Fall salad with Roasted Butternut Squash, Feta, Dried Cranberries and other goodies of the fall

Fall Salad with Roasted Butternut Squash, Feta, Dried Cranberries, Pumpkin seeds, Yellow Tomatoes and Cucumbers. 

There. I think those are all the ingredients! 

A little tip for those people who are always in a rush and can't cook two days in a row: if you're making one salad, it takes very little effort to make two of them. Leave the cheese and the seeds out or put them in a separate container, and put the salad dressing on right before you eat it. You can put it in tupperware and leave it in the fridge for about a day and a half. 

I do this all the time, the vegetables won't spoil and it will make you so happy to see that you have a nice healthy meal waiting for you in the fridge! 

 Ingredients*: 

For two salads:
Half a butternut squash**.
10 yellow cherry tomatoes
1/2 cucumber
a handful of colorful dried cranberries
a generous block of your favorite feta cheese
seasonal organically grown greens
pumpkin seeds, toasted, unsalted

FOR THE VINAIGRETTE: Oil and lemon. No salt. The feta is usually salty enough, but if yours is not feel free to add some sea salt.

STEP BY STEP: 

1. Cut the butternut squash as best as you can leaving the skin on. You can even just cut it in half. If you're lazy you can buy the pre-cut one. 

2. Turn the oven on 375 F or 200 C and bake the squash till you can squish down the pulp with a fork (about 20 minutes)

3. Now the skin will peal right off! 

4. While the squash cooks prepare the rest. Put the salad (washed and dried) at the bottom of the bowl, cut the yellow cherry tomatoes in half, slice the cucumber in thin slices. Cut the butternut squash in cubes and add it to the salad. 

5. Crumble the feta cheese with your hands (which we have throughly washed, right?), and add the dried fruit and seeds. 

6. Prepare the vinaigrette in a separate small bowl with 1 and 1/2 tbsp of olive oil and a tsp of lemon juice per salad. Whisk the two together with a fork and pour on top of the salad. 

7. Stir the salad before eating. 

Enjoy!!! 

Valentina

RealItalianKitchen

*About the ingredients: these are all things that are still in season in the area I live in. Feel free to substitute any of these for whatever is in season in your area.  

**About the butternut squash: I usually bake the whole thing, and then keep it in the fridge for all my squash needs of the week. When I made my salad the squash was cold and it was very firm and easy to cut. Perfect and delicious for the fall salad. When is still warm I usually make soup with it.  Clic here to learn how to make home made Ravioli with squash from scratch! 

Clic here to learn how to make a beautiful Quiche! 

Pumpkin Pie made by an Italian -

Here it is! My first attempt to Pumpkin Pie! Not to shabby for an Italian, uh?

My american fiancee' says it's good, some corrections to be made in the future, but good starting point!

I made it 100% from scratch, I used a fresh pumpkin, not the canned one, I made my own pie crust.

I got the recipe from http://www.pickyourown.org and made some corrections

FOR THE PIE CRUST

1.5 cups all purpose flour
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/6 cup cold margarin, or vegetable shortening, or vegetable oil, or coconut oil.
1/3 cup cold butter
some cold water to help holding all of the above together.

Very simple: mix all of the above with your hands or a food processor into a smooth pie dough ball. Let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes before putting it in the oven.

FOR THE PIE FILLING

1large pumpkin or large butternut squash. To prepare it for the use slice it in half, get rid of the seeds inside it LEAVE THE SHELL ON and throw it in the oven for 30 minutes till cooked and mushy. Once done remove the shell (now it comes off almost by itself) and work it in the food processor until you have a smooth orange cream.

You'll need 3 cups of this wonderful orange cream
3/4 cup sugar
1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract (I didn't have it, didn't use it)
1/2 tsp salt
4 large eggs (or 3 extra large ones)
12 oz of evaporated milk. I didn't find this so instead I used 1 cup of dried non fat milk and added 1 cup of water to it. Mix it well and you'll get the same results as with evaporated milk. If that's not 12 oz add a little more then 1 cup.

STEP BY STEP

1. Flatten the pie dough with a rolling pin and put it in a 10 inch pie pan. It's better to have a glass pie pan but if you're using an aluminum one like I did just be careful about step number 3.
Adjust the dough in the pan and make cute little ripple on the edges.

2. Mix all the ingredients for the pie filling and whisk till there are no lumps.
It's going to be very liquid, it's ok, it will solidify in the oven.

3. Pour the mix in the pie crust. If you're using an aluminum pie pan put the pan on the oven rack first, then pour the mix. I didn't do this and my filling SPILLED everywhere when I tried to move the flimsy pie pan filled with liquid to the oven, and made a mess, of course, I'm not surprised.

4. Bake for the first 15min at 425 F and for the remaining 45 at 350 F. If the crust gets to dark you can cover it with aluminum foil or a crust shield (I cut mine out from a piece of aluminum foil), you can buy a professional one, clic on the image at the end of the page to buy one.

5. Let the pie cool down for at least 1h before cutting into it. It's supposed to be served at room temperature or cold, with a little scoop of whipped cream on top!




Enjoy!

Valentina
RealItalianKitchen







P.S: Like every dish in the american tradition this is as heavy as a brick: don't eat too much or it WILL make you sick (I speak from personal experience...)!!!

Butternut Squash Mini-Quiche with homemade Pecorino Crust

This is a new spin on an old recipe of mine, the Butternut squash and pecorino quiche. 

I made a salty shortbread crust using grated pecorino cheese. And then I decided to make them bite size, for the joy of my fiancé!

Ingredients for a life time supply of mini quiche:

THE FILLING
1 butternut squash
1 cup of grated pecorino
1/2 an onion chopped finely
2 eggs
1tbsp butter, 2 cups milk and 2 tbsp of flour for the Bechamel Sauce


1. Clean the squash (long and painful procedure, buy it clean if you don't have the patience), cut it in little flat pieces and put it in the oven, where it will cook at 300F for about 20 minutes. You know it's cooked when you can squish it down with a fork.

2. Make it into a puree (I used the food processor) and while you do that let the onion cook in a pan with a little bit of butter. Once the onion is transparent and looks cooked, throw in the squash and mix it well.

3. Add the béchamel and half of the pecorino but leave some on the side to put later on top of the quiches.

FOR THE SHORTBREAD PECORINO CRUST:
300 gr (3cups) flour
1 whole egg
2 yokes
170 gr of butter (2 sticks)
30 gr of grated pecorino (half a cup)

1.Mix all the dry ingredients together, add the butter and start making little crumbs with your hands.

2. Add the eggs and work the dough till smooth. Let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

3. Flatten the dough with a roller pin. I like my crust thin and crispy, it also cooks better if it has stuff on top of it. With a round cookie cutter cut out your circles and put them on a muffin tin. With your hands give it the shape of the bottom of the tin, so that the edges rise up a little.

WE ARE READY FOR THE FILLING!
I tried putting just a little bit of filling or A LOT of filling and both were fully cooked and delicious, so it's up to you to decide! Sprinkle some pecorino on top.

Bake for 20 minutes, oven set to 350 F, or until the edges appear to be golden brown. Once they're cooked let them rest for a minute (the shortbread has to harden) and then scoop them out of the tin with a fork.

Enjoy!
Valentina
RealItalianKitchen