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I’ve always wanted to bake a whole pumpkin. Living in Japan Having no oven turns out to be only a minor hurdle – just use a saucepan.

I figured I could heat the air in the pot by keeping the lid on tight and using a low flame. People grease trays when they cook in ovens, don’t they? So I put some oil in too. But the pumpkin started to fry. I realised that the water in the pumpkin would evaporate anyway, so it’d end up steamed. Helping it along with some extra water stopped it from frying and worked really well.

It’s easy: cut the lid off a small pumpkin and scoop out the seeds. Put some seasoning in (like curry paste) and replace the lid. Put it in a saucepan with an inch or so of water. With the lid on the saucepan, bring the water to the boil then turn it down low. Poke it with a skewer to see if it’s ready. I think mine took about 20 minutes. Then I stuffed it with bread and leftover spaghetti sauce, and cooked it for another 5 minutes.

The nice thing about this is the skin of the pumpkin stops it from all turning into mush. Just make sure the water doesn’t all evaporate. If you put a bit of oil in you’ll hear it sizzling when the water level gets too low.

I’ve heard of lots of recipes for whole baked pumpkin, including cooking custard in it. For some things I think you should stuff it at the start of cooking instead of at the end. Let me know if you how you fare!

Finally, try to accompany it with something. Last night I ate half a pumpkin. Even with the stuffing, it was just too much all at once.