Chicken, Squash, and Walnut Salad

January can be tough going. The holidays are over, so there’s not much to distract us from the cold, rainy weather between now and spring. So what to do to stave off the winter blues? Cooking is one way. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. Here, you cook some chicken and squash, whisk together a quick lemon vinaigrette, chop an apple, and  throw it all together with spinach, feta, and walnuts. I know you’re *supposed* to toast the walnuts, for better flavor, but I left it off. The point here is simplicity (and I promise, it still tastes great). A winter salad will break up the monotony of soup, and will hopefully keep you distracted, even just for a while, from bad weather and cold. There are good things in these later winter months, and luckily we can find many of them in the kitchen.

Chicken, Squash, and Walnut Salad
Adapted from Gourmet

1 butternut squash, peeled and cubed
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for the squash
1 pound chicken breast, cubed
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 ½ teaspoons honey
5 ounces spinach
1 apple, diced
6 ounces crumbled feta cheese
½ cup walnut pieces

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Spread the squash on a baking sheet and toss with a little olive oil (the squash should be lightly coated). Evenly spread the squash in the pan. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the squash is tender.
2. In a medium-sized skillet, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium heat. Add the chicken and cook, stirring occasionally, until the chicken is cooked through.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, honey, and 1 tablespoon olive oil.
4. In a large bowl, combine the spinach, apple, feta, walnut pieces, squash, and chicken. Drizzle the dressing on top and gently toss to coat.

A Different Turn: Squash, Chickpea, Kale, and Feta Bake

Seven years ago, I wrote a post on this blog venting my frustration with snow. No, it wasn’t frustration—it was straight-up hatred. It had snowed in Bellingham, where I was attending college, and navigating the ice and snow between the campus and home had put me on edge. Apparently, the only thing that could calm my weather-induced rage was a squash and chickpea dish. Eating the meal inside my warm apartment, I was able to reach acceptance of the snow—well, perhaps an uneasy peace with it.

Looking back on that post, two things stand out to me. First, why did I hate the snow so much? Nowadays I live in Seattle, so if it snows more than an inch, everything shuts down. (Yes Midwesterners, East Coasters, I hear you laughing.) But in Bellingham, classes were still in session, and with buses even more unreliable than usual due to ice, I walked to and from campus, slipping and sliding all the way. So it’s quite possible I was just mad about having to go anywhere in the snow. Also, growing up on Bainbridge Island, snow = power outages, getting stranded, and having to do things like push the family car up an icy hill. So I can hardly be blamed for my rage, right?

The other thing that stands out is the dish itself, which I have made many times since, often with little tweaks—omitting and adding vegetables, grains, and so on. Recently I planned to make this dish, but quickly took it in another direction. That’s the beauty of some recipes: they provide a fertile ground for ideas, even, in this case, ideas that lead to a meal that looks nothing like the original. As in the original recipe, I baked the squash, but this time I added the chickpeas to the baking sheet, which crisped them in some places and added a pleasantly chewy texture.

Things really took a different turn at the next step, though. I piled coarsely torn kale and crumbled feta on top of the squash and chickpeas and returned it all to the oven. Some of the kale leaves crisped nicely and others softened, creating a mix of textures one doesn’t usually get to experience when it comes to greens. Plus, I found that kale and feta go so well together—it’s part of what makes this dish so addictive.  Red pepper flakes lend a little spice, and cumin and coriander, always good choices, give the squash and chickpeas some delightful flavors to absorb.

I don’t hate it as much as I used to, but snow still irks me. It can still ruin plans. But, as I knew seven years ago and know now, coming home to a good meal provides comfort, no matter what the weather—even if you had to go through ice and snow to get to class, not that anyone’s still holding a grudge or anything.

Squash, Chickpea, Kale, and Feta Bake

 1 large butternut squash, peeled and cubed
2 15-ounce cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon coriander
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
A little olive oil
1 bunch kale, leaves coarsely chopped into bite-size pieces
6 ounces crumbled feta

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees. In a large bowl, combine the squash and chickpeas. Stir in the cumin, coriander, and red pepper flakes, mixing well to coat.
2. Lightly oil a large baking sheet. Spread the squash mixture evenly on the baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes.
3. Scatter the kale pieces on top, followed by the feta. Bake for 10 minutes more. The squash should be tender and the feta browned in a few places.

