I was planning this for years. I came across the dish in Lisbon, Portugal in a restaurant called Mega Vega. After discovering it, I visited for a few days on the trot and really enjoyed their food. Potato, coriander and feta bake was one of their dishes, too. That was the first time I visited Lisbon and Mega Vega was the only veg place I could find. The other restaurants all seemed to offer menus heavy on meat and seafood and in the one place I asked if they could do a veggie option, they suggested salad and chips. But all that happened in Baixa district which, although very pretty with lots of old restored buildings and cobbled streets and deserving of a visit, is distinctly touristy and all the places are geared up for seafood dinners and stuff. Sure, a visit to Baixa is a must if you want to see Lisbon, but there are lots of more interesting places, and lots more variety in the restaurant department if you wander a wee bit further afield.
I now know that Lisbon is actually really good for vegetarians. Sveta did some research on the Internet before our next visit and came up with a long list of places to check out. We did that and found that a good number of the restaurants on the list were easy to find, open, reasonably priced and offered quality cooking. We enjoyed planning each day with a visit to an unknown restaurant for dinner in the evening, and just about all our eating-out experiences were positive. We did have one rather sad curry experience. The food was okay, but it wasn't spicy at all and included a large proportion of tinned and frozen veg. That wasn't one of the restaurants on our list. I won't say the name, but if you're wandering down Marqis de Pombal and some geezer waves an Indian restaurant flyer in your face, just be a bit wary.
I'm going off topic a little here. That's never happened before. I wanted to explain why it took so long to get this recipe together. I'll do it now. Seasonal vegetables! That's why. I like to cook with fresh seasonal vegetables, grown not far from where I'm standing over the stove. I don't do it every day at every meal, but it's something I generally prefer doing and I think if more people did that, there wouldn't be so many global problems involving unequal food distribution, the hidden impact of transport, excessive use of chemicals and a bunch of other stuff.
So, I wanted freshly harvested pumpkin and chestnuts together, in the same place, at the same time. It took a while to happen. I got the chestnuts in Istanbul, where the season had just begun and the streets were already full of the rich smoke from vendors carts. I went down to the market the day before I left and bought a kilo of the biggest, shiniest ones I could find. I got home to Almaty with my nuts and went straight out and bought a big freshly cut wedge of pumpkin and made the dish the next day. I know what you're thinking: I cheated a wee bit on the locally grown thing.
The recipe was a stunner. Sometimes it happens that way. Sometimes you put your heart and soul into something as well as a load of the best ingredients you can find, and you end up with an unremarkable pile of shit. Other times it all just swings into place. Sveta doesn't really think much of pumpkin but she agreed that this was a really good recipe. So, a big thank you goes out to the chefs at Mega Vega for the inspiration.
The last time we were there, Mega Vega seemed to have more restricted opening hours and we always arrived when it was shut. I'll look again next time, however, as they do lovely food: simple, fresh and imaginative and it's still one of my favourites.
The quantities here should feed three (me, Sveta and a bit left over) if you serve with rice.
Ingredients
300g peeled chestnuts
500g pumpkin
1 small onion
1 clove of garlic
2 tablespoons of desiccated coconut
A small piece of root ginger
A half teaspoon of coriander seed (roughly ground/crushed)
A third of a teaspoon of turmeric powder
Oil
Salt
Prepare the pumpkin by cutting it into wedges about four cm (1.5 ins) thick, then slicing the wedges into pieces 1 - 2 cm thick (you can peel the wedges first, but you don't have to).
Chop the onion, garlic and ginger any old way. Fry the onion for a minute then add the garlic and ginger and fry for a few seconds before adding the pumpkin and the whole chestnuts. Add the turmeric powder, coriander seed and salt and stir for a minute to heat all the ingredients through before covering the pan tightly and turning the heat down quite low. Simmer for 10 minutes.
At the end of cooking time, turn off the heat, gently stir in the coconut, cover the pan again and leave to stand for a minute or so. Serve with steamed rice.