Walnut Roasted Squash

Tom today!

My housemate James is a proper bargain hunter, and recently he found us an offer to get four veg boxes (from the riverford company) for 20 pounds. As a result we've had a nice variety of vegetables we've been trying out new recipes with. This is a variation on a recipe I make quite a lot with roasts. Here I've really extended the Asian flavours, and the walnuts and pumpkin mix well.

Ingredients (serves 4 as a main or around 6 as a side dish):

1 Japanese Pumpkin
3 cloves Garlic
1 Red Chili
1 tbsp Sesame Seeds
4 tbsp Soy Sauce
2 tbsp Sake
3 tbsp Olive oil
120g Walnuts
Salt and Pepper (around a tsp of each)
1 tsp Nutmeg
1 tbsp Sea flakes
1/2 Red onion

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius
Peel the pumpkin, then halve it and scoop out the seeds (I find it much easier to do in that order)
Chop into 1 cm chunks
Dice the garlic and chili finely
Crush the walnuts and slice the onion roughly
Throw everything in a roasting tin
Add the oil, sake, seeds, soy sauce and spices
Season to taste
Toss everything to mix and coat it all
Bake until the pumpkin is soft - around 35 mins
(If you find that quite a lot of liquid is coming out, you might like to turn the oven up for the last 15 minutes to boil off the liquid and crisp up the pumpkin slightly)

This is quite a simple recipe, and goes really tasty with the sweetness of the raisins in the baked cabbage recipe (link). Hope you enjoy it!

Walnut, Lentil and 3 Mushroom Pate

Tom here,

Sorry guys! It's been quite a hiatus over the exam period but Jess has managed to get a few recipes up, and now I have a bit more time I'm hoping to get a few more up. Got a few new recipes to upload over the next few weeks (including the dinner I made on actual christmas day at my parent's) This is a part of four different recipes I made for a wine and cheese evening we had to celebrate the new kitchen we've had installed in our university house! It's amazing, I would happily marry that oven and never look back. Sadly that's illegal. I think. Or at least frowned upon.

Obviously a wine and cheese evening presents a slight problem for veganism (and an even bigger one for gluten intolerants) but I managed to whip up a vegetarian pate, an attempt at vegan boursin and a couple of different types of truffles for something sweet.

Ingredients:

150g Walnuts
120g Oyster Mushrooms
120g Chestnut (cremini) Mushrooms
120g Shitake Mushrooms
100g Red Lentils
100g Shallots
2 cloves Garlic
1 tbsp Butter (I used sunflower, but usually prefer soya)
1 tbsp Thyme
1 1/3 tsp Sea Salt Flakes
1 tsp Black Pepper
1 tbsp Light Soy Sauce

This recipe is an adapted version of one I found online, I've used different mushrooms for more flavour, but each of these were purchased in sainsburys in fallowfield so they should be pretty easy to get hold of. The lentils added give a bit of a texture boost, but could be omitted easily.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius/ gas mark 4
Boil the red lentils until soft
Toast the walnuts for 5 minutes until browned and fragrant (they smell amazing!)
Leave the walnuts to cool
Dice the shallots and fry in the butter until soft
Chop the mushrooms and add to the pan
Crush the garlic and fry as well
Remove the stalks of the thyme and chop and add to the frying pan
Crush the walnuts in a pestle and mortar (may require a few batches)
Add all the ingredients to a jug and blend using a hand blender
Spoon into a bowl and refrigerate for a few hours
Stir in the soy sauce just before serving to give a nice flavour boost
Serve with crackers or use as a spread for sandwiches

This should keep in the refrigerator for about 3-4 days. This is quite a simple recipe, and can easily be adapted with more herbs, or even changed entirely if you wanted to make a different style. The mushroom types can be substituted for any really, I just happen to like these three (and they were all available) using a large amount of two or one type would be fine, but the pate would definitely loost some of it's flavour.

As always let us know any suggestions or tweaks you come up with at twocooksoneblog@gmail.com.

And hope you all had a nice christmas/January, will definitely not leave it so long for a new recipe this time!

As you may notice I got a bit carried away cooking and forgot to take photos. Sorry! Next time I will take some more I promise!