Potluck Inspired: Squash, Apple, and Prosciutto Salad

During my early years of college, my friend made a delightful squash and apple salad for one of the many potlucks we attended. Since then, the combination of squash and apples has intrigued me, but no recipe interested me enough or went as planned. But now, with help from prosciutto and greens, I’ve got it.

This success makes me feel better about a past squash and apple combination,  a soup attempt with apple cider. There was nothing appetizing about the resulting pureed goop. But when I saw this squash and apple salad in a Southern cooking-themed issue of Bon Appetit, I saw an opportunity to try the combination again. (Why not just make your friend’s recipe, you ask. Answer: I always want to try something new. And maybe I’m a bit crazy about working things out for myself.)

What is it about squash and apples, anyway? For me it’s the tartness of the crunchy apple and the gentle sweetness of the tender squash. The raw and the cooked, the well-matched contrasts. I didn’t feel like intervening too much with this excellent matchup, and I did not drizzle buttermilk on top, as the original recipe suggested. I would rather take the salad a little further from its Southern inspiration and use a light vinaigrette, perhaps olive oil and a slight touch of balsamic vinegar, or forgo dressing altogether. There’s enough flavor that I didn’t miss it.

I also omitted the lemon juice—its upfront acidity didn’t go well with the squash, apple, or prosciutto. Instead, I recommend using a tart apple, like a Granny Smith, to contrast with the sweet squash and the salty prosciutto. A sweeter apple, like a Pink Lady (which we used before I realized Granny Smith would be so much better), doesn’t do enough for variety. Even if you decide to replace the prosciutto with chicken or tofu, I’m still recommending a tart apple to add the right amount of zing.

With biscuits served alongside, this salad makes a light dinner. However, I also suggest you bring it to a potluck. You never know who you’re going to inspire.

Squash, Apple, and Prosciutto Salad
Adapted from Bon Appetit

1 butternut squash, peeled and cut into cubes (discard the seeds)
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 shallot, minced
1.5 ounces prosciutto, torn into small pieces
1 Granny Smith apple, cut into small dice
5 ounces spinach leaves

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Spread cubed squash on a baking sheet and toss with 2 tablespoons olive oil. Bake 15 minutes. Remove from oven and stir squash in the baking sheet. Return to oven and bake for 10 minutes more. The squash cubes should be soft and browned in some places. Transfer squash to a large bowl.
2. While the squash bakes, heat 1 ½ tablespoons olive oil in a small skillet over medium heat. Add diced shallot and cook 7 to 10 minutes, until softened and lightly browned.
3. Stir cooked shallots, prosciutto, apple, and 1 ½ tablespoons olive oil in the bowl with the squash. Place the spinach in another large bowl and pour the squash mixture over the spinach. Toss ingredients together until well combined. Serve with a dressing of your choice, if desired.

A win for fall: Squash salad with rice, pistachios, and pomegranate seeds

Fall is the season of squash, but even my beloved squash needs revamping every year. Pomegranate seeds and pistachios are lovely salad ingredients, and not so common that the sight of them induces an “I’ve seen it all before” type of reaction at the dinner table.

The original recipe (from Bon Appetit) called for a combination of black and wild rice for the base of the salad, and while I’m all for trying new grains (which was the purpose of the collection this recipe appeared in), I wasn’t in the mood to go looking for black rice. So I opted for brown rice instead, which we always have on hand. We used a delicata squash, a generous gift from Thomas’s parents’ garden, instead of a butternut.

From the same garden, we also picked some chard, and that went into the salad in place of the suggested microgreens—because it’s fall, for goodness’ sake, and we need hearty greens to sustain us. You can sauté the chard with or without its colorful stems; just be sure to cook it a bit longer than the recipe says below, if you are keeping the stems in. Or substitute the chard for another green, like kale, bok choy, or spinach.

Tying together the myriad flavors of this salad—the squash, pistachios, pomegranate, chard—is a dressing composed of honey, red wine vinegar, and olive oil. I was happy to use some of our fresh honey in a savory dish (mainly we’ve just been drizzling it over biscuits), and the mixture of sweet and tart, leveled by the olive oil, makes this dressing something to consider beyond this recipe, for other salads, during other seasons.

But right now, it’s fall, and the parade of squash and chard is well underway. With each season, I like to bring in a bit of the new with the old standbys. I’m sure this salad is destined to be a fall favorite.

