What I cooked last night.

Cut six slices of prosciutto into small squares the size of a Christmas stamp, and fry them in a large non-stick lidded pan for half a minute in some oil. Chop a kilogram of pumpkin into one-inch cubes, and two onions finely. Add these to the pan. Sauté on the lowest heat, lifting the lid to stir every now and then with a wooden spoon, until the pumpkin starts to soften. Chop a bunch of spinach and add to the pan along with a drained can of corn. Stir again, then place the lid back on the pan. Continue to cook very gently. Add salt and pepper. Serve as a main with torn basil and Greek-style yogurt, or as a warm salad with tahini, toasted pine nuts and a squeeze of lemon. Eat before midnight when it will turn back into plain boiled pumpkin.

The room was silent. Delegates had voted and were waiting for the result of the first podium finish – third – to appear on a large screen fixed to the wall. The barman moved around softly, collecting glasses. The room was a private one at a rundown hotel in an inner bayside suburb; the kind of place once frequented by car dealers, waterside workers, blacksmiths and horse trainers. To say the clientele had changed would be like saying the sun had risen. Today, the faded curtains, the worn carpet, and the accidentally-antique bar furniture gave the establishment a raffish air that appealed to the inner-urban hipsters who had transformed the surrounding suburb from $10,000 workers' cottages into $1.5 million 'unpolished gems' by the simple act of moving in. Now, the hipsters were happy to mix with the remaining scoundrels of the area and the hotel was the place they did it. Suddenly, a headline appeared on the screen. The Top Ten Vegetables. Silence. A subtitle appeare...

Peel it and chop it up. This is easier said than done. Pumpkin's dense texture means a good knife and a steady hand are essential. One slip and you'll lose a finger. The following recipe means the peril is worth risking. Pumpkin with spinach, corn and fresh basil. I am fond of the vegetable known in some parts of the world as being food fit only for pigs. ( Only ? The pig is one of the noblest creatures, if your moral universe extends to an animal pecking order. Orwell was right, but he got the order wrong. Squealer should have been a snake.) I like pumpkin’s sweet, mellow flavour when it is baked or sautéed, especially when eaten with contrasting flavours or textures. I’m not so fond of it when mashed together with potato, a common childhood side ('golden potato') and one which, it seemed to me, masked the assets of both vegetables. Having arduously made small cubes of a one-kilogram pumpkin, don't put away the knife. First, chop two onions and then cut six ...