Cinnamon Pumpkin with Chickpeas, Tahini and Candied Pumpkin Seeds

Sometimes inspiration comes in the most unexpected places. Like the Sunday papers. I found this recipe back in May in the Sunday Telegraph Body and Soul section. There was an excerpt of several recipes from a book called Community. I'd never heard of Community before I made this recipe- after I made this recipe I made sure to track it down at my local bookshop- it's chock full of delicious sounding recipes.

This is the best thing I've cooked this year.

My effort

1 large butternut pumpkin/squash (about 1 kg), peeled and cut into 2cm cubes
1 red onion, cut into 5mm wedges
1 head of garlic
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
sea salt and black pepper
2-3 tblsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 tblsp tahini paste
3 tblsp Greek yoghurt
1/2 lemon, juiced
1 small clove garlic, crushed
2 cans of chickpeas, drained
1/2 cup coriander leaves, roughly chopped

Candied Pumpkin Seeds

1 cup pumpkin seeds
3 tblsp low GI sugar
1 large eggwhite, beaten
1/4 tsp ground allspice
sea salt

Preheat oven to 220C. Toss pumpkin, onion, cinnamon, ginger, salt and pepper with oil.

Spread on a baking tray and roast for 40 minutes or until golden. You may need to remove the onion first as it cooks faster.

To make the candied pumpkin seeds, mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Spread on a tray lined with baking paper. Bake for 10-20 minutes or until seeds are golden and slightly puffed. Remove from the oven and season with salt. Stir gently, leaving some clumps. Allow the mixture to cool completely (it can be stored in an airtight jar for 3-4 weeks).

Whisk together the tahini, yoghurt, lemon juice, crushed garlic and a pinch of salt.

To serve, gently toss pumpkin, chickpeas, roasted garlic and coriander together. Place on a serve plate, spoon over tahini sauce and scatter over the candied pumpkin seeds.


Notes
Naturally I tinkered with the recipe.

Cook the onion separately it cooks much too quickly, and even keeping an eye on it it's quite easy to burn it before the pumpkin is done.

I don't like tahini all that much, so changed the ratios to suit. The original recipe had
4 tblsp tahini paste
3 tblsp Greek yoghurt
and the sauce was thinned with with 4 tblsp water- I can't remember if I did that or not.

I added a roasted a head of garlic with the other veggies as I had one in the cupboard.

I substituted coriander/cilantro for parsley, as I love, love, love coriander and find parsley a bit meh.

I found the candied pumpkin seeds a little troublesome, although I cut down the amount of sugar because it seemed too much. I will have to try that again.

Boiled butternut pumpkin/squash has a low GI rating of 51.
Tinned chickpeas are low GI at 40, while home cooked chickpeas are even lower 28 (and more delicious, but I used tinned for this).

How it looked in the paper

Smoked Salmon and Cucumber Salad

It has been a long slow cool start to summer in my part of Australia this year. The temperatures are starting to warm up finally and we can enjoy some salads, eaten outside in the evening. We enjoyed this one tonight. It went particularly well with a couple of glasses of champagne.

It's prepared in minutes, and totally non-cook. Always a bonus in the summer.

Smoked Salmon and Cucumber Salad

1/2 tsp low Gi sugar
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
1tblsp finely chopped chives
1 tblsp finely chopped dill
1/4 cup cream
1 piece hot smoked salmon, flaked
1/2 cos lettuce
1 telegraph (long) cucumber, thinly sliced

In a small bowl lend together the sugar, lemon juice, chives, dill and cream. Add the salmon. Toss to combine.

Arrange lettuce and cucumber on plates. Top with the salmon mixture.

Serves 2.

Notes
Adapted from a recipe in Marie Claire Fresh (Michele Cranston). The original recipe used smoked trout, which works very well too of course. The original recipe also salted the cucumbers, this step made them soggy in the final dish, and I preferred just using plain sliced cucumber to keep it crunchy. The original recipe called for watercress, but we couldn't find any this week so used cos lettuce instead. I imagine it would be very tasty.

Cream is of course relatively high in fat, so is low GI by definition. But there is only a small portion of cream per person here. You could substitute for it if you wanted to make it lower fat.

This post is linked to Weekend Cooking, a fabulous weekly meme at Beth Fish Reads.

