1. Butternut squash Florentine crespelle

    Butternut squash are plentiful in the autumn and when roasted make for extremely colourful & versatile dishes. Giulia shares a delicious Florentine recipe for cannelloni style crespelle.

     

    Crespelle with ricotta and spinach are a typical dish of the Florentine tradition: they look like thin pancakes and are filled and rolled up as cannelloni, as they were fresh pasta.

    Apparently Caterina de’ Medici, a Florentine noblewoman who married the future king of France Henry II in 1533, was so attached to her native food that she took a crowd of Florentine chefs and our crespelle to France, later named by our transalpine cousins crêpes. Nowadays you can order crespelle alla fiorentina in many traditional taverns in Florence, but it’s worth losing some time and to make them at home, to celebrate a special day, or just to treat your beloved ones with a rich first course.

    Once you know how to make and roll up crespelle, you can set tradition aside for a moment, play with the ingredients and fill them with your favourite seasonal vegetables or even a meat or fish sauce.

    Now, in autumn, pumpkins and butternut squashes are generously piled in markets and vegetable stalls. Roasted butternut squash with a good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, sea salt and black pepper is my favourite autumn side dish. You can use leftover roasted butternut squash or even roast a whole tray of squash just for this recipe, saving a few slices for your next meal.

    The sweetness of butternut squash is well balanced by a generous handful of grated pecorino cheese, a Tuscan sheep milk cheese, though you can substitute it with any other savoury cheese, from Parmigiano to mature cheddar.

    Makes 4 servings

    Ingredients for the crespelle

    2 free range eggs

    2 heaped tablespoons of flour (about 60 g)

    1 pinch of salt

    200 ml of whole milk

    Ingredients for the filling

    350 g of butternut squash

    Sea salt

    Black pepper

    Extra virgin olive oil

    150 g of fresh ricotta cheese

    1 free range egg

    50 g of grated aged pecorino cheese (or Parmigiano, or mature cheddar…)

    1 pinch of salt

    Ingredients for the béchamel sauce

    50 g of butter

    60 g of flour

    500 ml of whole milk

    1 pinch of salt

    Grated nutmeg

    For the garnish

    Grated aged pecorino cheese (or Parmigiano, or mature cheddar…)

    Extra virgin olive oil

    Sage leaves

    Method

    Make the pancake batter a bit in advance and leave it to stand for at least half an hour.

    Beat the eggs with salt and flour avoiding any lumps, then incorporate the milk in a thin stream.

    For the filling, preheat the oven to 180°C.

    Rinse the butternut squash, cut it in a half, remove all the seeds and slice into 1 cm thick slices. Season with sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

    Roast the butternut squash for about 30 minutes, until soft and slightly golden and caramelized on the edges.

    Blend the butternut squash with a mixer, then mix it in a bowl with the mashed ricotta, the grated pecorino, a pinch of black pepper and salt. Taste the squash and ricotta filling to check if it is savoury enough, then stir in a beaten egg.

    Now make the béchamel sauce. Melt the butter in a saucepan. When melted spoon in the flour and whisk for a few minutes until golden and toasted. Pour in the cold milk in a thin stream, stirring constantly to avoid lumps.

    Cook the béchamel sauce for a few minutes until thickened and season with a good pinch of salt and nutmeg.

    Grease a 14 cm wide non-stick frying pan with a knob of butter, heat it on medium flame and cook the crespelle for a few minutes on each side, until golden brown (use about 3 tablespoons of batter to make 7 to 8 pancakes).

    Spread each pancake with the butternut squash and ricotta filling and roll them up.

    Put the crespelle in a baking dish previously spread with a few tablespoons of béchamel sauce.

    Drizzle the crespelle with the leftover béchamel sauce and sprinkle with more grated pecorino cheese. Scatter a few sage leaves on top and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.

    Bake in the preheated oven to 180°C for about 20 minutes until golden brown and bubbling on the sides.

    Eat the crespelle warm just out of the oven, or warm them the day after with a dash of milk.

    For more inspiring butternut squash recipes visit Great British Chefs site.

  2. Happy Vegetarian Thanksgiving?

    Great British Chefs, guest blogger Monica Shaw  is on a mission.  Her mission is to see whether, as a vegetarian, she can celebrate Thanksgiving with the autumnal comfort that the event represents.  Read how she gets on and help her on her mission.

    Can you have a Happy Vegetarian Thanksgiving?

    Photo by Monica Shaw

    Vegetarians often get the short end of the drumstick on Thanksgiving, a day synonymous with big turkey dinners where nearly every dish is either meat-based or destined for a generous dollop of meaty gravy.

