Spiced roast pumpkin recipe, Raymond Blanc's autumn side

This spiced roast pumpkin recipe comes from Raymond Blanc's kitchen gardens at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, where wedges of squash go into the oven with orange juice, whole spices and a short dusting of curry powder rather than the usual butter and brown sugar.

Blanc published the method in his cookbook Simply Raymond: Kitchen Garden, built around the produce his Oxfordshire gardens grow through the seasons. He has said that curing a pumpkin for a month or two after picking concentrates its sugars and deepens its colour before it ever reaches the oven, which is why a shop-bought squash a few weeks past harvest often roasts better than one cut the same day.

Ingredients

Curing a pumpkin for a month or two after picking concentrates its sugars and deepens its colour before it ever reaches the oven.

• 1 small pumpkin or squash, about 1.2 kg
• 1 orange, zest and juice
• 1 tsp coriander seeds, lightly crushed
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tsp Madras curry powder
• 2 pinches sea salt flakes
• 3 star anise
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• A few sage leaves, chopped

Method

1. Heat the oven to 170°C (150°C fan). A gentle heat matters here: skin-on wedges are thicker than peeled chunks, so they need the extra time to cook through before the cut edges catch.
2. Halve the pumpkin and scoop out the seeds, then cut it into 10 wedges. Leave the skin on; it holds each wedge together in the tin and crisps up at the edges rather than turning to mush.
3. Crush the coriander seeds lightly with the flat of a knife, just enough to crack the husks and release their oil, then zest and juice the orange.
4. Put the wedges in a roasting tin, drizzle with the oil, then add the curry powder, crushed coriander, salt, star anise, cinnamon sticks, orange zest and orange juice. Toss well so the spices coat the cut flesh, not just the skin.
5. Roast for 45 minutes, turning the wedges once or twice, until the flesh is soft enough to take a knife without resistance and the edges have started to caramelise.
6. Scatter the chopped sage over the tray for the final 5 minutes only; added earlier, the leaves turn bitter and brittle in the dry oven heat.
7. Serve hot, straight from the tin, either in the skin or with the flesh scooped away from it at the table.

A side built to sit next to game

The spicing is deliberately restrained: a single teaspoon of curry powder and a handful of whole spices season the squash without masking it, which is why the dish reads equally well as a side for roast game or folded into a simple autumn grain salad. At Le Manoir, Blanc grows close to twenty squash varieties, swapping the pumpkin here for onion squash or crown prince depending on what the gardens are yielding, and the recipe holds its shape with either. Leftovers keep well cold, tossed through a custard-based pumpkin pie filling or spooned alongside a plate for a cook, like Danny Young, working through the same autumn produce list.

Can this be made ahead? Yes. Roast it up to a day ahead and reheat the wedges at 180°C for 10 minutes; the spicing only deepens as it sits.