Four recipes to make sure your pumpkins don’t go to waste this Halloween

Method

Pulse the lemon juice, tahini, garlic, and salt together in a food processor or blender until it forms a paste. Add in the chickpeas, olive oil, and chipotle chiles and pulse until smooth. Add in the pumpkin puree, cumin, and smoked paprika and pulse until well-combined.

Transfer the hummus to a bowl and swirl the top using the back of the spoon. Drizzle over a little additional olive oil. Sprinkle with smoked paprika and top with roasted pumpkin seeds. Serve or refrigerate until ready to serve.

Method

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the pasta to al dente, according to package instructions. Reserve 1 cup of the pasta water, drain pasta, and set aside.

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Once hot and sizzling, add the flour, then whisk constantly until it turns a golden colour and smells nutty.

Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Slowly pour in the milk a few splashes at a time, whisking constantly to smooth any clumps.

Increase the heat to medium high, then let cook, stirring constantly, until the sauce bubbles and thickens, about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat, then stir in the pumpkin, cream cheese, half of the chopped sage leaves, salt, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cayenne.

Continue whisking until the cream cheese melts and you have a smooth, rich sauce. Taste and add additional salt and pepper as desired.

Add the cooked pasta to the pan and gently toss to combine. Thin the pasta with a bit of the reserved pasta water as needed if it seems too thick or sticky.

Serve immediately, topped with Parmesan and the remaining sage.

Method

Finely slice onion, red chilli, cloves of garlic, the coriander stalks and the ginger. Set them aside.

Chop the tops off the pumpkins. Remove the seeds. (If you want you can bake them for delicious roasted pumpkin seeds). Hollow out the pumpkins, scooping the flesh off the sides. Chop up the flesh.

Get a large pan on the heat and pour in a glug of olive oil. Add your onion, ginger, garlic, chilli and coriander stalks. Fry until soft. Add a heaped tsp of lemongrass puree. Mix it in and add your pumpkin.

Stir it about. Crumble in a stock cube. Pour in enough water to cover the pumpkin, place a lid on top and boil for 25 minutes until the pumpkin is soft.

Take a hand blender and blitz the pumpkin. Remove any scuzz with a spoon.

Add your coconut milk. Blitz again. Remove any more scuzz.

Turn up the heat and bubble the soup down until you have a nice thick consistency.

When ready, pour soup back into the hollowed-out pumpkins, scatter with coriander leaves, drizzle over some olive oil and tuck in!

Method

Blitz the digestive biscuits and cinnamon in a food processor until they are almost fine crumbs, and then add the butter, cut into pieces. Process again until the crumb mixture starts to clump together like damp sand.

Press the biscuit mixture into the bottom of a 23cm / 9 inch springform tin to create an even layer. Put the tin in the fridge while you make the filling. Preheat the oven to gas mark 3/170°C/150°C Fan/325°F.

Put the pumpkin purée and cream cheese into the processor and run the motor until the cheese blends into the pumpkin. Add the sugar and with the motor running, break the eggs one at a time down the tube of the processor. Scrape down and process again, adding the lemon juice and blitzing to make a smooth mixture.

Wrap the outside of the biscuit-lined springform tin with clingfilm. I give a good few layers to make sure everything is completely waterproof. Now sit this on a large piece of double-layered strong foil and bring it up around the edges of the tin to make a nest. Sit the foil-covered springform tin in a roasting pan.

Scrape the cheesecake filling into the springform tin, and then pour recently boiled water into the roasting pan to a level approximately halfway up the cake tin.

Bake for about 1 ¾ hours, or until the filling has set with only a small amount of wobble left at its centre; it is worth remembering that it will continue to cook as it cools down. Take the tin out of the water bath and sit it on a cooling rack, removing the foil as you do so. When it is cool enough, put the cheesecake in the refrigerator overnight, before unspringing it from the tin to slice.