Squash Salad with Rice, Pistachios, and Pomegranate Seeds
Adapted from Bon Appetit

1 delicata or butternut squash, peeled, seeds removed, and cut into cubes
½ cup plus 1 teaspoon olive oil
1 ½ cups uncooked brown rice
1 bunch chard, leaves separated from stems (if desired) and coarsely chopped
¼ cup red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons honey
2 green onions, diced
1 cup pomegranate seeds (the seeds from one pomegranate)
½ cup shelled pistachios

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Spread squash cubes on a baking sheet. Drizzle ¼ cup olive oil over squash. Bake squash for 10 minutes. Gently stir the squash on the sheet, then cook for an additional 10-15 minutes, until soft.
2. While the squash bakes, cook the rice: In a medium-sized saucepan, bring 4 ½ cups of water to a boil. Add rice, reduce heat to medium, and simmer until all of the water is absorbed and the rice is fully cooked.
3. In a medium skillet, heat 1 teaspoon olive oil over medium heat. Add chard leaves to skillet and sauté until just tender.
4. In a small bowl, whisk together red wine vinegar, honey, and ¼ cup olive oil until well combined (the dressing will be pinkish-red in color).
5. Add the cooked squash, chard leaves, green onions, pomegranate seeds, and pistachios to the rice. Pour the dressing over the salad and gently toss to combine.

It starts with a craving: Squash and edamame with rice noodles

I wonder if anyone “craves” edamame the way I do. Unlike other foods, like sharp cheddar cheese and home fries, which I am pretty excited about all the time, edamame and I have a more nuanced relationship. Sometimes I see it on my plate and calmly think, “Edamame. Yum.”  And then there are other times in which I want to put edamame in almost every meal, and I go a little crazy at the salad bar at the market on Bainbridge (by the way, a salad of edamame, chickpeas, and goat cheese crumbles? Perfect). Go ahead and label me a crazy vegetable-craver. You’d be right.

I feel the same way about squash, especially butternut. When it starts showing up in stores and at farmer’s markets, I’m instantly deciding on recipes, both tried and new. Considering my weird and obsessive cravings for both these foods, it made sense to combine them in a rice noodle sauté, inspired by a recipe for warm glass noodles and edamame, from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty.

This version adds just a few more steps to this simple dish, like cubing and baking the squash and adding a bell pepper to the mix, but we also cut out Ottolenghi’s recommended sauce, deciding that soy sauce would be just as tasty and much easier. Also, make sure you put those rice noodles in boiling, not warm or even hot water. In merely warm water, they won’t cook as well and will likely be a little chewier than you prefer.

One of the best things about this dish, besides its taste and variety of textures, is the array of colors. The bright green, orange, and red, on a background of white noodles, reflects the changing colors outside. The squash cubes are tender, with a few browned bits on the edges, while the edamame are chewy and smooth. The bell pepper, sautéed just enough, adds crisp. There are a couple of ways to serve this dish, with more noodles so it’s an entrée, or less, so it’s more like a light lunch or pre-dinner salad.

The soy sauce also worked out well as a dressing, as it always does with rice noodles. Incidentally, rice noodles are also something I obsess over, an ingredient that seizes me rather than just being a routine. Rather than being a summary of a season or cuisine, this dish reflects a mood.  It’s a conglomeration of seasonal food, a good noodle dish, and tasty vegetables that are welcome in most any meal. As with most things, the individual pieces are that much better in the mix.

Squash and Edamame with Rice Noodles
Adapted from Plenty

1 1-pound squash, peeled, de-seeded, and cubed
8 ounces rice noodles
2 tablespoons peanut oil, plus more for squash
3 garlic cloves, pressed
½ red bell pepper, diced
1 red chili, diced
¾ cup shelled edamame (about 10 ounces)
3 green onions, diced
A small handful of chopped cilantro
Soy sauce, to taste

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Place squash cubes in a bowl and toss with a bit of peanut oil. Scatter cubes on a baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes, or until soft.
2. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Remove from heat and add rice noodles. Let stand for 5 to 10 minutes (the thicker the noodles, the longer the time) or until softened. Drain and place in a large bowl; set aside.
3. Heat peanut oil in a large pan over medium heat. Add the garlic, chili, and bell pepper; sauté until bell pepper just starts to soften. Add to noodles. Stir in squash, edamame, green onions, and cilantro. Stir to combine ingredients.  If you would rather have the dish piping hot, return it to the (now empty) pot you cooked the noodles in, and bring to desired heat on the stove.  Serve with soy sauce.

