Chicken and Chanterelle Pot Roast Baked in a Pumpkin
The pumpkin here is the pot, not the side dish. Inside the orange bowl, chicken, chanterelles, potato and peas come together slowly in broth, taking up the sweet juices of the roasting flesh — an old rural trick from the days when a stuffed pumpkin went into the masonry oven the way a clay pot would.
Notice that the vegetables, the chanterelles and the chicken are each fried separately, in their own share of the oil. That isn’t fussiness: chanterelles and tomato puree give up their moisture on different timelines, and chicken needs a hot, uncrowded pan to take on any color at all. Combine everything at the start and you get a stewed mass with no roasted flavor in it.
Before it goes in the oven
- Scrape the cavity down to a firm wall — too thin and it slumps during the hour at 180 C (350 F), too thick and it won’t cook through.
- Frozen chanterelles are fine if fresh ones aren’t at the market (thaw and pat them dry); button mushrooms work too, but fry them harder, since they hold far more water.
- Serve immediately. As it cools the pumpkin sinks and loses its aroma.
Part of Eastern European cuisine — 68 more recipes in the section.
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Ingredients
Instructions
Cut the "lids" off the pumpkins and scoop out the seeds along with some of the stringy flesh so there is room inside for the filling.
Coarsely chop the carrots and onion and sauté them in part of the oil. Fry the chanterelles and the tomato puree separately from each other in another part of the oil.
Cut the chicken into 30-40 g pieces and fry in the remaining oil until golden brown.
Set the pumpkins on a baking sheet and fill them with the chicken pieces, sautéed vegetables, diced potatoes, and green peas. Pour in the broth, add the tomato puree, and season with salt and pepper.
Cover the pumpkins with their "lids," wrap the top in foil, add a little water and oil to the pan, and bake at 350 F (180 C) for about an hour, until done.
Serve the roast right in the pumpkins, sprinkled with chopped herbs, and round it out with some pickled vegetables.
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