Roasted Squash and Spinach Salad from Molly MacRae

 

This is a nice wintertime salad with warm spices and beautiful colors. It’s hearty enough to be a dinner salad with crusty bread on the side but also makes a good side for whatever main dish you’re cooking up. Be prepared, though. The recipe calls for tossing all the ingredients in a “serving bowl.” I have a few fairly large serving bowls but nothing gigantic enough to hold this salad. The solution? A soup kettle – not elegant but adequate and you can’t beat that.

Roasted Squash and Spinach Salad

(adapted from Yasmin Fahr at the New York Times)

Serves 6 as a dinner salad and many more as a side

 

Ingredients for salad

1 butternut squash (about 2 pounds), halved and seeded

2 large red onions, halved tip to tip then sliced in 1-inch wedges

3 tablespoons olive oil

Salt and pepper

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

10 ounces baby spinach

1/4 cup salted pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds

 

Ingredients for dressing

1/2 cup crumbled feta (with more for garnish, if desired)

1/4 cup full-fat yogurt

1/4 cup orange juice

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

Salt and pepper to taste

 

Directions

Heat oven to 425 degrees F.

Put the halved, seeded squash and onion wedges on a large sheet pan. Pierce squash all over with the tip of a sharp knife. Coat everything, including squash skin, with olive oil. Season cut side of squash with cumin and coriander. Put squash halves cut side down on pan and surround with onion wedges.

Roast until squash skin is blistered and easily pierced with a fork, 25 to 40 minutes, depending on thickness of squash.  

While squash and onions cook, combine dressing ingredients in a small bowl.

Remove squash and onions from oven and let sit until squash is cool enough to handle. Then scoop bite-size pieces from the skin, putting pieces on baking sheet to cool a bit more. Discard squash skin.

In a very large serving bowl (or inelegant soup kettle), toss spinach with dressing. Scrape squash and onions into bowl, tossing to combine. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Garnish with pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds, and more feta if you like. Serve warm or at room temperature.

News!

Come Shell or High Water, book 1 in  the Haunted Shell Shop Mysteries is out now,

but keep an eye out for 

There’ll be Shell to Pay, book 2 coming in June!

 

The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” She’s the author of the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch, she writes books for Annie’s Fiction and Guideposts. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and she’s a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award for Short Fiction. Visit Molly on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram.