This recipe started in Istanbul and finished in Almaty, quite appropriately, on Halloween. I bought a bag of fresh chestnuts at a market in Istanbul, with a view to making braised pumpkin and chestnuts with coconut. I didn't buy the pumpkin, as at the time I had nowhere to cook and I knew that I'd easily find a fresh pumpkin in Almaty, since the chestnut and pumpkin seasons coincide (temporally at least, if not geographically). But, even though I didn't purchase the pumpkin, the process of thinking about the recipe let me to speculate on how I might most creatively use the left over pumpkin I was inevitably going to have afterwards. I didn't think about this all the time I was in Istanbul, of course; there were much more interesting things to do, but during the course of one of those much more interesting things, which involved taking a short ferry trip and then wandering about the district of Moda on the Asian side of the Bosfor, we felt rather hungry and decided to search out a cafe. Luckily, the first one we found had a good veggie selection and we sat down at a table in the street and ordered lentil soup. We began chatting to our neighbour at the next table and she told us this restaurant was well known all over Istanbul. As a result of that short conversation, I am able to report that the restaurant was named 'Ciya', which is the Turkish word for a wild mountain herb, though which exactly we were unable to establish (maybe thyme?).
So, where's the pumpkin in all this? Well, just a second and I'll tell you. It was right behind me all the time. While I was eating my soup, I happened to glance round and into the restaurant through the window and I spotted a large dish of candied pumpkin. I knew it was candied pumpkin because my friend Rob, who lives in Istanbul, had mentioned it the evening before as an example of a classic Turkish pumpkin dish. So, you can imagine what was going through my mind ... 'I'm going to try something like that.' is how I was thinking . But, of course, I wouldn't try it exactly as the Turks make it. I don't know how to for a start, but there's also the element of creative surprise and occasional reward that comes from experimenting a little with variations on traditional recipes.
The day after the chestnut and pumpkin recipe, I tried this and I feel it worked spectacularly well. I say this because I got up at three a.m. to raid the fridge and ended up polishing off all that was left after we had tried a little a t dinner. I think that's an indicator of success.
The day after this dish, by the way, I made pumpkin with pine nuts and corn. This kind of thing happens when you buy pumpkin.
Ingredients
300g pumpkin
500g orange juice
2 tablespoons of sugar
A small piece of cinnamon bark
2 cloves
Cut the pumpkin into slices 1-2 cm thick and remove the skin from each piece. Put the slices in a pan and add the other ingredients. It doesn't matter if the pumpkin is completely covered; it cooks fairly easily, and you can manoeuvre the slices around a bit while they are cooking. Bring to the boil and then reduce the heat, cover the pan and simmer for ten minutes.
Carefully remover the pumpkin slices from the cooking liquid and arrange them artfully on a plate with a raised edge, or a shallow dish. Fish the cloves and cinnamon out of the juice and raise the heat to a vigorous boil to reduce the liquid to a syrup (this will take ten minutes, tops). Pour the syrup over the pumpkin and leave to cool before serving.