Even squash haters like roast squash, especially of the delicata and acorn varieties. When these beauties are in season I like to occupy my entire oven with their sliced presence, roast until their skin bursts golden and adorn every meal with a touch of fall.
Just go ahead and drool all over the computer…it’s okay, really. The star of the show here is the tahini lemon sauce, creamy smooth sesame tahini is such a versatile ingredient. This sauce is not only great on salads and vegetables but also really nice with grilled chicken or white fish, as a dipping sauce for roasted potatoes and yam fries, added to vegetable soups or just smothered on a chunk of sourdough. Make a big batch and save moola on pre made salad dressings, seriously if you are into having a lower grocery bill then you need to start making your own dressings and sauces. The pre made stuff is not only expensive but usually loaded with additives, preservatives and unhealthy oil like canola and soy (yes, even the organic ones!).
Tahini is a power food, it’s higher in protein than most nuts and packed with important minerals like calcium, magnesium, potassium (potassi-yum!) and iron. Seeds are a lot easier to digest than nuts, you don’t have to soak them forever to make them more absorbable which is a huge timesaver. Sesame is one of the most nutrient rich seeds you could eat. I sprinkled some black sesame seeds on the salad, which are really high in iron AND they look cool, right?
Roasted Squash Salad with Lemony Tahini Sauce + Feta
Author: Chantelle
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4
You can easily double or triple the recipe and keep a jar of this sauce on hand in the fridge. It lasts about a month. Use whatever fresh local veggies are on hand, this is just what I had available.
Ingredients
1 acorn squash, cut into ½ inch slices
1 delicata squash, cut into ½ inch slices
1 beet, cut into ½ inch slices
a few radishes, sliced
a handful of cherry tomatoes
small chunk of feta
a few handfuls of local greens- lettuces,kale,arugula- you name it!
2 Tbs. Tahini
1 whole lemon, juiced, seeds removed
2 Tbs olive oil
2 garlic cloves
1 Tbs honey
1 tsp worcester sauce or 1 anchovy filet
½ tsp sea salt
generous amount of fresh cracked pepper
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400F
Lay out the squash and beets on a roasting tray and drizzle with a bit of olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt. Bake for 45 min. turning halfway through.
In a blender or food processor, add the tahini, lemon, garlic,honey,worcester, salt and pepper and blend until smooth and creamy.
Assemble the greens on a large plate or in a large mixing bowl, top with your veggies, roasted squash, beet,crumbled feta and a generous amount of tahini sauce.
Just like momma used to make… a little smoky, a touch of sweet, a lot of spicy,a flavour bomb explosion to douse all your favourite foods. My momma didn’t make hot sauce, but if she did I imagine she’d opt for a simple and delicious recipe such as this. Tomatoes, garlic and a whole whack of hot chiles are roasted together and blended with some sugar,salt and apple cider vinegar. The resulting sauce is excellent, I love to slather it all over fried eggs, sourdough bread, as a hot wing sauce, roasted potatoes oh the simple hot sauce really makes everything better. Might I say how affordable making your own hot sauce is, you get about 6 times as much for the same price and it’s way way better, for reals. Believe me because I am a self-proclaimed connoisseur of hot sauce, love the stuff.
Secrets of the Spice
Most spiciness is a hot pepper lives in the seeds.
Green chiles will give you a more bitter, grassy taste as they are still unripe.
Red chiles are ripe and at their peak, they offer a bit more heat and a more rounded out taste.
Wear gloves when processing hot peppers especially is you have young children or plan on picking your nose later…
Utilize your hood fan if you have one when you open the oven door, wofts of roasting chiles can be intense!
Homemade hot sauce is pretty much the best thing ever.
The beauty of this sauce is that it doesn’t really matter which kind of chiles you use. If you want a mildly spicy hot sauce you could go with green jalapeños and make sure to take the seeds out.
If you’re style is more medium spicy, try using cayenne peppers, with most of the seeds taken out but you could save about 2 tsp worth and add them back in when you puree.
If you’re not afraid of a little kick, try a hot pepper combo of those little cherry hot peppers, cayennes and jalapeño with the seeds left intact. It isn’t too intense but it does wake you up a bit.
And if you are one of those insane people raised on spicy foods and you have no fear than just throw a few habaneros or scotch bonnets in the mix!
