Okay, I'm going to do a dish with a butternut squash. It's so simple, right? And my kids love these cupcakes. So, what I want is just to carefully cut the squash.
Slice these little fellas up. And what I'm after is 400 g of squash. Like a pack of butter and a half. Really perfect. I've left the skin on this. Notice I've washed it. Butternut squash skin, you really don't have to peel. Even in soups or risotto or pastas, when it cooks, it goes so deliciously chewy and delicate and soft. It's not a problem, I promise you. So, in here,
just let it go down until you can get it as fine as you can. When it stops getting any smaller, sugar, 400 g. I'm using unrefined brown sugar for flavor and for nutrition as well. That can now go straight in.
And then it's just about loading this little baby up. So, four eggs. Little pinch of salt because I'm going to be adding flour. So, 300 grams of plain flour that goes in as well.
And then I've got some baking powder. Obviously, that's going to give it the air, the lift, and the sort of softness in there. And I want two good heaped teaspoons of that. Like that. And then I want a teaspoon of cinnamon. Cinnamon and squash are like really, really good friends. So, in with that, a handful of walnuts. Get them in there.
And as far as fat's concerned, I'm not going to use butter or lard or anything like that. I'm going to use extra virgin olive oil, but not a peppery one. You want sort of quite a creamy one. 175 ml. Of course, you can use sunflower oil, but this is much better for you.
You can see I've just put it all together. Dead simple. Whiz it all up. Once it's had a nice little mix up, I want to get it into here. Just clean down the sides.
Now, once I've done that, what you've got to do is fill these babies up about three-quarters of the way.
Also, the nice thing is I'm going to use half of this recipe now to do 12 squash cupcakes. And then the other half I can put in the fridge, and the baking powder isn't activated until it gets to the heat anyway. So, that'll be great for tomorrow. And then you've got lovely fresh muffins again.
Put them into the oven. There you go. So, cook them for about 20 minutes at 180 Celsius or 350 Fahrenheit. Bob's your uncle.
Right. So, I've got these out of the oven. These have been out for about 10 minutes and they've cooled down now. And the way to check that they're perfectly cooked is to get a knife, put it right into the middle. If it comes out clean, it's perfect. Really, really good. If it's not, pop it back in the oven. So, these have been cooling for about 10 minutes. What I want to do now to make them absolutely delicious is make a nice frosted creamy topping. Okay. And flavor-wise, I'm going to be using a clementine.
All the lovely fine zest. Reminds you of Christmas and all those lovely things. But then I want to do exactly the same with a nice lemon. So, like that. And I'm going to use a little bit of the lemon juice as well to give it a real twang. Scoop that up and put that in. Then I'll cut that in half and squeeze the juice straight into that bowl.
Once I've done that, I want to get the whole creamy thing happening. I'm using sour cream. There we go. If you can use vanilla extract or a vanilla pod, just run your knife all the way down it and then use your knife to scrape out all those incredible little seeds. Look at those. And then icing sugar. I reckon two tablespoons of icing sugar. And depending on the sourness of the lemon, you might need to adjust that a little bit, but I think that'll be all right. That's also going to thicken the sour cream as well.
Give it a really good mix up. And then have a taste. Incredible. Really, really nice. I'll tell you what that tastes like. It tastes just like when you're a kid and you had the little sherbet dips. I'm just going to load this onto here. Be as generous as you think you can afford to be without having it pour all over the place. And as it sits there, it will soak into the top of the cake a little bit and also will firm slightly because of the icing sugar.
Okay, last one to serve it. One's already dripping over like that. Fit them in. He can go on top. He can go around. Push him around. Him around, him around. Beautiful. Bit more clementine. And you can grate it again over the top. And then lavender, dried lavender that I cut from summer. Just give it a scrunch and just get a tiny bit, a little level teaspoon, and just sprinkle it from a height over that. And you'll get a tiny bit of that flavor. Absolutely delish. We're all allowed to get a bit feminine sometimes.
So, the recipe I'm going to give you today is a family-friendly, delicious, mild, fragrant veggie curry. Really, really nice. As we get towards the end of the week, we're also getting towards the end of the Oliver shopping. So, we've got no more meat, no more fish in the fridge. So, we've got odds and ends and that's fine. I've got a humble courgette, carrots, bit of parsnip, bit of butternut squash. Of course, you could use potatoes, cauliflower, sweet potato, anything that roasts up nice, sort of like root vegetables. Delicious. When you roast the veg, you're really concentrating the beautiful flavors within each individual veg.
