Egg & Spoon

Serves 3 to 4.

Lunch or pudding, it’s up to you — certainly these stuffed kumara work well with a bit of greenery for lunch, but their natural sweetness and sticky deliciousness makes them very suitable for pudding, especially with ice cream or yoghurt.

1 cup cashew nuts 6 medium-sized kumara

1 clove garlic

½ cup pitted dates

Peel of ½ an orange

Juice of 1 orange

Juice of 1 lemon

1 Tbsp sesame seeds Small bunch of thyme, chopped GF DF V

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Put the cashew nuts in a bowl, cover with plenty of cold water and leave to soak for 2 hours.

Wash the kumara well, then put them straight on to the rack in the oven to cook, skin on. Cook for 1 to 1½ hours until they are soft all the way through when you poke them with a skewer — the bigger they are, the longer they’ll take to cook. When the kumara are soft, take them out with an oven glove or thick dry towel and let them cool down enough to handle. Then cut the top quarter off each kumara and scoop out the insides, being careful not to break the skin. Put the scoopedout kumara aside in a bowl. Drain the cashew nuts and put them in a food processor along with the garlic, dates, orange peel, orange and lemon juice, then whizz it all up. Put the mix into the bowl with the kumara and stir it all together. Spoon the kumara and cashew mix back into the kumara cases and put them in a roasting pan. Sprinkle the sesame seeds and chopped thyme over the top of each kumara, then return them to the oven for 15 minutes to warm through. This recipe works with any sweet potato!