    But why should we vegetarians miss out on the joyous gluttony of Thanksgiving?  I’m done scrounging on side dishes and enduring year after year of nut roasts. Don’t get me wrong: I love green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, sweet yams (even when they come with marshmallows on top), but the sum of their parts do not make a main event.

    My mission: to find a vegetarian main dish that embodies the kind of autumnal comfort and celebration that Thanksgiving dinner is all about. An ideal veggie main should be spectacular to look at, utterly moreish and bursting with autumn veg.

    The best option I’ve found so far is the stuffed squash. For example, acorn squash stuffed with a savoury wild rice and cranberry stuffing is exquisite and proves that stuffing needn’t be crammed into a turkey to be gorgeous and delicious. 

    Mushrooms

    Photo by Monica Shaw

    Mushrooms present another option, gloriously autumnal and packed with that statisfying umami punch that Thanksgiving demands. Try serving them on cheesy squash polenta.  Or stuff your mushrooms in a pastry as in Vineet Bhatia’s recipe for Lafifa Mushrooms, Braised Spinach and Roasted Tomato Chutney.

    From Great British Chefs website - Vineet Bhatia

    The other matter for vegetarians is gravy. Yes, you can make a simple vegan gravy out of mushrooms or onions, but the ultimate gravy recipe in my world is a shallot and port gravy, the perfect accoutrement for mashed potatoes and roasted veg.

    Some vegetarians opt for something altogether different for their veggie main: lasagna, moussaka, savoury tarts and quiches. But these dishes don’t really say “Thanksgiving” to me. And they certainly don’t go with gravy.

    Hit me with some inspiration: What are you serving the vegetarians in your life this Thanksgiving?  We’re discussing this over on the Great British Chefs Facebook page.

    Blog post for Great British Chefs by Monica Shaw

  3. Food Urchin Takes on Robert Thompson’s Bavarois of Butternut Squash with Quince Sorbet

    Never one to shy away from apparently strangely matched pairings, Great British Chefs guest blogger Food Urchin aka Danny Kingston decided to see whether quince and butternut squash made happy bedfellows.

    Like a modern day, culinary and hairier equivalent of Jane Austen’s Emma, I do sometimes get over zealous with my matching of ingredients. As a result, I can happily pronounce in my experience that plums and liver don’t really make happy bedfellows; you should never send chilli sauce out on a blind date with creamy fish pie. Orange juice and milk will always split up in the most acrimonious, curdling fashion.

    Nevertheless, I am always on the look out for unusual food pairing and when I spotted Robert Thompson’s marriage of butternut squash and quince on Great British Chefs website, I was immediately intrigued.


    I must admit, putting a shy, dysmorphic gourd together with a tough, hard nosed bruiser did seem to be a bit of a mismatch at first.
     
    “He’s too fibrous, too pithy for his own good and has a tendency to stew on things. She’s crabby, difficult to get to know and will break your teeth given half the chance. It will never work.”
     
    But despite my initial reservations, I went ahead and made this last Sunday and was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. This simple and easy to make dessert is by turns light and luxuriant with lots of different textures. The perfumed quince, in both the sorbet and the purée went really well with the rich, sweet bavarois (or Bavarian cream to you and me) which had just a subtle tone of butternut squash. And the poached blackberries added a nice touch of sugary sharpness to proceedings
     
    One thing you must keep an eye on though is the temperature when bringing the custard mix up to 84°C. Without a thermometer, I was reliant on my trusty and somewhat stubby finger. Staring aimlessly at the pan as things slowly heated up, I kept sticking my digit in, gauging the heat on a scale of “ooh, aah, it’s getting hotter, it’s getting hotter!”
     
    Not really an accurate or hygienic way of doing things and to be honest, I did have a little bit of scrambling in the bottom after pouring the mixture into ramekins. So if you have a thermometer, use it!
     
    Still, under the right romantic conditions i.e. in the confines of your kitchen, working under candle light with Barry White playing softly in the background, Robert certainly showed that butternut and quince can make beautiful love together.

     
    In fact, I would even go so far to say that this would make the perfect ending to a dinner party where on placing the dish down on the table, you could expound “I first took it upon myself to introduce Mr Butternut and Miss Quince at a games party at Mr Knightley’s house last Autumn and they have remained inseparable ever since! Wouldn’t you say that the most beautiful thing in the world is a match well made?”
     
    If, you know, you were so inclined.


    What initially strange food pairings have worked well in dishes you’ve made or eaten?  We’re discussing this over on Great British Chefs Facebook Page.