This superb winter salad uses shaved and roast pumpkin to bring a riot of textural contrast and a flash of colour to a grey winter’s day
I
try to grow a few varieties of squash every season, but in the past couple of years the results have more or less failed me. I originally put that down to the lack of time and attention I’d given those poor plants, but I’m now starting to wonder if the soil in my raised garden beds overlooking Lyme Bay in Dorset is actually right for them.
I’m not giving up just yet, though, and this year I’ll be trying different varieties in a different bed that I’ve prepared and composted over the winter with seaweed mulch. As luck would have it, however, my friend Rob Corbett came to the rescue a couple of weeks ago by giving me several specimens when he delivered some wine from his Castlewood vineyard a few miles away in east Devon. If you know your gourds even a little, you will also know that squashes keep for months, which is handy, because they ideally need to cure and ripen before use. Happily, that also means you can use your crop throughout the long winter months.
I suppose that when you grow your own squashes and pumpkins, you potentially get stuck for what to do with them, but the possibilities are almost endless – for example, I recently made a cheesecake topped with a sweet squash relish, as well as a chocolate and pumpkin pie that’s a bit more appealing than the classic American version; I even made a squash cocktail with a new, Kentish version of the classic Italian walnut liqueur, nocino, made by Pleasant Land Distillery in Aldington, just outside Ashford. As the base, I used some of the skins, seeds and trimmings left over from making a squash risotto, and added some mezcal to the mix, too – as odd as that might sound, it was really quite delicious.
