This article is a guest post I wrote for the comprehensive vegetarian resource site, Savvy Vegetarian. It contains the secrets of knowing how to make moreish meatless meals.

For those of you dabbling with or newly committed to a plant based diet, you will probably be having this problem. To me, a lot of vegetarian dishes suffer a lack of flavour that doesn’t seem to be fixed with salt. They taste rather one dimensional. They lack depth or fullness in flavour. To be blunt, they are bland.

This can especially be a problem for new vegetarians and flexitarians and I shall explain why. If it just doesn’t taste as satisfying as you expect, then it’s probably missing that wonderful essence known as umami.

Umami?
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to continue with this article, please head over to Savvy Vegetarian where it is published in full. It's worth your while, even if do I say so myself ;)

When I see a display like this one of so many different pumpkin varieties, my reaction is to want to know the name of each one, what they taste like and what they are known to be great for. I am a listmaker, it's a compulsion. It's no wonder to me that I work in series with my art. It's a way of completely exploring a subject to my satisfaction and making a cohesive body of work that is understandable on its own as a body of work.

Back to the heirloom pumpkins. I've tried some of these so far and they have been excellent. Not at all like the grey, jap, and butternut that I'm used to. There's so much out there to try and I find it really exciting. This universe of choice is why I try to shop for my veg at farm outlets rather than the stupidmarket. All of these pumpkins were grown at this farm.

We recently had a go at the River Cottage baked pumpkin soup recipe* with a butter (not butternut) pumpkin bought here. It's a small round black/green pumpkin. There's one in the very front centre of the photo, partially obscured. Quite moreish, with it's own subtle flavour. It was drier and firmer than I'm used to. In fact it was more like pumpkin mash than soup! That recipe is awesome too. I highly recommend it, though it's certainly not for vegans or those on a diet. It won't be going in the art vege cookbook as I can't improve on it and make it my own!

However, it is highly likely there will be a spaghetti squash recipe going in thanks to the enormous supply of them at this farm. I nearly squealed with glee when I saw they had them. Since then I have been back nearly every week to stock up for the continuing experiment that is baked spaghetti squash. They've all been good but not necessarily repeatable or 'just so'... yet.

Speaking of recipes in the art vege cookbook that involve pumpkins, here's a (quite a) few:

If you're in my part of the world, the array of pumpkin varieties are for sale at Jonesy's in Bacchus Marsh on the avenue.

*can't find a link to it on the River Cottage or BBC site any more

Until I came across this intriguing post on how recipes are routinely dumbed down today, as compared to 30 years ago, I had no idea this was going on. What do I mean? Apparently, there are many people frightened off cooking by the specialist terms used, such as saute. So instead of writing, 'saute the onions until soft', food authors now write something like, 'cook the onions on a medium to high heat in melted butter or oil while continuously stirring, until soft'. Fascinating.