So, tray here, we're going to create a little bit of a landing strip. You could use a curry powder if you so wish. I've got some leftover madras spice paste here. I don't want much. Like a heaped teaspoon is all I'm going to use. Then I'm going to hit it up with some oil. Two tablespoons will go in there. And then a little bit of vinegar. So, I'll mix that up and that will coat them all and season them all in the most delicious way. Easy peasy. Now, in here also I'm going to put salt.
And then we're going to go veg. We're going to leave the skins on. A lot of the flavor, a lot of the sweetness and deliciousness is in the skin. Okay? And that includes the butternut squash. Okay? A lot of people spend a lot of time peeling this, forget it. Peeling this, forget it. And this and this, forget it. Right. So, let's start with the parsnip. Split it in half, then in quarters, then into bite-sized chunks.
In we go. With the carrots, I'm just going to split those in half. And again, more chunks. All roughly around the same size. Then we have courgette.
With the butternut squash, because of its wonderful skin, they'll keep for weeks, weeks, you know, just in the corner of your kitchen waiting to be used. You know, people are buying quite a lot of stuff and then it's kind of going off. So, any way to reduce that is obviously a good thing. We'll just chunk them up. So, in with the squash. Last but not least,
humble frozen veg. So, there's six of us eating this curry. So, six florets of cauliflower. So, just mix all that up. And there you go. Beautiful dressed squash for roasting. Follow me, Jules.
So, this will go in the bottom of a hot oven, about 190 degrees C, maybe 200, for about 45 to 50 minutes until just beautiful and golden looking. So, while the veg is roasting off and getting even more tasty, I want to create like a sauce for them to get stirred into. I'm going to get a big pan on a medium heat. I'm going to get some ginger, thumb-sized piece of ginger, and about the same of garlic, and I'm just going to finely chop it. Okay, we'll go in with some oil, about a tablespoon. The garlic and ginger, put that into your oil which is heating up. So, stir that around. The smell will be incredible. And as that starts to brown off and do beautiful things, I'm then going to go in with two tablespoons of mango chutney.
And this will start to caramelize a little bit. If you haven't got that, you could cheat with like apricot jam and a little bit of sort of spice from your spice shelf. I'm going to get some tinned tomatoes. I've used chopped tinned tomatoes. It could be plum. Scrunch them up. Could be passata. Even chopped fresh tomatoes. Delicious. As soon as this has come to the boil, we're going to season it with salt. And I'm then going to add some coconut milk.
Now, of course, you could use regular milk and that'll be fine. It will give it that sort of creaminess, but the coconut milk gives it this incredible deliciousness. So, in that goes. Look at that. So, we'll bring that to the boil. That is the most delicious fragrant curry sauce ever. So, the minute it comes to the boil, off.
And then I'm going to bring into the world a new party. We're going to make the most delicious kind of cheat's naan bread. So, I've got two builder's mugs of self-raising flour and then one of cold water. But, we're going to go a step further and we're going to stuff it. And one of our favorite things to stuff a naan or a bread with is like very lightly sort of spiced spinach. It's going to be amazing, right? My kids absolutely love it. They fight over it. They have arguments over it. So, this is good. So, the first job is to get this pan back on the heat.
And let's get our knob of butter in the pan. And what we want to do is bring to life spinach, which could bore people, but we're going to make it so tasty. I'm going to use cloves. I've got a bit of cinnamon as well. Now, you could use any spice you've got. It could be a pinch of cumin, fenugreek. It could be a pinch of curry powder. Could be a bit more paste, maybe a different paste. It could be just garlic. Right. We just want to make delicious spinach. Now, these little tablets of frozen spinach I have always had in my freezer. They're brilliant for Indian dishes, brilliant for soups, stews. It's going to be so delicious. So, that will go back in the freezer.
I'd normally put a bit of onion in this, but my lovely Jools, she doesn't like onions, so we're just going to use spring onions or leeks instead. So, let's just cut those in quarters. It's been washed nicely. Finely slice this. So, leeks go into your spiced butter. Then we go in with the spinach. I'm going to let this just slowly fry off. Give it a stir every now and again until you've got really dark, dense, intense spinach.
