How do you feel about butternut squash?  No, really.

For those of you who might shy away from the squash, consider the following: It is a fruit; who doesn’t love fruit? It is a healthy food; who doesn’t want to eat healthy?  It is inexpensive; who isn’t cheap  thrifty?  It’s not kale.

Dense and creamy, butternut squash is the product of a 1940s-era hybridization project by Charles Leggett of Stow, Massachusetts. He started with a gooseneck squash and the rest is history. The butternut got its name because, according to its early promoters, the interior flesh of the fruit is as smooth as butter and as sweet as a nut. Kinda corny but it works.

But…don’t you just hate to peel it?

While it’s true that butternut squash is hard to prep, it doesn’t have to be. Here is a link to an excellent piece from Eating Well Magazine that demystifies how to prepare the squash: Eating Well On Preparing Butternut Squash. Alternatively, you can poke holes in the raw squash’s skin and then microwave it for about five minutes to make it easier to peel. That’s what I do.

Here is a wonderful butternut squash recipe.

This recipe is adapted from one that appears in chef Yotam Ottolenghi’s new cookbook, Ottolenghi Simple. Israel-born and London-based, Ottolenghi is the author of a number of best-selling cookbooks including Plenty, Plenty More, Jerusalem and Sweet. Up until now, his recipes have been known for their inventiveness but also for their difficulty and for the long lists of hard-to-find ingredients. Ottolenghi Simple focuses on recipes that are quick to prepare, that involve short lists of ingredients and that can, in many cases, be made well in advance.

Roasted Butternut Squash With Lentils and Stilton

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Ingredients

• 1 large butternut squash (peeled and cut into wedges)
• 2 red onions (peeled and cut into wedges)
• 3 T. olive oil
• 1/2 C. fresh sage leaves
• Salt and black pepper
• 3 C. cooked lentils (I used Beluga but the recipe called for Puy)
• 1 large lemon (zested to get 2 t. zest and juiced to get 2 t. juice)
• 1 garlic clove (crushed)
• 1/4 C. parsley leaves (roughly chopped)
• 14 C. mint leaves (roughly chopped)
• 1/2 C. tarragon leaves (roughly chopped)
• Garnish with crumbled Stilton or gorgonzola cheese
• Garnish with chopped parsley and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
2. Prepare squash and onions and toss together with 2 T. olive oil, sage leaves, 3/4 t. salt and pepper in a large bowl. (I substituted a generous pinch of dried sage leaves.) Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Spread the squash/onion mixture out on the parchment-lined baking sheet. Roast vegetables for 25 to 30 minutes or until the squash is tender and beginning to brown. Remove from oven and allow the mixture to cool.
3. If you are going to use dried lentils, rinse them and add them to a pan of water to cover. Bring the water to a boil. Once the water is at a boil, lower the stove temperature to medium and simmer the lentils until they are tender but not mushy. This will take around 20 minutes. Drain and set the lentils aside to cool slightly. Alternatively, you can buy prepared lentils at markets like Trader Joe's.
4. In a large bowl, mix the lemon zest, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, mint, tarragon and remaining 1 T. oil. (I didn't have fresh tarragon and omitted it.) Salt to taste. Add the cooked lentils to the bowl and mix. Add the squash/onion mixture to the lentils and stir gently.
5. Arrange the squash/lentil salad attractively on a serving plate. Sprinkle crumbled cheese over the salad and drizzle with a bit of extra-virgin olive oil. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Nutrition

Calories

2269 cal

Fat

56 g

Carbs

342 g

Protein

125 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

171

https://bluecayenne.com/smooth-as-butter-roasted-butternut-squash-with-lentils-and-stilton

Here is a link to Amazon where you can buy Ottolenghi’s book: Amazon.

If you have been reading this blog regularly, you know by now that I have yet to meet a soup that I don’t enjoy. This South Indian lentil and vegetable soup is no exception and always conjures up a wonderful travel memory for me.

I’ll tell you the story.

My husband and I were fortunate to travel widely. India–beautiful, exotic and often exasperating– was one of our favorite destinations.

On one of our trips there, one of our stops was in Madras (now Chennai). We arrived very late at night after a harrowing flight from Calcutta on Indian Airlines. Advertised as an easy two-hour trip, our trip had taken a soul-crushing 10 hours.

Once at our hotel,  we wearily arranged to have a room service breakfast and fell into the bed exhausted.

When the breakfast cart was wheeled into our room the next morning, rather than eggs, toast and whatever, our cart carried a steaming tureen of spicy coconut-flecked lentil soup accompanied by pungent steamed rice cakes. There was also a small bowl of a coconut-cilantro-jalapeno chutney that could knock your socks off if this weren’t breakfast and your socks hadn’t been flung into some deep dark corner under the bed.

This was our lucky day!  Room service had gotten our breakfast order mixed up,  

Any moral dilemma we might have entertained about eating another guest’s breakfast quickly evaporated as the aroma of the lentil soup filled our room and our imaginations. It wasn’t our place to tell anyone. Right?  Right.

