Tag: autumn

Categories
Breakfast Desserts Recipes Snacks

Pumpkin Spice Muffins

A feature of autumn is having lots of weird coloured and wonderful shaped pumpkins and squashes on our vegetable stalls. This recipe uses one of these to bring sweetness and moist texture to a set of freshly baked muffins. I recently made these on Halloween (as my photo shows!), but they are just as enjoyable for an autumn-themed breakfast, dessert or a snack with tea or coffee.

Servings

This will make 12 muffins.

Timings

10 mins to chop the squash, and 30 mins to roast it. The rest of the prep can be done while the squash is roasting, and the muffins will then take 25 mins to bake at 180C.

You Will Need

  • Pumpkin, butternut or other squash, peeled with seeds and pith removed, and cut into chunks. You will need 250g of chunks.
  • 255g self-raising flour
  • 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • half tsp salt
  • 2tsp mixed spice
  • 140g caster sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 150ml milk
  • 2 tablesp runny honey
  • 90 ml vegetable oil
  • 50 g dried fruit
  • 50g chopped mixed nuts
  • a few handfuls of pumpkin and sunflower seeds to garnish

Method

  1. Spread the chunks of squash out on a baking tray, drizzle with oil, and roast in an oven at 180C for 30 mins.
  2. While the squash is roasting, prepare a muffin tin or mould.
  3. In a bowl, sift together flour, bicarb, salt, spices and sugar. Add the nuts and dried fruit and stir well.
  4. In a separate bowl, mix the egg, milk, oil and honey.
  5. When the squash has finished roasting, remove from the oven. The chunks should be charred and caramelised at the edges. Lift them on to a plate and set aside to cool for 10 mins.
  6. Whirl the squash chunks in a food processor with blade fitted, till you have a puree. This process should also help the squash to cool further.
  7. Scrape the squash puree into the egg mixture and stir. Then add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and stir well to combine.
  8. Spoon the combined mixture into the muffin tin or mould. Sprinkle a few pumpkin and sunflower seeds on top of each muffin. Bake in the oven, still at 180C, for 25 mins until golden.

Customise it!

Cut down on time to bake the muffins by roasting the squash earlier, perhaps when you already have the oven on cooking something else. Puree it and set aside to cool, then use as stated. Feel free to substitute other types of nuts and seeds as you prefer.

Musical choice for this post comes from Inspiral Carpets. I have just obtained tickets to see the band on tour in London next spring. I’m excited about this – I have grown to really like their music in the last few years but haven’t seen them before. I especially like the 60s sounding farfisa organ played by Clint Boon. They have lots of great tracks but this one seems particularly appropriate to the season – She Comes in the Fall.

Categories
Mains Recipes

Autumn Veg Roast

The signs of autumn are now all around us. I’ve been enjoying some beautiful wooded walks amidst glorious shades of red and orange leaves. The days are getting cooler, and this coming weekend, in the UK, our clocks will be going back one hour, bringing in earlier, darker evenings.

This dish was inspired by the arrival in the ADK Kitchen of a wonderful harvest of autumn vegetables from our local community farm. You can see these spread out in the photo below: butternut squash, another (as yet unidentified!) variety of squash, parsnip, carrots, onions, celeriac and mooli (white radish). Also included in the crop was some broccoli, green beans and fresh butter beans.

There was too much to use in one dish, so I focused on the squashes and root veg, which I think are lovely roasted. I added a tomato and onion sauce, with a maverick ingredient – black olives. It is topped with a crisp crust of wholemeal breadcrumbs, grated cheese and chopped nuts.

The next photo shows the finished article, warm from the oven. Served with a nice glass of red wine, it makes a great comforting meal on an autumn evening, now that the nights are drawing in.

Timings

10 mins to prepare and chop the veg, which then roasts for 30 mins. The rest of the prep you can do while the veg are roasting. Allow a further 20 mins for the assembled dish to roast further.

Servings

This will serve 6 people.

You Will Need

  • A pyrex dish-ful of chopped seasonal veg: I used butternut squash, celeriac, parsnip and mooli, and added some chestnut mushrooms and red pepper
  • A sprinkling of herbes de provence
  • Some olive oil
  • A 500g carton of tomato passata
  • 1 onion
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 75 g pitted black olives, whole or chopped
  • 5 or 6 slices of wholemeal bread chopped into crumbs
  • 75g grated cheddar cheese
  • 75g chopped mixed nuts

Method

  1. Chop enough veg to half fill the pyrex dish that you will use. The veg should be in chunks roughly about 2-3cm square. Tip them into a separate metal baking dish and sprinkle with the herbes de provence. Drizzle with olive oil and roast in the oven for 30 mins at 180C. Spread them so that they are in a single layer, and use a second metal dish if necessary.
  2. While the veg is roasting, chop the onion and add it to some hot olive oil in a saucepan, with the garlic clove, crushed. After a few minutes, tip in the passata and black olives, and mix. Let it bubble for around 10 mins so that it is slightly thickened in consistency.
  3. Separately, combine the breadcrumbs, grated cheese and chopped nuts in a bowl. Get your hands in there and give it all a good mix. You want the cheese to be intertwined with the other ingredients so that, when it melts, it will bind it all together into a crisp coating.
  4. When the veg has roasted, combine it with the tomato sauce, and pour into the pyrex dish. Pat it all down with the back of a spatula so there are no gaps.
  5. Sprinkle over the bread, cheese and nut crust, evening it out and patting it down with the backs of your fingers. Give it a final drizzle of olive oil.
  6. Cook in the oven for around 20 mins, or until the top is crisp and golden. With some ovens, it may help to give it a final 5 mins under the grill to crisp it up. Serve.

Customise it!

Lots of scope for customising here, starting with choice of veg. Really, you can use whatever is in season and whatever particular veg you prefer. There are many varieties of squash and root veg around this time of year, most of which benefits from roasting, helping it sweeten and caramelise on the outside and succulent to bite into.

With the crust topping, you can use other bread for the crumbs, and other cheese. Grated blue cheese would give it a lovely taste twist, as would some parmesan. The next time I make this I will include some pumpkin and sunflower seeds in the crusty mix.

You can omit the olives if they’re not your thing. I love them, and had the idea to include them in the sauce and serve the dish with a warmed, sliced black olive ciabatta (see my photo), which all worked really well.

The dish is suitable for vegetarians. To make it vegan, simply omit the grated cheese, though the topping will be a little looser. However, you could always use a vegan cheese. As ever, feel free to experiment!

This time of year also means that Halloween is approaching. I’ll be saying more about this in this coming weekend’s post, and hopefully having a little fun. For now, I’ll choose a track from a Halloween Playlist I have on Spotify, to share as musical accompaniment.

Cue Superstition by Stevie Wonder. Nothing more to say!