Orange dream with Kritharaki

Ingredients for 4 servings:

• 1 Hokkaido pumpkin(s)
• 1 large sweet potato(s)
• 2 carrots
• 200 g Kritharaki (rice-shaped noodles)
• 150 g apricot(s), dried
• 6 tbsp crème fraîche
• some cheese, grated
• salt and pepper
• possibly nutmeg
• ¼ onion(s)

Instructions

Working time approx. 45 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 40 minutes; Total time approx. 1 hour 25 minutes

vegetarian and beautifully orange with sweet potatoes, apricots and pumpkin

First, halve the pumpkin lengthwise. Scrape out the seeds with a tablespoon. Peel the “pumpkin lid” and cut into bite-sized pieces. Try to scrape out the other half of the pumpkin as best you can with a large spoon, but don’t chop it. Then add the larger pumpkin pieces to boiling water and simmer for about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, halve the apricots and peel the sweet potatoes and cut them into pieces similar in size to the pumpkin. Peel the carrots and chop them into small pieces. Then add the carrots to the simmering pumpkin and let them rest on the stove for about 1 minute before adding the chopped sweet potato. Let everything simmer together for another 5 minutes. While everything is simmering, dice the onion and fry it briefly in a pan. Then add the scraped pumpkin flesh from the bottom half of the pumpkin. Cook the kritharaki in salted water until al dente. This takes about 6-7 minutes. After the 5 minutes, drain everything in a colander until orange. Separate the carrots from the pumpkin and sweet potato and mash them into a puree. Mix the carrot puree with the pumpkin and onion puree and season with plenty of nutmeg, pepper, and a little salt. Add the dried apricots to the remaining vegetables, season with pepper and nutmeg, and add a little paprika. Then separate a quarter of each mixture. Spread the separated quarter of the puree into the hollowed-out pumpkin half. Then sprinkle a quarter of the kritharaki on top and cover with a quarter of the remaining vegetables. Then pile on the crème fraîche and top with grated cheese. Fill a baking dish with the remaining ingredients in the same order and place everything in an oven preheated to 150°C. Bake for about 15 minutes, until the vegetables are soft and the kritharaki are no longer quite al dente, but make sure you don’t make a mess out of the casserole. Then serve on warmed plates with a sprinkle of parsley. One guest can simply eat directly from the pumpkin half.