Sesame Snow Pea Salad

I first made this many years ago, and it had dropped out of my regular repertoire. Happily, I've corrected this oversight this year. It's a simple recipe from Jill Dupleix's 2002 Simple Food. I've long loved Jill's work, and have been happy to see her recipes return to the Sydney Morning Herald's weekly food section Good Living. She has a sense of fun with food, likes it to be healthy, or at least divine if not healthy, which is as it should be. And she writes fun instructions at times.

Sesame Snow Pea Salad

Mangetout (snow peas) are too boring for words when cooked whole. But shred them finely and toss raw in a sweet Asian vinaigrette, and they taste wild. Serve as a salad or side dish, or use as a base for seafood, duck or barbequed quail.

Serves 4

250g  snow peas (mangetout)
2 tsp sesame seeds

Dressing:
1 tsp Logicane Low GI sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar, or white wine vinegar
1 tbsp Chinese rice wine, or dry sherry
2 tsp sesame oil

Wash and dry the snow peas, then finely slice lengthwise into matchsticks, using the tip of a sharp knife. This will take some time, but keep going and don't curse me too much. The effect it has on the flavour and texture is too great to give up now.

For the dressing, mix the sugar, soy sauce, wine vinegar, rice wine and sesame oil together. Lightly toss the shredded snow peas in the dressing, draining off any excess.

Arrange the dressed snow peas on a serving plate and sprinkle with the sesame seeds to serve.

Notes
This worked well with barbequed chicken tonight. I've had it with seafood in the past, and that was delicious too.

I used rice wine vinegar, and dry sherry, it was fab.

The left over dressing was great on a chickpea and salad leaf salad.

Check out the Foodies Reading Challenge 

Never a dull moment with lentils

The Young Ones may never have had a dull moment with lentils, but I imagine that the rest of us have. Lentils have a bad reputation, not altogether fully deserved I believe. I have made and loved a brown rice and lentil soup for 15-20 years. I'm well aware that it does sound Rather Awful. But everyone who has tried it always wants the recipe.

Lentils are low gi wonders. They are nutritional powerhouses- full of protein, fibre and nutrients. And they are tasty too. There are different varieties to play with as well. I used some Australian grown Puy style lentils that I had lying about the house.

Browsing through the Essential Ingredient recently I noticed they have some black lentils, which I think they called Lentil Caviar. That is possibly going a bit far, but I know what kind of lentils I'll be trying next.

So my eyes lit up when flipping through the latest issue of Cuisine (a marvellous food mag from New Zealand) and I saw Ray McVinnie's current Quick Smart article. More a series of food suggestions than actual recipes, this month he features lots of delicious suggestions for grains, pasta and pulses- all right up my low GI alley.

Lots of fabulous suggestions- Spicy Quinoa and Pork, Barley and Asparagus Bake, Orzo with Roast Pumpkin and Kumara. The one that really caught my eye first was Lentil Egg Salad. It looked the perfect weekday work lunch suggestion. Easy to prepare ahead, yummy, and an excuse to have some bacon and eggs, and call it healthy.

Lentil Egg Salad

Boil some green or brown lentils in plenty of water with half an onion, a carrot and a stick of celery until the lentils are tender. Drain, discard the vegetables, toss the lentils in a little extra virgin olive oil, season and serve in a salad with cos leaves, soft-poached eggs, watercress sprigs, crisp bacon, capers, walnuts and a dressing made by pouring a big splash of red wine vinegar into the fat in the hot bacon pan after the bacon has been added to the salad.

I cooked up a batch of lentils and then made it into quite a different lunch each day for the week.  I think it's quite a hangover from my (lengthy) student days that I can quite happily eat the same thing for 3 or 4 days in a row. By day 5 though even my tolerance is wearing a bit thin. This lunch was good for padding out a week, it was reasonably different each day depending on what left overs I had to play around with. One day I used the leftover mango and blueberry salsa.

Another day I had some chopped mushrooms, corn and capsicum. It was quite the production in the staff dining room, cutting my egg and avocado and shelling pistachios.

I forgot to take photos of the first few days, which I thought were the best with leftover asparagus and mashed kumara. You could use basically anything and get a different, tasty, low GI lunch every day.