Recipe of the Month: Roasted Butternut Squash Curry

After slipping October's Recipe of the Month in just under the wire, Brian decided to get started early hunting down one for November. He did a general search for "hearty fall recipes" and came across a list that included an intriguing-looking recipe for butternut squash curry—a serendipitous find, since we happened to have all that butternut squash from our fall harvest. But we didn't have all the other ingredients required for that particular dish, so Brian did a second, more targeted search for similar recipes that we could make using only what we had on hand. And that's how he came across the Roasted Butternut Squash and Chickpea Curry at Cupful of Kale. The only thing it called for that we didn't already have was curry powder, and he could easily whip that up using another recipe he found on the site Feasting at Home. (It calls for 14 different spices and seasonings, but our well-stocked spice cabinet has all of them.)

As usual, Brian made a couple of minor modifications to the basic curry recipe. Following a tip at the bottom of the recipe, he added six ounces of frozen spinach to the dish to boost its veggie content. He also substituted home-cooked chick peas for the canned ones and changed the unspecified "salt and pepper" in the recipe to a teaspoon and a half of salt and no pepper. Also, since I'm a spice wimp, he replaced the quarter-teaspoon of "hot chilli powder" with a dash of our not-that-hot cayenne pepper. And, midway through the cooking process, he decided to omit the 200 ml of vegetable stock the recipe called for because the sauce seemed quite liquid enough without it.

The result was a mild but flavorsome curry that both of us enjoyed. Roasting the squash, rather than just cooking it on the stove, definitely seemed to add more depth and complexity to the flavor. Of course, it also added time to the cooking process. The squash had to roast for about 40 minutes to get tender enough to go into the dish, and while you spend part of that time preparing the rest of the sauce, it's still not exactly a quick weeknight dinner. So we probably won't make this as often as other squash favorites like our roasted vegetable medley (diced squash roasted with Brussels sprouts and potatoes, with scrambled egg added for protein) or butternuts squash souffle. But it can join our beloved butternut squash lasagna as a dish we trot out for relaxed weekend dinners.