The week after I
returned from London, I received a package that followed me home. My lovely UK editor had sent it, the best kind of parcel, one filled with books.
The books included a
memoir by a woman who learned to live on a farm, a “how to” book on drinking
wine by Victoria Moore and a cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi.
I had heard of
Ottolenghi before. He's a chef in London with four restaurants named after
himself and another called Nopi. He writes a column in the Guardian, which
began about vegetarian cookery and now expands much wider. The cookbook my
editor sent me was his first cookbook, a UK-version cookbook, charming with its
Britishisms: aubergine not eggplant, grams not cups. I cooked a number of
dishes—most recently a honeyed sweet potato and chickpea stew, which reminded
me that simple is great and healthy can taste far better than good. I’ve been
enamored of Ottolenghi ever since.
The other day, I went
on a cookbook-buying binge. My schedule has been so packed the last few weeks
that I haven’t had much time to cook. And since cooking is one of my favorite
ways to unwind, to relax, to push the cobwebs of anxiety out of my brain, I’ve
been feeling like my insides are tied up in knots. Even if I don’t have time to
cook, however, I could never give up those few minutes before bed when I read.
And I’ve been reading lots of cookbooks. I love it when I can get lost in a
cookbook like I would in a novel. It inspires the best kind of dreams.
Anyway. On this
cookbook-buying binge, I purchased Ottolenghi’s newest vegetarian tome: Plenty. It’s a beautiful book with a pillow-press
cover and recipes organized by vegetable. (Last night I dreamt about eggplant.)
And last weekend
Becca came to visit. She’s one of my best friends but lives in San Francisco,
so seeing each other in person is a rare delight. Her first night here I cooked
a little vegetarian feast from Plenty.
It included a salad made with roasted butternut squash, sweet spices, spicy
peppers, limes, cilantro, and a yogurt-tahini sauce. It sounds like a mouthful,
but it was pretty much perfect. I’ve been thinking about this salad so much
ever since that I made it again Friday night for some other lovely friends, who
agreed.
To make this salad,
you take a butternut squash, peel it (or not; I kind of like the crunchy
roasted skin), slice it, and roast it with a brush of oil mixed with cardamom
and allspice. When you serve it at room temperature, the squash is sprinkled
with crunchy slivers of a spicy green pepper, the herby wash of cilantro, tart
pieces of lime, and a nutty, smooth sauce. I don’t know what it is about this
salad, but it works.
Butternut Squash
Salad with Spices, Lime, and Green Chile
Adapted from Yotam
Ottolenghi’s Plenty
2 limes
Salt
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 big butternut squash
1 tablespoon cardamom
1 teaspoon allspice
½ cup Greek yogurt
2 ½ teaspoons tahini
1 tablespoon lime juice (or
more to taste)
1 green chile (I used
jalapeno), stripped of seeds and pith, sliced thin
2/3 cup cilantro leaves,
picked off the stalk
Preheat the oven to 400
degrees Fahrenheit.
For the limes: trim off the
tops and bottoms of the limes with a paring knife. Now with the limes standing stable
on a cutting board, use your knife to cut down the sides, slicing off the skin
and the white pith. Quarter the naked limes, and then cut into very thin
slices. Place these slices in a bowl, add a 1-tablespoon drizzle of olive oil
and a sprinkle of salt.
For the butternut squash:
Cut the squash in half lengthwise, and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Now,
cut the squash into slices – about ½ inch thick. Lay them out on a baking sheet
(Ottolenghi suggests on a piece of parchment paper).
Mix together the cardamom
and allspice in a small bowl. Add 3 tablespoons of olive oil, and stir. Brush
this spiced oil over the squash. Season the squash with salt. Roast for about
15 minutes, or until tender, and then let cool. (Here is where you can peel off
the skin… or not. I’ve done it both ways, and love the slight crunch when it is
left on.)
For the sauce: Whisk
together the yogurt, tahini, lime juice, and two tablespoons of water. Season
to taste with salt. (The sauce will be thick, but you want to be able to
drizzle it over the squash, so add more lime juice or water to taste to thin it
out if necessary.)
To serve: Arrange the squash
on a serving platter. Drizzle with the yogurt-tahini sauce. Spoon the lime
slices and their juice evenly over top. Scatter the chile slices. And then the
cilantro. Enjoy.