As the room service waiter served our breakfast, he ladled the spicy soup over the steamed rice cakes and then offered the bowl of chutney as a condiment. Dixon and I exchanged conspiratorial glances. Clearly, we weren’t in Kansas anymore–not even Delhi. Foodie paradise. That’s where we were. 

Later, we learned that our breakfast entree was called idli (the rice cakes) and sambar (the stew-like soup) and was a widely-loved breakfast in India’s steamy south. There were even restaurants, like The New Woodlands in Madras, that specialized in making the “lighter than a pavlova” rice cakes that accompany this tasty lentil soup.

Here is a stock photo from the Internet of what an idli looks like. White. Pillowy. Wonderful.

Later that week, we were driven farther south towards Tiruchirappalli and on to Cochin in what was then India’s version of the Model T car, the ambassador.

The ambassador car is a story in itself. In India’s controlled economy before the 1990s, the ambassador was pretty much the only car you saw on the road.

In production by Hindustan Motors from 1958 until 2014, the ambassador’s design was based on the British Morris Oxford car. The simplicity of the design appealed to India’s fledgling auto industry so much that they kept the car pretty much the same over the fifty-six years it was produced. The car you bought in 1958 looked pretty much the same as the car you bought in 2014.

Although it’s repair record was appalling, there were waiting lists to buy the car that stretched to as much as eight years. Inevitably, jokes abounded about the car: “The only thing that doesn’t make a sound in an Ambassador is the horn!”

The car understandably insinuated itself into popular Indian literature, too. For example, H.R.F. Keating, in his wonderful Inspector Ghote series, always has the rumpled Bombay detective tooling around in a beat up ambassador. I’ve always wondered which came first–Inspector Ghote or Peter Falk’s Colombo.

During the remainder of our stay in South India, we made a point of ordering any number of variations on that first revelatory bowl of idli and sambar. Some sambars were more spicy hot. Some had more vegetables. Some idlis had cashews and spices embedded in them like jewels. It was all good.

Once, when we asked our driver to stop and let us out to walk and take photographs of the rice paddy-strewn countryside, a group of workers in the rice fields engaged him in an animated conversation.There was a lot of pointing and gesturing and giggling. Obviously, they were talking about us. When I asked Krishna, our driver, about the conversation, he told me that the workers wanted to know what we ate for breakfast. Was it rice, they asked hopefully…rice with sambar? By then, we could honestly say (through our guide) that we did indeed have sambar and rice for breakfast and enjoyed it very much. Our answer brought smiles and nods of approval all around.

I’ve always remembered that day. On that bright Indian morning, on the edge of a rice paddy and seemingly in the middle of nowhere, the workers in that rice field had felt a need to find some small human connection with the foreign strangers in the ambassador. And then, there it was. We ate the same breakfast–a bowl of hot soup and a rice cake.

I can’t help but wonder whether, in the fractured and often violent world in which we increasingly find ourselves, we might benefit from a shift in focus away from the things that separate us to the things that we enjoy in common, however small.

I found this recipe many years ago in a magazine left behind on a table in an Artesia, California, Indian restaurant. The magazine is called India Currents.

Recipe: Broccoli-Cauliflower Sambar
1 1/2 C. cauliflower florets
1 1/2 C. broccoli florets
1-2 C. chopped Tomatoes
2-3 C. water
3 C. cooked pink lentils
1 T. fresh or frozen grated coconut (unsweetened and optional)
1 T. sambar powder
2 t. ground coriander
1/2-1 C. coconut milk

Herb-spice infused oil topping
1 1/2 T. mild oil
1/2 t. black mustard seeds
10 fresh kari leaves (optional)
1/4 C. chopped onion
1/8 t. turmeric

Directions:

Put cauliflower florets, broccoli florets, chopped tomatoes, and lentils in a large soup pot. Add water, optional coconut, sambar powder and 1/8 t. pepper. Stir to mix and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 10-12 minutes. Stir in coconut milk. Cook until hot for 4-5 additional minutes and then turn heat off.

Put mild oil in a skillet. When the oil is hot, add black mustard seeds and cook until mustard seeds begin to pop. Be careful here, although the mustard seeds are small, they can burn if they pop out of the pan and land on your skin. Add the kari leaves (optional). Stir in the onion and turmeric. Cook until onion just begins to brown. This should take about four minutes. Remove pan from heat and add the oil mixture to your soup. Stir. Garnish with chopped cilantro and chopped tomatoes.

Cook’s Notes: Sambar powder and kari leaves are available in Indian markets. Indian markets also carry many idli mixes. Gits brand is a good one. There is a special idli steamer that Indians use to make the rice cakes but I’ve found that my egg poacher does just fine. If you live in Southern California, there are a few South Indian restaurants in Artesia’s Little India. You can get very good idli and sambar at Udipi Palace located at 18635 Pioneer Boulevard in Artesia.

I will post a recipe for coconut chutney soon.