The versatility of this hot sauce is another thing that makes it so great. To make enchilada sauce, just roast a whole tray of tomatoes at the same time, and add blend about 1/2 C of your hot sauce with the roasted tomatoes, salt to taste, add a touch of cumin, et voila!
This version is for a HOT hot sauce, for less spicy variations see above in the post.
Ingredients
1 lb. assorted hot peppers, de stemmed
5 whole tomatoes, halved
1 whole garlic bulb, separated into cloves
drizzle of olive oil
1 Tbs sea salt
½ C apple cider vinegar
2 Tbs raw cane sugar or palm sugar
½ C water
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400F or 200C.
Line a baking sheet with parchment, lay tomatoes flat and spread hot peppers and garlic around, drizzle with olive oil and a few pinches of sea salt. Roast for 30 minutes until the peppers skin starts to brown.
In a blender or food processor add the chiles, tomatoes and peeled roasted garlic. Next add the apple cider vinegar, sugar, salt and water. Blend until smooth.
Add a bit more water for a runnier sauce.
Optionally you could strain out the seeds in a cheese cloth or fine mesh strainer.
This salmon is ahhhh-mazing. It tastes way better than the candied salmon from the market loaded with weird preservatives and junk. Bourbon glaze is good with just about anything, I mean really, it’s syrupy liquor tainted goodness that you will want to douse everything in, yes, even salad. Maybe even brownies, if you leave out the savouries. The salmon is broiled to crispy perfection, and coated with a thick layer or glaze, some sesame seeds and greens onions, the whole marvellous dish comes together in under 30 minutes. That is, if you don’t nearly light your house on fire like I did, but at least we got to test the smoke alarm. J is a firefighter so while I frantically wave the door open and closed trying to do…something, he actually deals with the situation and I love him for it. My track record for starting fires is, ahem, not favourable. But J got over my negligence as soon as he took one bite into this melt in your mouth nom nom salmon.
It’s the time of year where the Kokanee salmon spawn, what a beautiful sight of red fish flowing in the river. A feast for the grizzlies and black bears of the region, not to mention the eagles and osprey. There are a few places around us to go and marvel at the fishies. This time of year is always challenging in that summer is over, you can feel the haze of endless sun dissipate. The shift occurs so rapidly you barely notice it until the tip of your nose is red and frozen and your little babies feet now need to be covered with a pair of woolies. And here we are, my favourite time of year, pumpkins, colours everywhere, calm acceptance that the sun still shines and the world is turning. You can expect more soups and roasted delights, comfort foods and pumpkin spice being churned out, especially once we get all settled in to our new nest.
Bourbon Glazed “Candied” Salmon goes great in a salad, I made a dressing with a Tbs. of the glaze, olive oil, apple cider vinegar and a touch of dijon mustard which was tantalizing. This recipe was inspired by the one at How Sweet Eats with a few little tweaks and a whole lot of extra smoke.
Yes I just made that word up, Manguac, it’s great right, hilarious, it’ll be the next hummus I swear you’ll love it that much. Because what grows together, goes together, not that mangoes or avocados grow in my backyard,though maybe someday. So here goes, you’ve had mango salsa, now welcome mango guacamole, a new hero sidekick to top your grilled summer goodies. Manguac is splendid with grilled fish, BBQ chicken, pork chops, on a burger or veggie burger. I also just eat it with some fresh local greens as a salad, pack it to the beach and you are set!
An amazingly seasonal addition to this dish would be fresh local corn, honestly the corn right now is bonkers. Every summer I get that max. 1 month of the freshest, tastiest corn on the cob, I add it to everything. The best way in my opinion is grilled corn covered in butter or ghee. Yum. But grilled and added to this manguac is divine and makes it all the more delicious.
If you haven’t seen this video on how to easily peel a mango, check it out, the method of scraping the mango against a glass actually makes perfect sense.
This is so extravagant, I want to eat this brazil nut pesto on absolutely everything! Why haven’t I thought of this before? The magical mineral rich nut is the ideal candidate when you don’t have/want pine nuts. Sunflower seeds, yes, very yummy substitute as well as almonds, but they still don’t equate to the awesomeness of selenium rich brazil nuts. Its pesto season, my friends, and I am lapping it up and licking the spoon, I suggest you do the same.
Potato salad is quintessential summer food and the addition of pesto is bloody good. Adding in little additional greens helps to mop up extra saucy goodness, crunchy onion,kale and swiss chard were on hand and worked beautifully. New potatoes or baby potatoes work the best since they are so tender and the texture is just melt in your mouth. Check out your local farmers market for the best of the best, after all, food that grew close to home always tastes better. Today at the store I needed some garlic and there was a sale bag full of organic garlic imported from Chile for 3.50, then there was a brilliant purple hued russian heritage variety grown locally and each bulb was the same price as the entire bag from Chile. Although I go throw garlic like a mad woman, I had to get the local stuff, I know it’s a million +1 times better. Still, this discrepancy in local fare costing far more than imported needs to change. Maybe a time will come when we can barter skills and trade commodities instead of fueling this global trade economy, because lets face it, we’re not doing the environment any favours, nor ourselves. I’m not saying that it will ever be 100%, there are plenty of useful things we can only get from other countries, but when our food security is at stake, or worse, doesn’t exist at all, something has got to give.
It’s the little things that count, one person cannot change the world, but collectively we can shift this paradigm. Our hearts know this beautiful world is possible. A new UN report says small scale organic farming is the only wayto feed the world, that’s right, not GMO’s and mono crops, humanity has always known this. Our amnesia is only temporary, as more reports like this start to come out it becomes blatantly obvious that we need to reconnect with the earth & remember, we are all connected. Thanks for reading friends.
1/2 C grated parmesan cheese, or nutritional yeast for vegan version
1/4 tsp sea salt
fresh cracked pepper
For the potato salad
1 lb new potatoes
1/4 of a red onion, thinly sliced
3 leaves swiss chard, kale or other greens, finely chopped
1/2 C mayonnaise
1/2 C pesto
Instructions
Pesto
In a blender or food processor, start by adding the garlic, brazil nuts, basil and cheese, start blending and slowly add the olive oil until mixture starts to become smooth, add salt and pepper.
Potato Salad
Boil water for the potatoes and cook until tender. Allow potatoes to cool before proceeding.
Mix the pesto and mayonnaise together, or leave the mayonnaise out for vegan
Add the cooled potatoes, kale, chard and onion to a large bowl and incorporate the pesto-mayonnaise until everything is well coated. I like to use my hand and mash the potatoes up a bit so that they absorb the most sauce.
Summer is the season to invent delicious new salad dressings. The bounty of veg is just too much to stick with the go-to “salad hug”, everything needs to be complimented, just so. Bring out the best of those juicy little cherry tomatoes, a little salty zing to that fresh cucumber, a breath of fresh air to those beets that’ve been underground, until now. It can’t hurt to add a touch of good asiago or parmesan cheese to the mix, something about balsamic just begs to be indulged with cheese. Roasted sunflower seeds are your ally when it comes to making something amorphous taste rich and full. This recipe for creamy sunflower seed balsamic dressing is vegan (if you don’t put cheese in your salad!) and paleo but you’d never know it, for real. It’s a trick of a dressing that even the pickiest child should love.
Colorful salad components will vary based on what’s in your fridge. Mine consisted of kale, baby lettuce greens, shredded beets & carrot, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, red onion, quick pickled radish and asiago cheese. It was gooooood. The next day I had just a big bunch of greens with this creamy balsamic and an egg on top, yum. The recipe makes 500mL or 16 oz. worth of dressing, which lasts for quite a few salads. Unless your like me and enjoy more dressing than actual vegetables sometimes…
Yesterday was a little trip to our new home in Kaslo. Things I noticed: everyone was fishing- this is a good sign, the neighbours across the street had a visitor who road their horse over and tied it up beside the front door (we should go back to that mode of transport, how fun would that be), people like babies (phewf) and basically the best view from a swing set on the planet (wish we had a photo), there are plenty of medicinal and edible plants everywhere. Looking forward to nestling in to a gem of a place.
1/2 C water (maybe a bit less depending on how thick you want the dressing)
generous amount of fresh cracked pepper
Instructions
Heat a skillet on high for about 1 minute, turn the heat to low and add sunflower seeds to the pan, let them get nice and brown, this only takes a few minutes, make sure to stir them around so they're all evenly toasted.
Allow the seeds to cool.
Add all ingredients except water to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth, adding water as you go to achieve the desired consistency.
Hey I'm Chantelle, my alter ego would be a mermaid if I wasn't such a terrible swimmer. I love writing authentically and cooking in my pyjamas. My favourite pastimes include eating avocados, travelling the world and hanging out with a toddler.
