Salad of Griddled Baby Butternut with Lemon, Garlic, Feta and Mint: plus a Cooksister!

Salad of Griddled Baby Butternut with Lemon,
 Garlic, Feta and Mint

There are two things I want to write about in this post: one is a delicious, garlicky, lemony dish of chargrilled baby-butternut-squash slices, and the other is Jeanne Horak, arguably the Net's best-known South African food blogger. I've been scratching my head for 20 minutes trying to find a way to knit these two topics into a coherent opening paragraph, and I think I have cracked it.

What do this vegetable and Jeanne have in common? Well, they're both young, fresh and unusual, they're both South African, each one has added a particular deliciousness to my day. Jeanne, I apologise for comparing you to a vegetable (a word that doesn't have good connotations when applied to a human), but I know you won't mind at all. In fact, I think, given your love of fine, snappingly fresh ingredients, you'd be quite pleased to be compared to an infant butternut in the prime of its youth.

Jeanne Horak, who lives in London, is a talented cook, food writer and photographer, not to mention a great champion of South African food bloggers. Her blog, Cooksister, has won many awards, and in February 2009 was listed in The Times, UK, as one of the Top Ten Food Blogs for the Home Cook. What's more, she's drawn up a comprehensive directory of South African food blogs.

We met last year, when Jeanne contacted me to say that she and her husband were nipping into South Africa for a few weeks, and it was jolly good to meet her, and the other Johannesburg food bloggers she'd lined up for a Sunday breakfast. Anyway, the reason I mention this is because Jeanne has generously featured my Scrumptious blog on her South African food bloggers' page - click here to read more about me and my food philosophy.

Now, the very tiny baby butternut squashes. I came across these perky little beauties, each the length of a middle finger, at my local veggie shop today, and was intrigued by their lovely pale-cream and green variegated skin. Thinking they'd probably taste similar to baby marrows (courgettes) or pattypan squashes, and would be perfect for a stir-fry, I bought them.

But, after slicing off a piece and tasting it, I was intrigued to note that the flesh was a little denser and sweeter than that of a baby marrow, with a nutty note, and not at all watery or spongy. So I decided to char-grill them and dress them, still warm, with olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, feta cheese, fresh mint and parsley. And, oh my goodness, they were faintingly good: cooked in a very hot ridged grill pan, they developed a slight sweetness at the edges, but were still tender-crisp and full of flavour. The dressing contains a lot of crushed fresh garlic, but it is strained before it's poured over the cooked butternut.

If you can't find these, you can use courgettes or pattypan squashes instead, although the final result will be somewhat more watery. This just won't work with mature, yellow-fleshed, hard-skinned butternuts.

Salad of Grilled Baby Butternut with Lemon, Feta and Mint

10 baby (really tiny) butternut squashes
some olive oil for rubbing
the juice of a lemon

For the dressing:
4 cloves fresh garlic, peeled
the juice of a large lemon (about 3 T; 45 ml)
130 ml fruity olive oil
a pinch of salt
freshly milled black pepper

To top:
3 Tbsp (45 ml) fresh, finely chopped mint
3 Tbsp (45 ml) fresh, finely chopped parsley
crumbled feta cheese

salt and freshly milled black pepper

Heat a ridged griddle pan on a hot plate for 7-10 minutes, or until very, very hot. Wipe each little butternut squash to remove any furry bits. Cut the squashes, lengthways (that is, from top to bottom, stalks and all), into four 'leaves'.

Using your fingers, rub each slice, top and bottom, with a little olive oil. Place the slices on the griddle, in batches, and cook until dark-gold lines appear on the underside, and the edges of each slice begin to darken. Add more olive oil, if necessary. Flip the slices over. When they are nicely striped on both sides, remove them from the pan and put aside on a plate.

When all the slices have been browned, pile them back into the griddle pan, turn the heat down to medium-low, wait for a few minutes for the pan to cool slightly, and squeeze over the juice of one lemon, plus a tablespoon of water. Cover the griddle pan with a circle of greaseproof paper, or a saucepan lid of the right size. Leave the slices to steam gently until they are just cooked: that is, tender-crisp, but not raw, and certainly not mushy.

