‘Curing’ a pumpkin begins with harvesting – pumpkins and gourds should not be picked while they are still soft. Green or immature fruits only keep for a few weeks before they begin to shrivel. This means that before you harvest them you need to make sure they are bright and rich in whatever is their normal colour – orange for pumpkins, anything from pure white to deep yellow for various other forms of squash and gourd and – most crucially – they should have a fairly hard rind.

So harvesting should be done after the vines have withered and the stems have actually turned brown and begun to dry – of course if your weather turns inclement (for which read rainy) you may have to harvest early and know that your pumpkins won’t last as long.

Use a sharp knife or pruning shears to cut the fruit from the vine. Wash the fruits in warm, soapy water to remove any traces of soil. After wiping off any excess moisture, spread the fruit out on layers of newspaper in a place that offers good air circulation and a temperature of at least 21 degrees C – much warmer than most people think is necessary! Leave them for a week or two to toughen their skin and heal surface cuts, making them impervious to outside infection, rot or damage, then you can store them in whatever place you have that is dry , has good circulation of air, and doesn’t drop below 7 degrees C. Alternatively, why not make lots of pumpkin soup in the days after you harvest and freeze it for the months ahead! For a very special pumpkin meal, try a rich risotto.

Pumpkin Risotto

1 tablespoon olive oil

500g pumpkin, peeled, deseeded and cut into 1cm cubes

1 onion, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 cups arborio or other risotto rice

125ml white wine

1.5l good quality chicken or vegetable stock

100g freshly-grated parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 180°C and spread cubed pumpkin on a baking tray, drizzle a teaspoon of the oil over the top, stir to coat and then bake for around 20 minutes Then put the stock in a saucepan and heat until simmering – keep hot. Heat the rest of the oil in a large heavy-based frying pan and fry the onions for a couple of minutes, then add the garlic and cook for another two minutes. Turn up the heat, add rice and stir constantly for two minutes until heated through. Don’t let the rice stick or clog or it will be lumpy throughout the cooking period.

Now pour in wine and cook, stirring until it has almost evaporated. Add half the roasted pumpkin along with a soup ladle of hot stock, turn the heat down to a simmer and stir until stock absorbed, at which point you add another ladle of stock. Continue adding stock, stirring and allowing each ladleful to be absorbed before adding the next. This should take around twenty minutes. After fifteen minutes, add the rest of the pumpkin and the parmesan, this gives you two textures to the pumpkin: a crisper bite to the cubes added later and a soft melting consistency to the earlier cubes.