Tag Archives: butternut squash

Pumpkin and ginger loaf

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I got this recipe from the BBC Good Food magazine. I have adapted it ever so slightly. I would also experiment with dropping the sugar content, but never the first time I make something. It’s great for using up Hallowe’en pumpkin carving scrapings, but I admit I used butternut squash as bit too early, for us, to be carving pumps.

Ingredients

250g pumpkin or butternut squash chunks (note: peeled weight)

50g black treacle

140g golden syrup

140g light brown sugar

100ml milk

100g cold butter, diced

125g self raising flour

100g plain wholemeal flour

1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda

half a teaspoon of baking powder

1 tablespoon of ground ginger

2 teaspoons of mixed spice

2 eggs

8-10 pieces of crystallized ginger, thinly sliced

What you do

Oven to 180C. You need a 2lb loaf tin (23cm x 13cm x 7cm) which you have lined in baking parchment.

Put the pumpkin or squash chunks in a bowl with a bit of water, cover with pierced cling film or a suitable microwave cover, and cook on full power in the microwave for about 9-10 minutes. When done, drain any excess water and mash it up.

Whilst that is doing, put the treacle, golden syrup, milk and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a very gentle boil, stirring until the sugar is all dissolved. Take off the heat.

Sift together the dry ingredients: the flours, ginger, mixed spice, bicarb and baking powder, add the diced butter and rub together with finger tips until like fine breadcrumbs. I admit it, I did this in a food processor because I am a lazy bastard. Set aside.

Whisk the egg gently into the pumpkin/squash, just until you have a gooey, orange mass. Now pour this into the treacle/syrup/sugar/milk mixture, or vice versa. Now add to the dry ingredients, mixing carefully and slowly. If the syrupy mixture is too hot and/or you add it too fast, then you will get small clumps of flour that will never disperse.

Or you could be like me and chuck the whole lot into the bowl of a food mixture and whisk it together, because you can never have too much washing up.

Pour the batter into the loaf tin and onto the top, scatter 80% of the sliced up crystallized ginger. Bake in the centre of the oven for  45 minutes. A skewer should come out with some moist crumbs, you don’t want it too dry. Five minutes before, scatter the rest of the sliced ginger on top.

Take out and cool completely. Like all gingerbread, it tastes better after a few days of being wrapped in baking parchment/foil and is delicious sliced and spread with butter and served, in front of a fire, with a cup of tea.  It is full of lovely autumn flavours.

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Nutty quinoa salad

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Today was the Big Storm. As we waited for it to pass and the 80mph winds almost bent our poplars in half and shook the beech tree like a deranged nanny, I thought about lunch. Something healthy, but not salad, something warming, but not soup.

I found this in the BBC Good Food magazine, which is about as comforting a magazine title as you can get. It says serves 2-3 and I’d say that’s about right. You can obviously up certain ingredients, such as the squash or the quinoa, if you need to make it go a bit further. I never weigh my squash incidentally. The only thing I found was that this was a bit salty for my taste – ergo delicious – so you may want to not salt the squash, for example. Anyway, this is packed with good things and if only I can resist the bourbon biscuit waiting for me in the kitchen, I will have had a wholly good lunch.

A small butternut squash, peeled, seeds out, cubed into 3cm cubes (approx 500g)

10sprigs of thyme

50ml olive oil (not virgin)

50g whole almonds, skin on

250ml stock (veg or chicken) or water

125g quinoa, that lovely middle class staple, rinsed

100g feta, crumbled

4 tablespoons of chopped parsley (we grow our herbs but struggle with the parsley, so I always have some of this in the freezer. It also stops you paying out 80pence for herbs that then go off in the salad drawer).

Preheat the oven to 200C and toast the almonds (whole) for 5-7 minutes, watch them really carefully. When they’re done take them out and at some point before serving, chop them up roughly.

Now put the squash in an oven tray and pour over the olive oil, thyme and salt and pepper. Mix it up and place in oven for 30-40 minutes until it’s tender and slightly brown at the edges. When done take out and put to one side. You’re done with the oven now.

Put the water or stock in a saucepan and put the rinsed and drained quinoa in, cook for about 12 minutes, until the stock is mostly absorbed and the quinoa is tender to the bite. Now put the cooked quinoa into a large bowl or plate, put the squash on top, crumble the feta on top, scatter the almonds and some parsley and you’re done. You can have this warm (I did and it was superb) or at room temperature. Strikes me it would make an excellent packed lunch, too.

For extra veg, eat with a small green salad. I didn’t because I couldn’t be bothered to pick some salad from outside and rinse it, so I’ll, um, have that later.