Fire-Roasted Pumpkin Filled with Wild Mushroom Risotto and Mascarpone

As we were looking for a mind-blowing vegetarian dish for this chapter, Andy’s wife, Karen, was reading in bed and nudged him awake. “You’ve got to make this,” she said as she read him the description of a Renaissance recipe for pumpkin baked with mushrooms, bread cubes, and cheese embedded in the text of A Thousand Days in Venice, by Marlena de Blasi. Three mouthwatering weeks and several failed experiments later, this beautiful and utterly romantic extravagance emerged from the gri