Tag archives: wine

Butternut Squash and Spinach Cannelloni Recipe

I’ve neglected the food part of the blog for a while so I thought I’d write this down, I had a butternut squash to use and came up with this!

Ingredients – Makes 6

A 1KG butternut squash, peeled and diced into 1-2cm cubes

A little olive oil

Freshly ground black pepper

1 onion, peeled and diced

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed

A sprinkle of dried sage

200ml of vegetable stock

175ml white wine

150g of spinach

30g of toasted pine nuts

125g of crumbled vegetarian blue cheese

50g of feshly grated vegetarian Parmesan cheese

1litre of passata

6 sheets of fresh lasagne

Method

Pour a little olive oil into a large pan and add the diced onion, sauté for 5 minutes or until soft.

Add the peeled & diced butternut squash and garlic to the pan, give it a good stir.

Add the herbs, vegetable stock and wine, you may as well pour yourself another glass whilst you’re at it.

Season with freshly ground black pepper, stir, cover and simmer for 15 minutes or until the squash is just soft.

If there’s any liquid left in the pan, drain it off then lightly mash the squash with the back of a spoon.

Add the spinach, crumbled blue cheese, half the parmesan and half of the pine nuts. Stir the mix and cover until the spinach has milted.

Lay out the lasagne sheets and place a hearty spoonful of the mix on each one, roll up and place in a greased baking dish.

Pour the passata over the cannelloni until they are almost covered and sprinkle with the remaining parmesan and pine nuts.

Bake in the oven at 200C for 20-30 minutes or until the pasta is tender.

Butternut squash and blue cheese risotto recipe

“Amazing” is the only word I can use to describe this, the risotto is creamy yet ever so slightly salty from the cheese. The recipe below made more than enough for 4 (probably enough for 6) so I had left overs for lunch the next day.

Ingredients

  • 1 big organic butternut squash (the one I used was 1.4KG)
  • 1 tablespoon of olive oil
  • Ground black pepper
  • 1 large organic onion
  • 75g of unsalted butter
  • A bottle of white wine (You can drink most of it)
  • 1.5litres of vegetable stock
  • 300g of soft blue cheese (I couldn’t find Gorgonzola so I used Saint Agur)
  • 500g of risotto rice

Method

  • Preheat oven to 220C (reduce if you’ve got a fan oven).
  • Peel, halve, deseed and slice the butternut squash, drizzle with the olive oil and season with ground black pepper.
  • Place the seasoned squash on a baking tray and bake in the oven until soft (40 minutes was enough for me, turn the squash after 20).
  • Remove the squash from the oven and chop into bite size pieces.
  • Add the butter to a large pan and melt over a medium heat.
  • Finely dice the onion and add to the pan, cook until soft.
  • Add the risotto rice, stir until coated in butter.
  • Add a small glass of white wine, stir, drink the rest of the bottle.
  • Turn the heat down to low.
  • Add the stock, one ladle at a time, stir continuously until the rice has taken up the liquid then add another ladle of stock until it’s all gone. Now is probably not the time for a game of Angry Birds, you need to stir all the time and not let the rice stick to the pan. This will probably take half an hour.
  • At the very last minute add the chopped butternut squash and stir.
  • Break the blue cheese into chunks, add it to the risotto and stir.
  • Check the seasoning, you probably don’t want to add any salt but fire away with the black pepper!
  • Serve with some freshly baked focaccia and more wine.