In the meantime, make the dressing. Finely chop the garlic, or smash it to pieces with a mortar and pestle. Add the olive oil, salt, pepper and lemon juice, and whisk well to combine. Let the mixture sit and infuse for ten minutes while you finish cooking the butternut slices.

Lift the cooked baby butternut slices from the pan, arrange on a big platter and allow to cool for five minutes. Strain the garlicky dressing, through a metal sieve, over warm slices, pressing down on the garlic mush with the back of a spoon. Scatter the chopped mint and parsley over the dish, and toss gently to combine. Crumble the feta cheese over the salad, and set aside, at room temperature, for an hour or two so the flavours can mingle. You can make this up to 8 hours in advance, but don't put it in the fridge.

Serves 6-8, as a side salad.

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Easter goodies: Chocolate, Amaretti and Coconut Fridge Biscuits

Fridge biscuits made with butter and crushed biccies were all the rage in the Seventies, when nobody cared how much sugar and fat they ate, and aunties always kept a stash of them in their humming old General Electrics. A cold, nubbly fridge biscuit with a glass of iced milk is a thing of beauty, not least because it requires no baking and is easy enough for a six-year-old to make. [Please note that I use the word 'biscuit' in its British sense: that is, in the US sense, a cookie.]

Unbaked fridge tarts are still popular in South Africa. Made with Marie biscuits, Tennis biscuits, ginger nuts or Boudoir Biscuits, they usually include condensed milk, whipped cream, grated chocolate, tinned fruit, or a combination of all four.

The undisputed queen of fridge tarts is the icky but strangely compelling Peppermint Crisp Tart, about which my fellow South African food blogger Jeanne of Cooksister has written a full treatise. For a selection of eat-until-you-turn-green fridge-tart recipes from around the world, have a look at this newsletter from Funky Munky.

You can use any combination of biscuits and nuts and flavourings for this recipe, provided you stick to the basic quantities (too little crumb material, and you'll end up with a biscuit that's too hard to bite into). You can also add raisins or dried cranberries or apricots, but I personally think fruit should have no part in this tart.

These biccies cry out to be served on a doily (see my note about doilies at the end of this post).

Chocolate, Amaretti and Coconut Fridge Biscuits

175 g butter
150 g good dark chocolate, broken into pieces
1 packet (200 g) of Tennis biscuits (or light, crumbly coconut biscuits)
14 Italian amaretti biscuits
1/2 cup (125 ml) desiccated coconut
1/2 cup (125 ml) icing sugar
3/4 cup (180 ml) nuts (I used walnuts, but pecans, macadamias or almonds will do)
a few drops of almond extract/essence, or a good glug of Amaretto liqueur

Melt the butter and the chocolate in a double boiler, stirring gently now and then. Or melt it in the microwave (find tips for melting chocolate at Godiva.com). Put the amaretti biscuits in a big plastic bag and, using a rolling pin, crush to a coarse powder. Now put the tennis biscuits in the packet and lightly crush them so that you have a mixture of crumbs and small bits. Tip the biscuits into the chocolate and butter mixture and add all the remaining ingredients. Stir well to combine. Press into a buttered 20cm x 20cm square glass or ceramic dish and refrigerate until firm; about two hours. Remove from the fridge and slice into squares (this is easiest done by cutting the whole slab into quarters, then slicing the quarters on a chopping board). Keep in the fridge.

Makes 12 biscuits.

PS Do you like my heart-shaped doilies ( see photo)? I bought a packet of these, and some gold ones, at a Chinese discount shop, knowing that a doily occasion was bound to arise sooner or later. This is exactly the sort of biscuit that requires a doily.

Do you know that doilies are dying out? An article in The Telegraph in 2007 reported that sales of paper doilies have plummeted in recent years:

'Once, no self-respecting cake stand or plate was complete without one.

'But now the traditional paper doily, for decades a symbol of suburban gentility, is on the verge of extinction.Asda reported yesterday that it sold only 400 packs last week, compared with an average of 12,000 a week 15 years ago.

'The terminal decline in demand is down to changing social trends, says the supermarket. Since the 1950s doilies have been regarded as a sign of high class and good manners.But many now view them as outdated and the preserve of snobs - as epitomised by Hyacinth Bucket in the sitcom Keeping Up Appearances.' Print Friendly