A fall treat in hand: Pumpkin scones

For me, scones have always seemed more like a dessert than breakfast or a snack. They’re often filled with sugary heaps of berries, drizzled with frosting, and covered in crunchy pieces of sugar. Bakeries and stores tout these as breakfast items, but I feel that’s akin to eating a donut first thing in the morning: tasty at the time, but regrettable almost instantly. So when I decided to make pumpkin scones, I returned to a recipe I’d made once long ago that I remembered not for its sweetness, but for its savory character.

That I made pumpkin scones at all came about by happy circumstance. Thomas’s mother gave me a pumpkin from her garden, a gorgeous orange squash of the Cinderella variety. This pumpkin sat in the kitchen for a few days, a reminder that fall is here, before I took it down from the countertop and started cutting it. I took the Jack ‘O Lantern approach, first cutting a hole in the top around the stem, then scooping out the pulp and seeds (the pumpkin had fewer seeds than a carving pumpkin, and the pulp seemed more compact and less watery). Then I sliced the pumpkin into half moon-shaped pieces before cutting the pumpkin flesh into cubes.

I’d never cooked with a fresh pumpkin before, having used only the canned stuff for previous pies and scones, but I figured it wouldn’t be much different from cooking with any other squash. This proved correct. After baking the pumpkin cubes for about half an hour, you end up with pieces that smash with little effort—a good thing, since you want these scones to be smooth (although a stray bit of pumpkin here and there doesn’t hurt). The only difference is that you’ll have a lot more squash to work with than you would with say, a butternut or acorn squash. Much of the extra pumpkin ended up in a curry (which turned out all right but needs some work. Stay tuned).

You’ll raid your spice cabinet for this recipe—it calls for cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and ginger. These spices say “fall” like no others, tempting with thoughts of Thanksgiving pies to come. Also, be sure to use the cake/pastry flour in addition to the all-purpose flour; it adds a softer texture, so the scones are a balance between bread and pastry. Of the things that led me to return to this recipe three years later, that texture was one of them. That time, I used canned pumpkin, and the scones were a deep orange-brown color; with fresh pumpkin, which is more yellow in color than the canned stuff, the scones will be a very light brown.

With only six tablespoons of brown sugar, these scones are either a sweet bread or a savory pastry, and one or two would make an excellent breakfast. Or, save them for snacking with a bit of white cheddar and a crisp apple on the side. I’d like to have one in hand as I stroll through a forest turning bright shades of orange and yellow, on a sunny day with a crisp chill in the air—not quite winter’s bitter cold, but the chill that lets you know fall is here.

Pumpkin Scones
Adapted from Pinch My Salt

Makes 8 scones (recipe can easily be doubled)

6 tablespoons butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cake or pastry flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon allspice
¼ teaspoon ginger
1/3 cup pumpkin puree (fresh or canned)
1/3 cup heavy cream or, in a pinch, whole milk
6 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. If using fresh pumpkin, heat oven to 350 degrees. Peel the pumpkin and cut the flesh into cubes (how much you decide to bake for the scones will depend on the size of your pumpkin; for a larger pumpkin, there’s no need to cook all the pumpkin at once for the scones, and you can use the remainder for other purposes). Scatter cubed pumpkin on a lightly oiled baking sheet, and bake for about 30 minutes, or until softened. Let cool, then transfer cubes to a large bowl. Mash pumpkin until smooth. (Leftover pumpkin can be used to make bread, muffins, and other delights)
2. Cut butter into small cubes, then return it to the fridge. In a large bowl, combine flours, baking powder, and spices.
3. In a second bowl, combine 1/3 cup pumpkin puree, cream, brown sugar, and vanilla.
4. Using your fingers or a pastry cutter, mix chilled butter into the flour mixture until well blended; it should have a coarse and crumbly texture. Stir in the pumpkin mixture until a loose dough forms.
5. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Place dough on a lightly floured surface and knead it just enough so it stays together (if doubling recipe, divide the dough in half). Shape dough into a circle about 1 inch thick. Cut into 8 triangles, as if you were slicing a pie.
6. Place scones on a lightly oiled baking sheet. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until lightly golden brown on the edges.