Roast Butternut Squash, Brussel Sprouts, and Goats Cheese Gallete

This was the first free-form pie I ever made and I have to say I am totally sold. They are easy to make, very tasty, and best of all, adaptable i.e. a good use of whatever  veg and cheese you have leftover. This can take a while to make, but you can always cut down time by making the pastry beforehand and storing in the fridge until needed, or using ready made pastry.

Pasta with Leek, Butternut Squash and Feta Cheese

This was a random 'oh I have some odds and ends in the fridge that need using up' recipe of mine, which turned out quite nicely. I added in the feta cheese at the end of cooking as I wanted relatively large chunks of feta in my sauce, but you could cook the feta into the sauce if you preferred.

Quinoa with Roasted Butternut Squash, Leeks and Feta

I've never cooked with quinoa before, so I was feeling a bit apprehensive about making this dish. I needn't have worried though as it tasted delicious. The addition of the feta cheese was very nice but if you wanted to make this dish a bit healthier you could omit it with no problems whatsoever.

North African Butternut Squash and Chickpea Stew

Another Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe that I have tweaked to suit my store cupboard contents; despite having a large library of cookbooks, I keep coming back to his 'Veg Everyday!' cookbook because it's so fabulous. This is essentially a Moroccan stew, but the addition of pasta means this is a one-pot dish and you don't need to serve with any carb e.g. cous cous. The low pasta content (in fact I added more to Hugh's original recipe) in the stew also means those who would rather have it without can, in my view, remove it without fear of compromising the recipe too much. I bought saffron especially for this, because I've always seen it in recipes and omitted it, but felt like trying it out. I have to admit that I balked at the price - four GB pounds for a small jar! However, I pressed on and bought it anyway. I have to admit, I'm not sure how much it adds to the dish - perhaps a subtle flavour - so if you too do not feel like shelling out for such an expensive spice then feel free to omit that too.

Paneer and Butternut Squash Curry

Mmmm curry. Indian food is my favourite of all cuisine. I could literally just live off curry. As I've said before, I don't pretend to know what I'm doing when it comes to curry. Rather, I experiment with flavours and see if they work. I did this from scratch, but as ever if you don't want to, just use curry paste. My friend Yusuf once gave me an invaluable tip when it comes to making curry: don't use tinned tomatoes, this isn't a rich Italian tomato sauce. You want to use fresh tomatoes and cook for a long time to get the sauce thick. It might sound obvious, but it wasn't ever something I'd thought about, and my curries are so much better for it. 

The peas in this dish are optional; I made this dish twice, once with peas, and once without, and I preferred without, but the peas were a nice variation. Of course, if you don't have the time to use butternut squash or can't get hold of it, sweet potato or carrots will do just fine. You can buy paneer cheese in most supermarkets. It is pretty flavourless by itself, so if you can be bothered, marinate it before hand. I didn't and it still turned out fine.

Note: if you want to print the recipe without pictures, just click 'print friendly' and 'remove images'.

Lentil, Butternut Squash and Chard Sauce

I haven't cooked with lentils for a while which is a big shame as they are a) delicious and b) very healthy and full of protein. So I decided to have a rummage through my old recipe books, and adapted this from a random vegetarian recipe book from the mid 1980s which I got second hand from a charity shop ages ago (yeh, I have a bit of an addiction to buying vegetarian recipe books in charity shops). The recipe originally called for carrots but I felt like butternut squash so I used that instead, so you could use carrots in you can't be fussed with the hassle of peeling/cooking squash. Also, if you're wondering where to get chard from, I just used a bag of bistro salad from the supermarket, which contained chard (and beetroot, yum!) but you could use spinach instead. In case you haven't realised, my approach to cooking is basically find a recipe and then modify the hell out of it depending on what ingredients I have at my disposal, haha. I had this with pasta, but I'm having the leftovers with cous cous tonight, as I'm confident that'll work too. You could also tart it up a bit by whacking some goats cheese into it too. Yumm.