Recipe: butternut squash and blue cheese salad with pine nuts

Ingredients

1 butternut squash
100g (about half a packet) of blue cheese
Handful pine nuts
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
2 or 3 sage leaves

Method

Cut the squash into cubes of approx 2cm.
Put in a roasting tray, season with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil.
Roast for 20-25 minutes in an oven at 180 degrees, until the squash is soft.
Roughly chop the blue cheese and mix through the squash, sprinkle with a handful of pine nuts.
Put back into the oven for a few minutes, until the cheese has melted.
Mix together and serve at room temperature, with a few chopped sage leaves on top.

We had a hog roast for the evening meal at our wedding ten years ago. Our brief to our wonderful caterers (Scott and Kirsty from Strawberry Shortcake Dining) was that we wanted the side dishes to be delicious and substantial for the vegetarians to enjoy. Not just a few sad soggy salad leaves. They came up with this delicious squash, blue cheese and pine nut recipe, and it’s been a favourite ever since.

It makes a fabulous BBQ side dish and is especially good with sausages or pulled pork. You can make it the day before, to cut down on cooking time on the day, and it lasts really well as leftovers.

Recipe notes:

Our caterers used a delicious creamy blue cheese called ‘Perl-las’ but you could use any cheese that you like. We’ve made this with stilton and roquefort before, and both have tasted just as delicious.
Butternut squash works well in this recipe as it stays firm when roasted and doesn’t get mushy. Any other squash that cooks this way would work just as well — we have used some homegrown ‘Crown Prince’ and we’re planning to experiment with more of our own grown squashes this year.
You can make a vegan version, using tahini and lemon juice instead of the cheese.