Reciplace

Butternut Squash, Feta and Buckwheat - weeknight superfoods

My lovely veg box people have been bombarding me with winter veg lately.   Okay, so it IS January.  I'll admit that I'm impressed that anything grows in this weather at all! But crikey - what do I do with ten thousand Jerusalem artichokes?  What if I'm sick of celeriac mash?  

Squash, however, is one thing I never get sick of.  These lovely parcels of sweet flesh have been one of my favourite vegetables since carving pumpkins with my dad at Halloween.  They smell good, taste good, and are pretty darn good for you.

This is my favourite stuffed squash recipe.  I usually make it with butternut squash, but you can stuff any orange squash this way.  It's packed with healthy things, and tastes incredible. 

The recipe is originally from those geniuses at Tesco Healthy Living Magazine.   What a wasted talent!  It must be absolutely soul destroying for the poor writers of these recipes (who obviously know how to put together a fantastic dish) to be working for the UK's largest destroyer of local food and farmers.  They even call for buckwheat in this recipe - a stellar grain that ironically, Tesco isn't quite foodie enough to sell. Love it.

Ingredients

• 1 medium butternut squash
• 300ml vegetable stock
• 50g buckwheat
• 2 spring onions, finely sliced
• 40g broccoli, steamed (or rawif wished)
• 15g walnuts, chopped
• 1tsp harissa paste
• 25g feta, crumbled
• 1tbsp freshly chopped parsley

1. Preheat the oven to 200ºC/180ºC fan/Gas 6.


2. 02 Halve the squash horizontally and de-seed. Place in a roasting tray cut-side up. Bake for 40-50 mins, or until tender.


3. Meanwhile, bring the stock to the boil, add the buckwheat, cover and simmer for 30 mins, until tender. Drain and place in a bowl with the remaining ingredients, mixing well.


4. When the butternut is cooked, scoop out the middle flesh, chop and then mix with the stuffing ingredients. Spoon back into the squash.


5. Return to the oven for 15 minutes then serve.

Salmon with crème fraîche

Don't you just love the internet?  You've got 4 totally random ingredients left in the fridge, the supermarkets are shut, and you've got a starving husband begging to be allowed out to the kebab shop....   Just type the 4 random ingredients into google.... and presto!  A fab meal awaits!

Tonight the ingredients were; salmon, fenugreek, crème fraîche, and green beans.  Surely this can become a meal, non?  Good ol' Google offered up Crème Fraîche Baked Salmon from a gorgeous blog I'd never seen before called A Gluten Free Day.  How do people take photos like that?!?  Must learn....

The recipe was easy-peasy - bake some salmon fillets with lemon and seasoning, then spread crème fraîche on top.  I threw the fenugreek into some risotto with white wine, and steamed the green beans and served with a simple oil/vinegar dressed salad.  Another night with no food in the house and the kebab shop avoided!  Really must finish that online grocery order.....

Green Tea Pancakes

On our penultimate morning in Japan, we ordered room service breakfast in what is surely one of the most upmarket hotels in the world - the Tokyo Mandarin Oriental. 

After a quick glance over the menu, I immediately decided on Green Tea Pancakes.  What red blooded Canadian can turn down pancakes? And since I'd become addicted to Green Tea Powder (matcha) while in Japan, it was the obvious choice.

Of course, they were gorgeous.... I doused them with maple syrup and mopped up every last crumb.  I thought about making them when I got back home, but it turns out the recipe is just to add a tbsp of matcha powder when you are mixing your dry pancake ingredients together.  Easy!

I haven't been able to actually find matcha powder since I got home, so these are hotel photos!  I'll have to check out the Japan Centre in London so I can recreate this delicacy.  Then I just need to figure out how to recreate the enormous soft Mandarin Oriental bed, the silk bags of tea, the 36th floor view of Tokyo......