This is before it’s cooked obviously…
Here’s a great one for meat-free Monday. A *little* bit of a hassle, but not much and everyone loves this.
For 4 with a side salad
1 butternut squash (I have started using pre-sliced butternut squash from Waitrose! I KNOW, it’s the end of days…)
2 x 200g bags spinach
1 large ball mozzarella (doesn’t have to be amazing quality, whatever Sainsburys have got is fine.)
2 small onions
small bunch sage
50g butter
1 tablespoon flour
about 150ml milk
grated gruyere, cheddar or parmesan – or all three!
1 Peel and chop your squash (or just tip it out of the bag – ha ha!) into a roasting tin, then slice the onion and tear up the sage leaves and scatter them evenly among the squash. Season generously and douse in olive oil. Bake this at 200C for 30 min. Check at 20min that it’s not burning. (Your oven is different from mine.)
2 Meanwhile wilt the spinach in a pan with some water. Drain it well in a sieve afterwards because spinach doesn’t half like to leak a lot of purplish water everywhere for ages.
3 Put the roasted squash in a serving dish, (don’t include the considerable pool of olive oil at the bottom of the roasting pan, but do put in all the burntish onion bits), scatter over the spinach and tear up the mozzarella and place evenly over the top.
4 You could now, I guess, just bake or grill all this together for a bit and then serve? I usually do a white sauce, but this is a hassle.
Anyway you all know how to do this by now: melt butter in a pan, take pan off heat, add plain flour until you get a sort of paste.
With pan still off heat, pour in 2 glugs milk and whisk until you get a thick sauce. Then add rest of milk, put back over a medium heat and stir until thicker.
Season and add cheese until you have a lip-smacking cheesy sauce. Then pour that over the squash and spinach and finish off under a grill.
5 I have in the past toasted some bread, rubbed with a garlic clove, whizzed up in a whizzer and scattered over the top before baking – but that all seems a bit much in this heat, doesn’t it?
Please stop asking me if I’m watching the Handmaid’s Tale.
This could work with thinly sliced sweet potatoes too??
yes I don’t see why not x
Much less effort esp with mandolin!
Oh, thank you for this! I’ve got a vegetarian friend and her daughters coming round to tea tomorrow, so your timing could not have been better, because I was wondering what on earth to do that I haven’t done before. I’m doing this with sweet potatoes, though, because they’re less faff.
Can’t wait to try this! Thanks Of-Fred!
Making this tonight. Intended to do the cheese sauce but it’s too hot and I can’t be arsed! When I wilt spinach I cheat – put the spinach in a colander, slowly pour over half a kettle of boiling water. Toss the spinach around then pour over the other half of the kettle of water. Done. Less washing up and it’s already draining all the rank green water off as you go.
Thanks for a veggie recipe, Esther!
Great combo of ingredients. You can’t go wrong with spinach and cheese! Cheers!