If, like me, you've been wondering what to do with all that left over pumpkin, apart from make pie and soup, then this spicy winter chutney might be the answer. Our lantern was made early this year, in preparation for a weekend away, so the rest of the afternoon was spent putting the scrapings to good use.

I adapted the pumpkin chutney recipe on the lovely mytinyplot blog, increasing the amount of ginger and adding some apricots for extra fruitiness.

There are many other recipes for pumpkin preserves out there, mostly (unsurprisingly) from America, one UK site which has a selection of recipes and some pictures of amazing carved pumpkins is bumpkinpumpkins.co.uk
I really must spend some more time carving next year.

  See here for the the pumpkin chutney recipe.

Recipe Costs

£0.95 500g diced pumpkin
£0.20 150g apple peeled cored and chopped
£0.11 150g onion chopped
£0.30 3 tsp fresh ginger finely chopped
£0.20 1 tbsp mustard seeds
£0.48 100g dried apricots chopped
£0.01 pinch cayenne pepper
£0.11 200ml apple juice
£0.64 500ml vinegar
£0.19 200g sugar
£0.01 1 tbsp salt

£3.20 Total
£2.90 per kg of chutney (a third of the price of similar at ocado)

The larger pieces of pumpkin from the carving and scraping were diced, the rest of it I did have to make into pumpkin soup (best you've ever tasted), an opportunity not to be missed.

1 apple, 1 onion and the spices were added into the preserving pan along with the vinegar, I also added some apple juice at this point as I felt there wasn't quite enough liquid.

When looking for pumpkin recipes apricots seemed to crop up as an ingredient quite regularly, often added in the form of jam. I imagine this may be because of the similarity in colour, as well as the extra sweetness it gives. Not having any apricot jam to hand, I added 100g of chopped dried apricots, which should add some texture and sweetness to the chutney.

After 45 minutes of simmering, the chutney was starting to thicken and the pumpkin was well cooked, so in went the salt and sugar.

A further 10 minutes of boiling, with frequent stirring, and I was starting to see a trail left in the bottom of the pan, indicating the chutney was the correct consistency, so it was potted into steralised jars.

Recipe Timings

30 mins preparation
45 minutes simmering
15 minutes boiling
15 minutes potting