Roast root veg ribbon st...
2019-03-19
Want to make ordinary root vegetables positively gourmet – in under 30 min...
Warm winter squash & lentil salad
Prep 15 mins
Cooking 50 mins
Serves 2-4
Autumn into winter is when hard squash varieties like butternut and pumpkins shine in the kitchen, so banish those early-winter blues with this warm and spicy squash salad. They’re cheap as chips right now because they’re in season, so hit your greengrocer and try to get a range of interesting ones. A splosh of good extra virgin olive oil and a very generous grind of our Natural Herbs and Spices Chilli and Garlic spice is all that’s needed. Into the oven they go along with red onions and vine tomatoes. Pile it high on lentils and give it some feta and basil love and you’re done.
What you will need
- Variety of hard & soft squashes
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Grinder seasoning - Chilli & Garlic
- Red onions, quartered
- Vine tomatoes
- Cooked lentils
- Feta, crumbled
- Basil leaves
Method
The key to getting a salad like this right, is understanding that vegetables do not all cook at the same rate. Denser squashes like butternut and pumpkin take much longer to cook than their softer squash cousins like courgettes or patty pans. Equal-sized pieces of similar vegetables will also cook at the same speed. Bear this in mind in how you cut the veggies and stagger the roasting timetable by adding the larger pieces and harder squash earlier.
Here’s how we did it:
Preheat your oven to 210 ºC. Cut the hard squashes like pumpkin into equal-sized pieces. Splash over olive oil and grind over Natural Herbs and Spices Chilli and Garlic spice - then into the oven it goes for 15 minutes. Onions cook faster, so they go in after 15 minutes. Then, the soft squash varieties and tomatoes follow at the end as they need only 15 minutes in the oven. Your total cooking time should be about 45 minutes.
Drizzle olive oil over the warm lentils and give them a good pinch of sea salt. Tumble the vegetables on top, crumble over a block of feta and loads of basil leaves.
Tuck in!
Recipe & photography by food stylist and blogger of everything yum, Lizet Hartley: http://www.melkkos-merlot.co.za
