Soups & Starters
Vegetarian & Vegan
Butternut squash curry
A super-easy curry for winter nights
One of my biggest successes on the allotment in 2021 was butternut squash - I had plants scrambling all over several beds and they produced masses of (admittedly fairly small) fruits with deliciously sweet, vivid orange flesh. They keep well indoors in a cool place, so I’ve been in no hurry to use them but last night, when it was very cold and damp outside, I decided a squash curry was what was needed to cheer things up. I made it but then had to go out to a meeting in the village, so it was wonderful to come back in from the cold and be greeted by the rich, tempting smell of a good curry, waiting to be heated up for a late supper… It was worth the wait, and was super-delicious!
Ingredients
Serves 2-3
- 1 butternut squash
- 1 cauliflower
- 1 tbsp hot curry powder (I used Schwartz)
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 clove garlic, sliced
- small piece fresh ginger, grated
- 1 tbsp ground cumin
- 150ml hot vegetable stock (I used Knorr Mushroom Stockpot)
- half a 400ml can light coconut milk
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 150ml tub plain low-fat yogurt
- pinch of chilli flakes
Method
Pour a little olive oil into a shallow roasting tin. Cut the squash into quarters (and then eighths if it's large), then roll around in the oil. Cut the cauliflower into florets and roll that in the oil too. Sprinkle with the curry powder, then roast for 30-40 mins at 200C (fan oven) until just tender.
Meanwhile, fry the onion until translucent, then add the garlic, ginger and cumin powder and sizzle for a minute. Add the coconut milk and stock and stir until heated through and thickening.
Peel the cooked squash by scoring the skin lengthways with a sharp knife and then peeling back the skin from either side of the cut. Cut the squash flesh into large cubes and add to the pan with the cauliflower. Stir to coat in the sauce, then pour over the lemon juice. Spoon into a serving dish and top with the yogurt. Sprinkle with chilli flakes and serves with rice.
A Cook's Plot Tip
Lots of recipes tell you that if you're roasting squash you don't need to remove the skin, but I find it too bitter. Getting it off is a bit of a feat, though. If you try to do it before your cook the squash, it's really hard work. So my fail-safe method is to roast quite big pieces, with the skin on. Once they're cooked, leave to cool slightly then make a slit down the skin of each piece with a very sharp knife - you can then easily peel back the skin from either side of the slit, and discard it.