This week I am focusing on the butternut squash, a versatile and delicious ingredient that I have come to love over the years. Technically, the squash is a fruit, but as I’m no horticulturalist, I’ll avoid explaining why. What I do know is that most squash is harvested in late summer and in autumn and left to age for a few months to soften and develop in temperature-controlled storage. This means they are at their peak around now. They are packed with natural sweetness and vitamins, and are perfect for roasting and getting some colour into your weekly menu.
They will forever be etched in my memory as a result of Christmas 2013. At the time, I was managing the larder section of a busy fine dining restaurant. The larder section looks after starters and the first few courses of a tasting menu. Christmas being notoriously busy, many kitchens will restructure menus for the period to make them more efficient and serviceable to the higher demand. The chef decided to put the same hot starter on both the a la carte and tasting menus for lunch and dinner. Great, I thought: it meant my prep list would be halved for the month. How wrong I was. The dish consisted of every imaginable way of presenting butternut squash. There were roasted rectangles, pickled sheets, sweetened stars, spiced purée and even some blanched balls for good measure. The seeds were roasted and turned into a crispy sheet along with making an oil.
This was all before the main elements were added. Then there was liquorice caramel, a sauce made from clementine and ginger juice infused with clementine leaf and butter, all topped with three large scallops, studded together like impaled soldiers on a polished liquorice stick (yes there are in fact sticks that taste like liquorice) and roasted in foaming butter spiced with Vadouvan – a colonial French spice blend somewhere between curry and Cajun. Caught your breath yet? Imagine my prep list now. Add in six day weeks with full lunch and dinner services and I was processing about 25kg of butternut squash a day. By the time Christmas Day arrived, our relationship was on the rocks. In fact, if I never saw another squash again I would have been okay with it. Unfortunately, the bright orange colour engrained in the palms of my hands and under my nails was a constant reminder of my ex. It was February before my skin returned to normal.
Thankfully, that was more than 10 years ago and I’ve fallen back in love with the humble squash. This week’s recipes reflect the sentiment, with a little nod to that crazy starter all those years ago. First up we have a beautiful dish of roasted scallops with squash and a simple citrus and pickled ginger. You’ll be surprised how well this combination works and this is a nice little special-occasion dinner to have up your sleeve without committing too much time. The second dish is a more traditional squash venture, paired with some shop-bought gnocchi, roasted sage and chilli butter. This can be thrown together midweek for minimal cost but maximum flavour.
