this is a traditional turkish dessert we make with pumpkins. i made it for halloween but i couldn’t be bothered with carving the pumpkin, instead we had mini pumpkins and they were super cute on their own.

ingredients

• 500g pumpkin (cut in cubes)
• 300g sugar
• 100g walnuts

preparation

this is the tricky bit. you’ll need a very strong and sharp knife for this. put the tip of the knife in first and slice up the pumpkin using the segments as a guide like this:

clean the stringy bits holding the seeds. save the seeds! i have another recipe coming up for those. back to the pumpkin, now peel the skin. i use a sharp peeler and find it more difficult with a knife. you can peel very thinly with a peeler keeping the nice bit just under the skin. a couple of these, i peeled with a knife and used the peel to cover the bottom of the saucepan to prevent sticking:

then cover the chopped up pumpkin with the sugar and leave to rest for an hour or so. or you can do this overnight so the sugar is absorbed all the way in the pumpkin.

you’ll notice that the sugar will have melted by now, you can put the lid on and on to the hob, medium heat:

it doesn’t take a long time to cook, maybe 20 minutes or so, keep poking with a knife every now and then, when it’s all soft, it’s cooked. take the pumpkin pieces in another dish:

be generous with the walnuts:

now this bit is optional. if you’ll notice that the sugar-water in the pan is nowhere near sticky enough, keep boiling for a bit longer and reduce, with the peel in it.

when it’s reduced to a syrup consistency, i scrape the little bit of pumpkin flesh and chuck the peels.

and pour this syrup over the pumpkins:

this top bit kind of hardens and crystallise after resting in the fridge for a couple of hours and it’s yummy:

you can skip the syrup bit altogether and serve it more neatly if you like using a walnut half on each slice and clotted cream on the side.

enjoy! x