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This is a festive recipe either as the centre piece of a holiday meal or as a hearty winter dinner treat.

Cook the pumpkin (winter squash) until it is sweet and tender and you wont be disappointed!

• 1 Pumpkin (sweet winter squash) with good colour and a balanced shape.
• About 500 grams of whole wheat sour dough bread, sliced and cut in 1.5cm cubes cut and leave them out over night to dry out slightly.
• 1/2 cup wild rice, washed and simmered for 30 min.
• 3/4 cup currants
• 3 stalks celery (include any leaves)
• ½ cup Parsley – washed, dried and finely chopped
• 3 onions finely diced and sautéed with 1 Tbls Olive oil with a pinch of sea salt for about 5 min.
• Olive oil
• Sea Salt
• Shoyu
• 2 cups ready to eat chestnuts (either boiled chestnuts that come in a jar or soaked and cooked dried chestnuts)

• Organic Vegetable bullion powder or make a fresh vegetable stock
• 5 cm piece of kombu – soaked (we are only using the soaking water from the kombu, you may use the kombu for another dish)
• 2-3 dried donko shiitake mushrooms - soaked together with the kombu. Once soft, remove the stems and cut shiitake in small dice
• Fresh ground black pepper

Instructions:

Prepare the Pumpkin:

1. Carefully, with a pointed knife, cut into the pumpkin and remove the top as if you were going to make a Halloween jack-o-lantern.
2. With a soup spoon remove all the seeds completely from the inside of the pumpkin and also from the top. Really scrape it smooth!

Prepare the Stuffing:

1. In a large mixing bowl combine the bread, wild rice, currents, celery, parsley, sautéed onions, chestnuts, shiitake and soaking water, several turns of fresh pepper,
2. Add 1-2 Tbls Olive oil drizzled over the mixture.
3. Season with a little shoyu but mostly with some vegetable bullion combined with enough water to moisten the mixture, which should be not too wet and not too dry.
4. Mix the ingredients.
5. Pack the pumpkin with the stuffing and put the top on.
6. Rub the pumpkin with a little olive oil and sprinkle with a little sea salt.
7. Bake in preheated oven at 180c for about 1 hour or until the pumpkin is soft.
8. Allow to cool slightly before cutting, cut the pumpkin like a pie so that each piece is a crescent of pumpkin filled with stuffing.

Enjoy!