Wave your wand (or wooden spoon) and turn the humble butternut into something truly magical with this weeknight warmer-upper. Spoonfuls of velvety roasted pumpkin are dolloped and stirred through a classic risotto. It's then enriched with cheese and butter, and topped with walnuts to transform into something truly wondrous. Abracadabra!
Preheat oven to 200°C fan-forced. Scoop out seeds from pumpkin and discard. Place pumpkin on a lined baking tray, drizzle with 2 teaspoons oil, rub to coat and season with salt. Bake for 45–50 minutes or until soft and caramelised. While pumpkin is cooking, continue with step 2.
Place 750ml (3 cups) water and stock cube in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer and stir to dissolve stock cube. Reduce heat to low and keep warm.
Thinly slice eschalot. Pick oregano leaves from their stems. Heat remaining olive oil in a frypan over medium heat. Add eschalot and a pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, for 4 minutes or until softened.
Add rice and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until well coated in eschalot. Add hot stock, 250ml (1 cup) at a time, stirring continuously and allowing the stock to be absorbed before adding the next cupful, until all stock has been used, the rice is cooked and mixture has thickened. This will take about 20 minutes. The rice should be creamy, but still retain some bite.
Remove risotto from heat. Using a spoon, scoop pumpkin from its skin and stir through risotto. Discard pumpkin skin.
Roughly chop walnuts. Stir through most of the parmesan, baby spinach leaves, oregano and butter and season to taste. Scatter with walnuts and remaining parmesan to serve.