So this is what I made for the October 'We Should Cocoa' challenge:
Not very pretty, and not obviously anything to do with chocolate but I went for Roasted Pumpkin with Mole Sauce. I dressed it up a bit with some chopped fresh tomatoes and a poached egg dusted with mild chilli flakes.
I chose the savoury route as I am not very fond of pumpkin in sweet dishes and could not think of anything sweet with pumpkin and chocolate that I was inspired by.
I have been growing chillies at home this year and they have been my only 'glut' so I was keen to get using them. They are also far hotter than I was anticipating so I cannot use them in large amounts at a time.
I picked the larger ones earlier as the plants were all getting quite ragged. The picked chillies are holding up well just kept like fruit in a bowl and I am going to try and dry some of them too.
The smaller size chillis are still surviving in my unheated conservatory but I think I will need to pick them soon.
My mole sauce was based on a recipe I found on the David Lebovitz web site for Chocolate Mole. He serves the sauce with meat or chicken but it worked very well with the chunks of roasted pumpkin.
I substituted my fresh chillies for the dried poblanos he calls for, and used ground almonds as the thickener. I skipped the dried fruit as I felt it was going to be sweet enough and I don't have unsweetened chocolate but I do have a 90% dark so that was close enough. The colour does change to a bit of a muddy hue once the chocolate is added which was a little off putting but the flavour was very deep and rich.
I had quite a lot of mole sauce and roasted pumpkin left over so did another version a day later with melted cheese, yoghurt and lime but I preferred the first version.
The We Should Cocoa Challenge is hosted by Chocolate Teapot and Choclette, and the October challenge is being guest hosted by Hungry Hinny, a round up of this challenge will appear on their blogs at the end of the month.