Guest recipe: Frew’s pumpkin and chickpea curry

I’ve been spending a week with our older sister, Candy, and her partner, Frew, in their Adelaide Hills home. I have to admit that my eyes are green with envy each time I visit Candy and Frew’s beautiful home. This week Frew took me and his Dad, recently arrived from Denmark, on the ‘token’ walk around their stunning property. With beer in our hands and dogs at our feet, we strolled through the bushland as Frew pointed out wild flowers, native trees, the resident brown snake which had left behind it’s skin and the beautiful bird life that flew around us as though we weren’t even there.

Then we got hungry.

As always, Frew got to work in the kitchen tossing together a  friggen tasty pumpkin curry served with rice, pappadums, local homemade chutney and a yummy carrot salad. And again, he happily spilled the secret ingredients so you too can recreate this magic kitchen moment.

What goes in:

1/2 butternut pumpkin
Dark agave syrup
Olive oil for cooking
1 large onion, chopped
1 teaspoon of chilli flakes
4 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
1 tablespoon of ginger, chopped finely
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 tablespoon of yellow mustard seeds
1 tablespoon of black mustard seeds
1 tablespoon of turmeric
2 cinnamon sticks
400g tinned tomatoes
Half a cup of vegetarian stock
400g tinned chickpeas, rinsed well
Salt and pepper to taste

How you do it:

Heat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius.

Cut the butternut pumpkin into cubes, leaving the skin and pulp attached (you can eat every part of a butternut pumpkin, nothing needs to be wasted). Place the seeds to one side. In a bowl drizzle the pumpkin with agave and olive oil. Mix until coated. Place on a tray.

In a separate bowl, sprinkle the pumpkin seeds with olive oil and salt. Place on a separate tray.

Place both the pumpkin and the pumpkin seeds into the oven. Cook the pumpkin until golden and the seeds until crispy.

Heat some oil in a large fry pan. On one side of the pan add the onion, chilli flakes, garlic and ginger (These guys are Frew’s base ingredients he uses most often in recipes. He even has a name for them – ‘The Usual Suspects’).

On the other side of the pan add the coriander, cumin, yellow and black mustard seeds,  tumeric and cinnamon sticks. When the mustard seeds start to pop, mix the seeds and onion mixture together. Continue to cook on medium to low heat until the onions are soft and slightly caramalised.

Add the tinned tomatoes and stock into the pan. Simmer on a low heat for 10 minutes.

Finish by adding the chickpeas and allowing to cook for a couple of minutes to just heat slightly. Mix the pumpkin and pumpkin seeds through to finish.

Love Alana xx