Tamarillos are in season now in New Zealand, their astringent sour sweet flavour is perfect with caramelised roast pumpkin. The addition of walnuts and feta gives creaminess and crunch for a perfect vegetable dish. This dish is great on its own or we like it accompanied by lamb.Ingredients

1/2 a pumpkin, I like the dark green ones as you can eat the skin and they hold their shape after cooking.

100gms of fresh walnuts, these are grown locally in Nelson and freshly shelled to order. Walnuts can go stale quickly so they are best kept in the freezer.

100gms of feta, I am using sheeps milk feta.

2 tamarillos, if you can’t get tamarillos you can use one pomegranate.

a large bunch of parsley.

40ml of good olive oil, mine is local Nelson olive oil from Kakariki, available at Nelson market.

2 lemons.

1/4 teaspoons salt.

a good sprinkle of sumac, optional.

plenty of coconut oil.

Slice the pumpkin into wedges, I no longer bother to take out the seeds or the fluff in the middle of the pumpkin, I find the seeds are delicious when roasted and why throw them out? Melt a lot of coconut oil in a roasting tray, don’t hold back as they best way to get really good caramelisation on your pumpkin is to use plenty of oil. Use a brush to cover all  sides of the pumpkin with the melted oil, sprinkle on some salt and I like to add a sprinkle of sumac which gives an lovely sour flavour to the pumpkin. This then goes into a hot oven at 180c fan for about 40 minutes.

Cover the tamarillos in boiling water for 10 minutes until the skin peels off easily. Then chop up the beautiful jewels into smallish chunks.

Dry roast the walnuts for 10 minutes in the oven at 180c fan. Remove the stalks and roughly chop the parsley, then zest and juice the lemons. Into a food processor put the parsley the lemon zest and juice, the olive oil and most of the walnuts, reserve a few for topping.Blitz until smooth.The pumpkin is done when it is soft and caramelising at the edges, the oil will have all soaked in and there will be a little bit of crunchiness.

Lay out he pumpkin wedges on a platter, spoon the walnut pesto down the middle.Spoon over the chopped tamarillos.Lastly sprinkle the crumbled  feta and reserved walnuts on top. Serves 4  hungry people  25 grams of carbs per serve.