Quinoa & butternut squash salad (vegan)

Butternut squash is such a sign of autumn to me…along with spiced pumpkin lattes at Starbucks! So when I saw ‘Deliciously Ella’s’ recipe for butternut squash and quinoa salad it jumped to the top of my ‘must cook’ list.

If you haven’t heard of Deliciously Ella, she’s a inspirational vegan who promotes the health benefits of a vegan lifestyle and shares great looking and tasting recipes. She also has a recipe book that has prime position in my kitchen!

The gluten and dairy-free recipe is easy and makes a feast - it says it serves two but it ended up doing two of us for two meals, with some ‘additions’ for day 2.

Peel and chop the squash into little cubes.

Add some olive oil, dried herbs, paprika and salt…

And then bake it in the oven until soft - it took over half an hour as I had a pretty big squash!

While the squash was in the oven we set to work on the quinoa.

I’d found some red organic quinoa that I wanted to try - I thought it looked suitably ‘autumnal’.

I added the quinoa grains to boiling water

Threw in the lime juice, dried herbs and salt and left for about 15 minutes.

Then added the broccoli pieces, coriander leaves and more lime.

When this cooking was coming to an end, we toasted up the pine nuts, sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds.

Then added these to the pot of quinoa.

Once the squash was cooked, I combined it with the quinoa, added the chopped cherry tomatoes and more fresh coriander.

To accompany the salad Ella recommends her avocado cream dip. Simply mix all of the ingredients (below) together until you have a lovely smooth and creamy paste.

It’s a great vegan, gluten free mayo substitute.

It was yummy - though definitely needed the avocado cream to add some interest to the dish as it was fairly bland…we kept adding lime juice and paprika to enhance the flavour!

Day 2 and we still had plenty left so we mixed up the cold leftovers with some fresh salad to make a second meal…

And stirred in another batch of avocado cream to make a tasty round 2.

Check out Deliciously Ella’s website for loads more recipes.

Ingredients - Salad

1 squash
1 cup quinoa
1/3 cup pine nuts
a dozen cherry tomatoes
a large handful of broccoli (she recommends long-stemmed but I couldn’t find any)
1 lime / lemon
a handful of fresh coriander
olive oil
mixed dried herbs (e.g. oregano, herbs de provence, thyme and rosemary)
paprika
salt

Ingredients - Avocado Cream

2 ripe avocados

3tbsp apple cider vinegar

2tbsp olive oil

2tbsp water

seasoning

Recipe from http://deliciouslyella.com

Tuesday 13 October 2015