Seasonal Food for a Veggie

[Oola]

I'm trying to buy more seasonally, as a) it's cheaper when in season (even when organic) and b) obviously more tasty!

I bought a butternut squash the other day and it's been sitting on my kitchen counter looking a bit blank. I think tonight I will probably whizz up a butternut squash and roasted red pepper soup, but I'd quite like to experiment with butternut squash and pumpkins a bit more next week. I've only ever managed to make soups with them. As much as I love soup, sometimes I do like to chew :D

I've also included a Recipe Book forum room here so if you want to publish your fave recipes on the website, you can stick it there as long as you say where you got it from.

I'm also thinking of growing some butternut squashes and pumpkins next year - anyone ever tried eating the blueish green (smaller) pumpkins? I tried growing sweet potatoes but I neglected to plant them into the ground, so they were left in a big pot in the conservatory (warm, but not really right!) and as you can imagine have probably done nothing. I would like to try again but I'm one of the those people that want to keep my veg patches looking pretty but functional, so I don't know if I could have yards of black polythene covering sweet potatoes!

[jazzactivist]

Butternut squash is my absolute favourite vegetable, Oola. I think that it is best roasted with a sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon to really bring out the flavour. This also adds a lovely flavour to soup. It is also nice raw as a salad: grate and mix with cubed avocado, diced tomato, toasted sunflower seeds and a dash of balsamic vinegar.

[Redstart]

Roasted butternut is excellent - I toss 3 cm cubes of skinned, de-seeded butternut with some olive oil, add some salt and roast, uncovered, for 50 to 60 minutes. It makes a good side dish.

It's also excellent in a curry - I'll post the recipe in the recipe forum if you like.

A nice soup is to sauté a small onion in 1 tbsp butter, add 500 g cubed butternut; stir round and add a heaped teaspoon of curry powder. Cook 1 minute and then add 1 litre vegetable stock and 300 ml pineapple (or orange) juice. Cook 30 mins until the pumpkin is soft and then liquidise it. It's yummy!

[Oola]

Yes by all means publish your recipe in the Recipe Book :)

Pineapple Juice in the soup! Sounds interesting! What effect does it have on the flavours?

[Redstart]

It tastes wonderful with the buttery butternut and curry powder. My vegetarian daugher first cooked it for me and followed it with a spinach strudel. I've made the soup ever since as I always seem to end with butternuts I need to use up.

And I'll post the recipe tomorrow or Tuesday - I'm a bit busy and need time to search my recipe folder for it!

[CountryLady]

Butternut squash roasted is just scrummy! I like to add a bit of rosemary, it smells sooooo good!

[Oola]

I just whipped up a butternut squash and red pepper soup yesterday, sort of made it up as I went along!

I basically roasted the butternut squash and the red pepper in the oven for about 50mins-1hr, then browned off some onions and garlic in a pan, added a small knob of butter, chucked in the roasted red pepper & butternut squash, added some vegetable bouillon in water, salt & pepper and a bit of cayenne pepper, let it reduce down and then whizzed it up with the hand blender.

Rich said to me it was "best thing" he's tasted "all year"! I thought it was too thick but he absolutely adored it - couldn't believe how sweet it was. Great! He even said he thought if you added curry powder to it it would make a good curry sauce. Interesting thought. Needless to say I will be experimenting with more butternut squash recipes. Any recipes you've got can be added to the Recipe Book forum on here.

[CountryLady]

Now that DOES sound interesting. My O/H is completely addicted to curry sauce so I'm going to give that a try.