The Pumpkin Chilli Story

Pumpkin picking is one of my favourite autumn activities. It is such great fun to walk around a farm with a wheelbarrow, get muddy and pick some tasty seasonal goodies. My local farm is always filled with families and kids running around and having so much fun whilst they compete on who can pick the heaviest pumpkin. I love it when the field is full of huge pumpkins, it looks like somebody just dropped them from the heaven and forgot about them.

So, one autumn Saturday, me and my boyfriend decided to go pick up some pumpkins and sweetcorn and have a fun day out, even though we already had two massive orange pumpkins at home waiting for us to be used, but never mind why not to get more when we can.

We picked a massive white pumpkin, which I totally struggled to even carry. The white pumpkins is supposedly sweeter than the orange ones, so we have decided to give a go. We also picked some sweetcorn and ended up paying five pounds. I could not believe how cheap it came out to be.

That day I made a delicious pumpkin soup. The next day I roasted the pumpkin and combined it with some salad. This past week I ended up making every single pumpkin recipe that exists and started to be worried we might turn orange anytime soon.

I got to the point, that I could not even look at a pumpkin anymore. Then for a month I did not touch any of our pumpkins. I managed to freeze some, but we had so much pumpkin that it was almost impossible to get rid of it. It felt like these pumpkins just kept growing back every time I looked away.

In our household there are only two of us, but when I cook I always manage to cook more than we can eat.

So, if you are family of three or you have some third wheeling friend around, and desperately need to get rid of your stash of pumpkins; sweetcorn and any vegetable which might go off very soon, I have the perfect solution for you.

So, keep reading because you are about to find out my amazing idea for warm autumn meal. The chilli is so versatile, if you are vegetarian or meat eater you can just adjust this recipe as you like. Its super simple, one pot recipe, so it saves you time cleaning up afterwards as well.

I made this dish thousands of times and every single time its slightly different, which is really what I love because you just cannot get it wrong. Starting by cutting your onion and garlic. I love garlicky food so I used half of a whole garlic clove, which is probably five cloves and one big white onion diced into small pieces and put them in a large pan with some oil and stirred until softened. I added some salt, so the onion gets a little bit sweeter.

If you are eating meat, you can get your mince meat at this point. As I’m vegetarian I chopped all my vegetable and added them into the pan. I have used approximately two cups of this famous white pumpkin which we picked earlier, a cup of sweet corn, one carrot, one red pepper, and some celery. But honestly, do not worry to improvise and add any vegetable you have in your fridge, its going to be just fine.

When the vegetables soften, I add a can of mixed beans in chilli tomato sauce, and one can of chopped tomatoes followed by some tomato puree. Add some water and simmer for few minutes. You can then add some vegetable stock, black pepper, chilli flakes, onion powder, a spoon of honey, mixed herbs of dried basil and oregano. I also added liquid smoke to add some smokiness.

Bring the mix to the boil whilst stirring occasionally. The longer you cook it the better it tastes. I cooked my chilli for about forty minutes.

I also prepare some jasmine rice in my rice cooker, but you can totally eat the chilli without the rice, or you can swap it with some tortillas or even a bread.

Just pour your chilli into your bowl and decorate with some spring onion or avocado and enjoy.