Feast of the gourds: Asha’s pumpkin taster menu will satisfy all your Halloween moonlit cravings

Come Halloween, most of us are thinking more about carving pumpkins than eating them.

We waste more than 18,000 tons of sweet, gourdy goodness every October. In the US, however, pumpkin buyers take pleasure in turning their fruit into a tasty pie or pudding.

Whilst carving out Jack-O-Lanterns is great fun, it’s also good to spare a thought for the contents of our pumpkins at this time of year.

Which is exactly what Asha’s head chef Ashwani has been busy doing over at their Peter Street restaurant.

Chef Ashwani has taken the iconic Jack-O-Lantern fruit and bubbled, toiled and troubled to create a masterpiece 4-course taster menu on Halloween itself to celebrate the spooky season.

Paired with Chivas Regal whisky and pumpkin cocktails like Beetlejuice and Nightmare on Peter Street, this accomplished tasting menu should not only satisfy your moonlit cravings this Halloween but also instil a new-found respect for the humble gourd.

The first dish on chef Ashwani’s menu will be a butternut squash soup served with pumpkin kachori (puffed flatbread), tapioca crisp and wild mustard cress foam.

Next up is pumpkin kebab stuffed with mild cheddar, cashew nuts, chaat masala and green chill.

This will be followed by chicken curry made with pumpkin, khoya, tomatoes and home ground garam masala and served with a big fluffy naan on the side.

Finishing on a sweet note, the meal will end with a sugar pie halwa made with gondh (a natural gum with many health benefits), winter melon, reduced milk and redcurrants. Sounds pretty good to us.

Tickets are priced at £30 a head which includes the 4-course menu and two warming Chivas Regal whiskey and pumpkin cocktails.

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