26 Oct 2025
Elena Hogg, founder of local culinary company FOOD by Elena, finds new uses for her garden’s excessive bounty of fruit…
Aside from the shop fronts and supermarket aisles being draped in all manner of Halloween tat, which I’ll come to shortly, the sign that autumn’s in full swing is best seen from the state of our back lawn.
In spite of my husband’s weekendly efforts to clear the carpet of yellow and brown leaves, just a few days later the lawn is back to how it was, and you can almost hear the trees sniggering.
Inevitably, among the leaves are about six thousand rotting apples, which also have a turn at mocking us by making the green wheelie bin we throw them into too heavy to drag over the gravel drive on bin day.
Sometimes, we manage to collect up the apples before they start to rot, though there’s always an imperfection or two from their fall to the ground.
When the stars align just right, you can happen across a just-landed apple that’s not even had time to bruise, or perhaps has fallen on a Friday, when the leaf-carpet is at its thickest before the weekend raking, cushioning its arrival on terra firma.
These apples are like gold dust and are largely gobbled up there and then.
The battered ones have their bruises cut out and get peeled and chopped for any number of recipes. I love to add piping hot stewed apples to a fridge-cold bowl of wobbly custard, and throw over some flaked almonds for an autumnal pudding that hits the same sort of spot that apple crumble does, but requiring only a fraction of the time and effort. I also jar the sauce and keep for when I make chorizo and apple sausage rolls for party nibbles – the sweet and smoky flavour-combo sets the tastebuds a-tingling beautifully.
With the latest haul of apples, though, and having already made the usual suspects (apple cake, apple muffins, apple cobbler…), I decided to try something new: apple pie cookies.
Stewed-down apples, spiked with cinnamon and nutmeg for some autumnal warmth, are nestled into the centre of a ball of cookie dough, which results in a really delicious treat. And it’s far simpler than it sounds, as you simply use your thumb to make a dent in your cookie dough balls, fill with the apple mixture, and let the oven do the rest. I fully recommend getting small hands involved, too, as precision is not required and any imperfect cookies still taste amazing.
In homage to upcoming Halloween, but also avoiding the over-commercialisation with which it is synonymous these days, I decided to try combining my garden apples with a simple can of pumpkin purée suggested to me by the Ocado algorithm.
I found a lovely recipe for apple-pumpkin bread by Jam Jar Kitchen, which made my kitchen smell so good that I feel there should be a candle or reed diffuser made with the same ingredients, so I can enjoy the fragrance whenever I want without the ensuing calories. Because you cannot have just one slice.
Leaving behind the sugar and spice, though, I discovered a savoury recipe for pumpkin which used up exactly the amount of purée I had left over. And what a triumph it was, because it combined velvety, sweet pumpkin, umami-rich parmesan and trusty spaghetti, which effectively guarantees the kids will eat it.
As it goes, they devoured it. The recipe couldn’t be simpler: for four people, use about 100g of pumpkin purée, about twice that volume of grated parmesan, then whisk in a couple of egg yolks to emulsify (I used one whole egg instead because I already have far too many egg whites waiting to be meringueified in the freezer). A little of the pasta cooking water also helps make the sauce extra silky.
If you want, you can fry off some bacon bits to sprinkle over, which gives a carbonara vibe to the whole dish, but I find lashings of black pepper finish the dish off just right.
If you’re aiming for the full Halloween vibe, you could garnish with some mozzarella balls topped with sliced olives to create eyeballs, if it doesn’t put you off eating too much. Alternatively, using black spaghetti in lieu of regular should do the trick (or treat). Happy Halloween!
