🎃 Halloween Kitchen Ideas - Cozy Dinners with a Seasonal Twist

27 Oct

As the evenings in Nerja begin to cool (just a little!), the kitchen becomes a place of gathering again. The days are still bright and warm, but dinner now feels slower, more intimate, more inviting. It’s the perfect moment for shared plates, candles on the table, laughter, and a touch of seasonal magic.

You can find almost all ingredients when it comes to vegetables and fruits at the local Tuesday market. We get majority of our ingredients from there. This year, we’re playing with two of our favourite autumn dinner styles - fun, relaxed, colourful, and full of flavour.

Halloween Raclette Night

Raclette is one of our favourite cozy-weather meals, whether just for a few, or a long table of friends. It’s social, relaxed, and wonderfully slow. Everyone melts their own cheese and assembles their plate the way they like it. No hurry. Just warmth and conversation.

You can sometimes find Raclette machines at Lidl in Nerja, and they are easy to order online. Mercadona usually stocks Raclette cheese, ready-sliced and perfect for melting.

What You Need

A Raclette machine (tabletop, plug-in)
Raclette cheese (Mercadona)
4-5 small potatoes per person (as it’s the main filling ingredient)
Vegetables such as sweetcorn, peppers, tomatoes, and onions (or anything you love)
A platter of cold meats: jamón serrano, salami, cooked ham, chorizo
Bread and dips (optional but recommended)

How It Works

Place everything on the table within easy reach. Melt the cheese in the little pans under the raclette grill, then pour it over warm potatoes and add vegetables and meats as you please. OR put the cut veggies in the little pans, and put the cheese on top, warm it under the grill and then pour over the potato. Some use the top of the Raclette machine for cooking meats, we prefer platter of cold meats, but each to their own taste! A glass of wine in hand, music in the background, dinner becomes a slow rhythm.

Halloween Touch

Cut veggies into little “pumpkin faces”, make cucumber ghosts, add olives as spooky eyes, tangerines as pumpkins. It doesn’t need to be perfect - just playful.

💀 A Mexican Night for Día de los Muertos

Another beautiful way to celebrate this time of year is with colour, spice and warmth. A Mexican-inspired evening is full of life, just as Día de los Muertos is intended to be.

For our Fun Friday Group, we made a vegetarian pumpkin chili - comforting, hearty, and full of autumn flavour and served it with a variety of small sides to make the table lively and abundant.

How to Build the Table

Begin with a generous pot of Vegetarian Pumpkin Chili in the centre. Surround it with toasted bread brushed with your favourite olive oil (you’ll find our favourites on Shop Well Page). Add a simple Spanish tortilla sliced into squares, a bowl of nachos with dips, and a plate of cheese-filled peppers for colour and bite. Create a playful pumpkin-shaped vegetable platter with two dips in the centre - it always makes people smile and finish with a dish of seasonal fruits served and kiddie Halloween sweets.

No need to hurry. The table is meant to invite reaching, sharing, touching, tasting - together.

🌶️ Vegetarian Pumpkin Chili (Recipe)

Ingredients:

4 large potatoes
¼ pumpkin (or squash / 3-4 sweet potatoes)
1 large onion
6- 8 big cut tomatoes or 3 cans of chopped tomato
2 cans kidney beans
2–3 cloves garlic
Salt & pepper, paprika, cumin seeds & cilantro
Chili (we use our homemade chili sauce- see recipe) https://www.nerjaamigos.com/market-finds-kitchen/-from-bush-to-sauce-our-homegrown-birds-eye-chili

Instructions:

Chop potatoes and pumpkin into small cubes. Cut the onions.
Sauté cumin, onion and garlic gently in oil.
Add the tomatoes.
Add potatoes and cook for 15-20 min then add the pumpkin. ( Pumpkin cooks much quicker so be careful it does not get mushy).
Add kidney beans.
Season with salt, peppers, paprika, chili and cilantro.
Let simmer for a few moments until soft and beautifully blended.

Tips: You can add sweetcorn and other types of beans too. If using fresh tomatoes, add a bit water.

Serve with nachos or rice, veggie platter and the above.