Warm Salad of Mushrooms and Roasted Squash

by Amy

Substitions: 1 Cal spray instead of the ONE HUNDRED MILLILETRES of olive oil to roast the squash
Mixed leaves instead of the dreaded rocket


Rating: 7

I love butternut squash so much. I think it might be one of my favourite foods. Obviously not my literal favourite food, that would be ridiculous*, but of all the things I can eat with wild abandon without sinking into a pit of self-loathing, vomiting and/or breaking out in adult acne, BNS is right up there.

Squash happens to be having "a moment" in the world of vegetable fashion (yes, there are fashionable vegetables! Stop laughing) which means that to my delight there are LOADS of squash recipes in Veg Everyday. This is a warm salad--I'm not sure where warm salads came from but if in doubt, blame Ottolenghi--comprising basically of roasted squash, fried mushrooms and stilton on a bed of leaves with a balsamic dressing.

Proper easy it was. Not even that much chopping involved! This felt like a night off.

But what of the taste: Well, it was nice, because all the ingredients were nice. There was a balanced mix of sharpness and sweetness from the stilton, roast squash and balsamic, but the whole thing together was a bit, well... mushy. Some toasted nuts and/or seeds could have provided a nice contrasting crunch. 

Also the fried mushrooms just totally didn't feel right in a salad. It's like they'd arrived at the salad and were hanging out there just to be polite, but secretly they were despising the company of every other ingredient on the plate and pining for their fried egg mates.

Anyway. I might make this again but I'll be ringing the changes: ie some pumpkin seeds on top--and possibly raw baby button mushrooms? I am so boring.

* Milkshake