Stuffed Hokkaido Pumpkin

 I first ate a stuffed Hokkaido pumpkin at my Georgian friends place. It was so delicious that I stole the recipe from her and made my own. Unfortunately it didn't taste anything as delicious as my friends. I was so sad, but I blamed it on the fact that her pumpkin was organically grown, with love, in her own garden. Thereafter I lost the recipe, but every year since then, when the shelves were brimming with Hokkaido's during the fall, I craved for a stuffed pumpkin. So for the last few years I've been experimenting with stuffing pumpkins. This year I finally perfected my recipe 😁. We've been so busy eating it that there was no time to post it! I hope you'll still have some pumpkins left on the shelf.

Preparation time: 1.5 hours; serves 2

Ingredients:

1	Organic Hokkaido pumpkin (about 20 cm diameter)
1 tsp.	Minced garlic
1/2 tsp.	Salt
1 tbsp.	Olive oil
200 g	Feta or similar (I use a cheese based on cows milk)
1/2	Vegetable cube
1/2 cup	Couscous
1/2 cup	Coarsely chopped walnuts
1/4 cup	Dried cranberries, coarsely chopped
3/4 cup	Hot water
1 tbsp.	Chopped cilantro

Method:

Pre-heat your oven to 180 C (fan oven) [200 C convection].

Cutting and cleaning out the pumpkin is probably the most time consuming and difficult part of the this recipe. You'll need a very strong and sharp knife to cut open the top. See the picture below. Take great care  while doing this. Cut the hole big enough so that you can fit your hand in later to scrape out some of the insides. 

Put the minced garlic, salt and olive oil into the pumpkin and coat the surface well. Don't forget to coat the inside of the lid. 

I've found that Hokkaido pumpkins tend to split in the oven. This is a bit annoying because one of the nice things about the dish is that it looks really good. So if it splits and falls to pieces, well what was the use? Because of this I've taken to wrapping the bottom part of the pumpkin with aluminium foil. Sometimes before I bake it and some times after. However, wrapping with foil is not essential, it's just to keep the pumpkin together. 

Put your pumpkin on a baking tray (this is essential) and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the flesh of the pumpkin is soft enough to scoop out. This will not only depend on the size of your pumpkin but also on how thick it is. 

While the pumpkin is baking you can get the other ingredients ready. Coarsely chop the walnuts and cranberries (if they are too large that is). Cube the feta cheese and finely chop the cilantro.

Once the pumpkin is baked remove it from the oven and scrape out some of the flesh (about 1/2 to 1 cup). Be careful to leave enough flesh so that the pumpkin retains it's shape. If the flesh is hard you can cut it into small cubes, if not it will just break up when you mix things together. Now place all dry ingredients in a bowl and mix. 

Pour in the hot water, mix everything together and then stuff the pumpkin with the mixture. 

Put on the lid and bake for a a further 15 minutes.

You can serve this as a side or a main dish. We like it with a bit of crusty bread and a salad.