Seasonal Recipes: Autumn

Autumn is prime time for harvesting and the garden has provided an abundance of food for members to take home. Below is a recipe for a delicious squash dahl which the community enjoyed at a recent Saturday sessions communal lunch. Below that are some hyperlinks for other seasonal recipes recommended by garden members. Enjoy& tag us on instagram if you go ahead and make any of these!

Nick’s Autumn Squash Daal

Okay so bear in mind amounts maybe slightly off as I don’t follow recipes but just go on feel and taste. This is a very flexible and forgiving recipe so feel free to get creative and put your own spin on it. It is an ideal recipe for Autumn / winter squash.

For the last one at the garden we used a turban squash, like this one

But you can use sweet potatoes or any squash / pumpkin these are some of the ones we grow:

This recipe is great for large batches and freezes well but to serve 4 use:

1 tbsp sunflower oil

1 onion, finely chopped

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground turmeric

1 tsp mustard seeds

½ tsp black pepper

½ tsp cayenne pepper (for a bit of heat) – you can use fresh / dried chillies if you have them

400g butternut squash, peeled and cut into 2cm (prepared weight)

400g can chopped tomato or fresh ones in the fridge that you don’t know what to do with

1.2l veg stock

300g red lentil

small pack coriander, roughly chopped

Optional;

1 heaped tbsp mango chutney

naan bread, to serve

Step 1

Put the oil and the onion in a saucepan, and cook for 5 mins. Stir in the spices and cook for a further 1 min, then stir in the garlic and butternut squash.

Step 2

Tip in the chopped tomatoes, stock and season with black pepper. I tend to not add salt as there is often plenty in the stock but feel free to add some here if you want.

Bring to the boil, then gently simmer for about 20 mins. At this point you may want to blitz the root veg with a blender for a smooth creamy daal you can also mash the daal after the lentils have cooked if you like.

Step 3

Add the lentils and simmer for another 20 mins until the lentils and squash are tender. Stir in the coriander and serve with warmed naan bread.

The flavours in this really start to pop on day two so it works ideally for cooking the day before and then heating for the group the following day. Also taste it as you go along to make sure you have enough spice and heat. Spices are not consistent in terms of flavour so take the above amounts as a reference guide only

Links to other seasonal recipes recommended by our members:

Check out this recipe book which is full of recipes using locally foraged foods!

Find the National Trust’s guide to seasonal food herehttps://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/discover/gardening-tips/guide-to-seasonal-food.

Handy tool for searching for recipes by Veg

Thanks for reading! We hope to see you at one of our sessions soon.

Head over to our instagram page to see our monthly schedule 🙂