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While we were in New Zealand, we stayed a week with an awesome family.  Louise was a vegetarian and had the sweetest boy Liam (see pics of them here).  Anyway, Louise was an excellent cook and made some authentic vegetarian “kiwi” foods.  About 2 months ago, I started craving this one dish that she made us… pumpkin cannelloni.  All I have to say is, thank goodness for Facebook!  I was able to send Louise a message and within a day or so, had the recipe to settle my craving!

A couple things to note… 1.)  Pumpkin in Australia and New Zealand would be squash to us.  Most of the pumpkin they eat is either butternut or buttercup squash to us.  2.)  In NZ, they use grams to measure with… instead of cups or ounces.  It’s a bit tricky sometimes to figure out how much you really need!  3.)  This recipe was put out by a company called Wattie’s.  This would be similar to Green Giant here in the States.  Well, actually, probably bigger because they make EVERYTHING it seems like.  Wattie’s is a staple food item name in any Kiwi pantry or fridge/freezer.

So, now to begin.  Pumpkin (or squash) is a pain to work with for because cutting the rind off is SO hard to do.  But if you can get past that… it’s worth it!  (And I must say on a side note… I used to despise squash.  I hated the taste and texture of it.  For some reason, over the past couple years of being overseas, I grew to like it… maybe it’s an acquired taste?)

Here’s a couple of photos of me getting the pumpkin ready.  Once you de-rind it and scrape out the seeds on the inside, you can either roast it or microwave the pumpkin.  This, obviously, cooks the pumpkin and makes it soft to work with.

I chose to roast the pumpkin.  I just put the pieces on a cookie sheet and stuck it in the oven for 30 minutes or so.  Once it came out, I was able to mash it.

Then I added the parsley, cottage cheese, eggs, salt and pepper.  One thing I have learned is that pumpkin itself is quite bland… so don’t go stingy on the salt and pepper.   Once it was all mixed together, I put the mixture into a gallon size zip lock bag to pipe.  I cut a slit at the bottom of the bag and squeezed the pumpkin filling into the manicotti tubes.

Once all the tubes were filled and placed in the pan, I poured the canned tomatoes on top and covered the pan with foil.  (This keeps the moisture inside the pan to cook the pasta tubes.)  Then I let it cook at 375 degrees for a little over an hour.  The last 10 minutes I actually removed the foil and sprinkled parmesan cheese on top to melt.

Here’s the final product.

Of course, mine didn’t turn out quite as good as Louise’s did, but they still tasted great!  Here’s the link to the original recipe: http://www.foodinaminute.co.nz/Recipes/recipe_default.aspx?recipeid=88 Hope you enjoy!

By:  Andre’a Feldhaus… vegetarian cook for a day