I’m so glad that this salad came to me on a Monday; a serendipitous salad on a Monday can set you for the rest of the day, if not the whole damn week!
As per usual, we had a butternut squash and a pumpkin half lurking in the back of the fridge…This always happens, we buy them with such good intentions and then can rarely quite be bothered to have the forethought to cook them in time for a meal, so we end up throwing them out about 2 weeks later when we can’t fit a cold lamb joint on to the shelf they were lurking on. It’s sad, it’s wasteful, I hate it… So when I went to the fridge in search of a morsel for my elevenses and happened upon said butternut half, I gleefully took the chance to throw it in the oven and cook it in time for lunch (you shall also be glad to know that the pumpkin is not forgotten and is intended to be eaten with chicken this evening).
Now, usually when I get around to cooking butternut squash I double bake it.. Roasting it first with olive oil, butter, garlic and whatever herbs take my fancy that day (often sage, sometimes thyme), then scooping out all the flesh (leaving enough near the skin to stop it from loosing shape and falling apart, about 1cm), mixing it in a bowl with some fried onions, bacon, spinach, cracked pepper, a and heaped tablespoon (see what I did there?) of sour cream and then pile it all back into the skin and cover it in grated cheese and bake for a further 20 mins, till the cheese is all melted and yummy looking. Delicious, yes. Healthy.. not overly. Also, I’m currently trying to minimise my dairy intake to only butter (which I just cannot cook/live without) and the dash of milk I put into my, now daily, cup of tea. I have skin that is super prone to break outs, so this is one of the many trials I am going through to see if it makes any difference, along with washing my face with Manuka honey and bicarb soda and moisturising with rose hip oil… fancy! (And still less expensive than buying the chemical riddled alternatives).
So! With this in mind I couldn’t really bring myself to do my typical recipe, so instead only did the first half of drizzling it with olive oil, dabbing on some butter, scattering on some garlic slivers and dusting with ground sage, nutmeg and black pepper and throwing in the oven for just over an hour at 180℃ (fan-forced).
When I initially took the squash out of the oven, I shan’t lie I was a little at a loss as to what to do with it to make it a meal worthy of its dairy doused cousin. So, in my typical response I went to the fridge for inspiration; where I came across, in the salad draw some baby spinach and kale leaves and a box of snow pea shoots.. Also items that often are left forgotten and half used till it’s too late. So out they came and thusly the salad began. The nuts occurred to me partly because Butternut Squash, rather unsurprisingly seems to beg to be accompanied by nuts to my mind, and also because I love a bit of crunch and substance to my lunch salads, they seem much less mean and meagre that way. And now you have the longwinded story of the Totally Nuts Salad.. Now for the recipe!
Ingredients:
Squash:
– 1/2 a butternut squash
– a knob of butter – 1 clove garlic
– 1/2 tsp (freshly) ground nutmeg
– 1/2 tsp ground sage
– black pepper
Salad:
– handful of baby spinach leaves
– the same again of baby kale
– and smaller bunch of snow pea shoots
– a few hazelnuts, pistachios, whatever kind of nuts you have to hand.
– some pepitas (pumpkin seeds), flaxseeds (linseed), and psylliam husks (purely because this is what I had to hand, any seeds you like would do).
– olive oil
– runny honey
– Maldon Salt (or normal table salt)
Method:
Firstly, preheat your oven to 180℃. Next you need to line a baking tray roughly the right size to fit your squash half, with a piece of tin foil to stop the squash from sticking to the bottom (I drizzle a little olive oil on it too, just to be sure). Next, place the squash, skin side down into the tray. Now, dot on some butter with slivers of garlic, a drizzle of olive oil and a dusting of nutmeg and sage over the squash, then bung it in the now up to temperature oven. Roast for just over an hour, or till a butter knife can pierce the flesh easily.
For the salad, simply roughly chop up your spinach, kale and shoots and place them in the serving bowl, then drizzle over some olive oil and runny honey and crush over a pinch of Maldon Salt, or grind over a little less of normal table salt.
Next take out your chosen nuts and roughly chop them as well, then, with the seeds, place them in a dry frying pan over a medium heat. If you are using flax/linseeds they will ping out of the frying pan when their cases split, so if you have something useful like a spit-guard (not a saucepan lid though, or they won’t toast the same) I would suggest placing that over the frying pan; if not, either brave the potential mess or leave them out of the toasting process. Once your nut and seed mix is nicely golden and toasted, simply take off the heat and leave to one side.
Now, on a chopping board, slice two, inch thick portions off your warm squash. Then chop those again roughly into inch cubes and toss them onto your dressed bed of leaves. Next scatter over your toasted nuts and seeds, grind on a little pepper, and you are done!
If you use up the whole half of the squash, with the corresponding amount of salad, you would have between 4 or 5 servings, depending on the size of squash and/or serving.
Enjoy!
Oh and happy Monday!
G. xxx
The Heaped Tablespoon 