Donal Skehan has given us the perfect idea on what to do once we carve our pumpkin this Halloween.
The Dubliner showed Philip and Holly how to make pumpkin pasta on This Morning as “they’re not just in the shops for carving, they’re great to cook with as well”.
Schofield even admitted that it was his “favourite vegetarian dish”.
And with the dull, damp evenings already occurring, there’s nothing more perfect that a big bowl of comforting pasta to warm you up.
Donal said: “The beauty of this is that we’re going to take a supermarket ingredient and transform it into something that is a little bit more exciting.
“I have store bought tortellini, look for one with a plain flavour, something like spinach and ricotta is perfect.
“When it comes to Autumn, it’s all about the flavours you bring together.”
The easy to make veggie dish serves four and contains 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 small pumpkin, peeled, deseeded and sliced, 3-4 thyme sprigs, 2 sage sprigs, 100g butter, 75g hazelnuts, roughly chopped, 500g spinach and ricotta tortellini, Sea salt and black pepper.
To serve: 100g Cashel blue, Best quality extra virgin olive oil.
The method is as follows:
Heat the oven to 180°C. Put the pumpkin on a large baking tray with thyme and sprinkle with the olive oil. Add some with sea salt and ground black pepper, then roast for 40 minutes or until tenders. Keep it warm once it's cooked.
Once the pumpkin is nearly done, boil a pan of water with some salt. Add the tortellini and cook until tender. Drain the pasta but keep a cup of the starchy cooking water to use in the sauce.
While the pasta cooks, put a large heavy-based frying pan over a low-medium heat with some butter. Fry the hazlenuts in the pan for about 5 minutes. Add the sage and allow to toast in the butter
Pop the pumpkin and tortellini into the pan, adding a splash of reserved pasta cooking water.
Throw over some blue cheese along with a generous drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Finish with some salt and pepper.
You can check out more of Donal's Halloween recipes here.
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