I had my guard up. I didn't want it, but it was sitting on a market stall, tempting me. Beautiful, big, with intensively orange pulp – a pumpkin. It enticed me once again, even though I have used a lot of them this year. Fortunately, the best season for pumpkins is in October and November, so we will have a chance to miss them until they come back again next year.

I have made soups and pancakes with pumpkins, and this time I decided to make a pumpkin salad. Preparing this dish is extremely simple and lasts as long as it takes to bake the pumpkin. If you plan on preparing this salad, you should bake the pumpkin earlier. The pumpkin should cool down before you mix it with the rest of the ingredients. It is up to you how you serve this dish. It is essentially a salad but I served it on toast.

The inspiration for this pumpkin salad was taken from a cookery book by Mlekowita.

Ingredients:

Salad

0.5kg of pumpkin

1 red pepper

1 tablespoon of dried thyme

200g of feta cheese

100g of butter

1 tablespoon of light wine vinegar

2 tablespoons of olive oil

salt and pepper

some leaves of fresh basil

Toast

5 slices of dark bread

3 tablespoons of butter

2 tablespoons of minced parsley

2 cloves of garlic

Heat the oven up to 180C.

Peel the pumpkin. Remove the core from the pumpkin and cut it into large chunks. Dice the pepper. Put the vegetables into a casserole dish. Spice them up with salt, pepper and thyme. Sprinkle with olive oil and wine vinegar and put little pieces of butter on them. Bake until the pumpkin is soft (for 30 minutes). Take it out of the oven and leave to cool down. Don't turn the oven off.

Mash the butter with the crushed garlic and parsley. Spread the slices of bread with butter on both sides and bake them for 8 minutes. Dice the feta cheese. Mix the pumpkin and pepper with the feta cheese. Put the mixture on the slices of hot toast and decorate with basil leaves.

Enjoy your meal!