicy-ness)

What you will need :

About half a pumpkin (Roughly 1kg)
1 can chickpeas
2 T chopped Coriander
1 cup coconut milk
1 onion - diced
1T oil

1/2 cup curry sauce ( My one is not very hot which is why I used 1/2 cup, you may want to use 1-2T of yellow curry paste instead - depending on how hot you want it)

Rice:
1 cup long grain rice
1 onion - Diced finely
50g butter
2 cups white stock (I used vegetable)


How to:
Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees Celsius
Chop the pumpkin (Carefully!!) and peel skin off( i find using a peeler works great)
dice into cubes

Roast off in the oven for about 20-30min or until semi tender - Note that they don't need to be completely cooked through at the moment as they will be cooked later :)


While they are cooking we can cook off the rice
Place butter and onion in a small saucepan and sweat off.

Add the rice and coat the rice in the butter

Add the white stock
Cover with a lid and bring to a boil then simmer
This is cooked once the rice is soft to bite and has soaked up all the liquid.

Back to the curry!

Place oil and onion in a large saucepan and sweat off

Add the curry sauce, coconut milk, roasted pumpkin, chickpeas and coriander,

Cover with a lid on a high simmer for about 20 minutes

Finish with cracked pepper for seasoning.

Serve with rice and enjoy!

Brit :)