Recipes / Blog

In Season Now 25 Oct 18

When in comes to seasonal fruit and veg, autumn offers up some real bangers. Butternut squash, kale, beetroot, celeriac, jerusalem artichokes, pumpkins, apples, pears and quince are some of the stars, but the list of hearty, generous produce goes on and on. We're lucky enough to have the space to grow a lot of vegetables in our kitchen garden, and despite using them when cooking for weddings and parties as well as giving them away to friends and family, we're still left with a delicious and colourful bounty to use up ourselves. Well we aint complaining. We have a pile of tender beetroot and golden squash, as well as a few friends coming for dinner tonight to help us get through them.

We've decided to make a warm roasted beetroot and feta salad with chargrilled spring onions, toasted pine nuts and soft green herbs. (I think parsley, chives and dill will be especially delicious here). For the dressing, I'll drizzle over some red wine vinegar and walnut oil, and plenty of salt and pepper. 

After the salad starter, comes the squash. We're going to use it in a vegetable lasagna. Here's the recipe, of sorts. (I'll be making it up as I go along when I cook this tonight, but it will go a little something like this)..

Cut up the squash into large bite-sized chunks, and roast in a medium oven with olive oil, salt and pepper.
Dice an onion (red or white or a couple of shallots). Cook slowly in oil or butter, and when it's soft add a couple of tins of tomatoes, or if you have them, fresh tomatoes that you've cut into chunks. Add a glug or red wine vinegar and some salt and pepper and leave on a very low heat, stirring every now and then. 
Roast some mushrooms with some garlic. (They can be added to the squash after the squash has had about 30 minutes in the oven)
When the veg are really soft and delicious, stir them into the tomato sauce. 
Blanch some kale (or spinach, or cavolo nero - whichever you prefer but kale is at its best this time of year) for a few minutes in salted boiling water, then drain and pat dry.

Get the dish you want to cook your lasagna in. Put a layer of the tomato and veg sauce in the bottom, them some of your blanched greens. Then a layer of lasagna sheets. Then a layer of creme friache mixed with grated parmesan. (We have both of these leftover from a job, but if you'd rather go with a more traditional white sauce then BY ALL MEANS DO.) Keep on layering until you come to the top of the dish. Finish with the creme friache mixture. We also have some sage growing outside, so I'm going to gently cook that in some foaming butter and as soon as the leaves start to get crispy, drizzle over the top of the assembled lasagna. Add extra parmesan and mozzarella for good luck. Cook at 180 c for about 30 minutes or until it's golden and bubbling and basically looks irresistible. A very fine autumnal supper it shall be, I hope, that truly takes advantage of this season's glorious produce.

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