Yum, yum, yum. Okay, let's make the bread. My cheat's naan bread is so simple it's going to hurt your head, right? You've got two builder's cups of self-raising flour. All right. And then with the bottom of your little mug, just make a little well. Very satisfying.
So, to two builder's mugs of self-raising flour, I've got one mug of cold water. So, that goes in. That's your ratio. So, into the water, we're going to add salt. And I'm going to add a little oil. Then take a fork and just evenly go around the edge. Right? And it will go from straight water to like a pancake batter. Then to like a thick sort of dough. I'm using a fork because I don't want to use my hands and I don't want it to go sticky.
So, can you see now that this dough is getting quite firm and once actually my fork starts to look even a little bit clean, right? That's a good sign that we can use our hands. So, use a little bit of flour on your hands and just kind of move it around. Bit of extra flour just to dust. If you feel that it's a bit too tacky, then just use a little extra flour just to kind of clean your hands and that's fine. You can adjust. If you can keep it quite wet, look at that. Then it'll be really fluffy in return. So, can you see how this bread, the more I've kneaded it, the more elastic it's got. So, now what I'm going to do is just add a bit of oil to the surface and the bread. And that won't stick anymore. So, let's rub the oil in. And then what we can do is start to spread it out. Just roughly push the bread out. You can use a rolling pin if it makes you happy. And then I've got this here. If you spread it out like this, it will cool down really, really quick.
Take the clove out or the cinnamon stick in there?
Yeah, you can take the clove and cinnamon out. No trouble at all. Normally, I put paneer in an Indian bread like this. I haven't got it, so I'm using feta. Half a pack of feta is probably more than enough. I'm just going to break it up. So, I'm going to take the spinach with the feta, put it in the middle here,
and put that in there like so. Just bring the top in like this. Bring it in like that. Bring it in like that. Like that. And then we can push that out. And as we push that out, then we're also pushing the spinach out. I can take this non-stick pan. And because this is oiled already, I can basically just pick this up as a whole and get that in there. Beautiful. I just keep touching it because it feels so damn good. Okay, this I can either cook for 10 minutes on each side on a hob or I can put it in the oven at the bottom and sort of 20, 25 minutes it'll be golden and crisp and gorgeous. So, that's it. Happy days.
So, let's check on the veg. They've had about 50 minutes. And if you look in here, hopefully, yes, look at that. That's what we want. See the charring? That is flavor. Maximum flavor. Now, if I just show you up here, I've got the sauce here simmering away. So, what I have to do now is get these veggies landing in this sauce. Add a little bit more veg if you want. Just a handful of peas. Bit of chickpeas. You know, all of this is going to add to it being the most delicious curry. Let's serve the family. I've got a nice stuffed naan.
Here we go, lovely people. Daisy is a massive lover, aren't you, Daz, of naan breads and bits and pieces. So, we're going to go in for the kill. There you go. So good.
Oh, look at the feta, the way it's melted.
Oh. So, there you go, lovely people. There is a delicious meat-free meal. As you can see, it's been decimated. The bread's nearly all gone, guys. Was that a hit?
So, there you go. Have a go. Nice veggie curry. Happy days. Enjoy. And that bread. Come on.
I'm going to show you how to make a delicious sausage and squash chili con carne. Really simple to make, luscious to eat. The kids love it. You can do a big old batch of it as well. And it's perfect for when the weather starts closing in and it's getting colder. Great for things like bonfire night, parties. It's going to be a beautiful thing. I've got the oven on. I've got a pan on here, a nice little casserole pan. So, first up, get a nice squash. Now, the skin actually is very delicious, but what I love about peeling it is it kind of allows the squash to soak up all those beautiful flavors. So, once you've peeled it, just take the end off the squash. Remember, the squash is round, so obviously be careful when you're cutting it. And when it comes into slicing it like that, just keep your hands out the way and just gently angle it down like that. Don't put your weight on too much. Nothing kind of erratic.
Then we've got these little seeds here. So, I'm going to grab a little spoon and we can remove these seeds. Now, these seeds you can save, you can dry, and you can plant out next year to grow more pumpkin, which is very, very cool. So, I'm using a butternut squash. You can use any squash or dense pumpkin that you like. Just slice it into little kind of sort of one and a half, 2 cm chunks. So, I've got the butternut squash done. Then it's the sausages. Look at that. 400 g of beautiful sausages. Now, what I want to do is just add a little bit of oil and I want to fry off these sausages. I want to pull them out into little meatballs. Going to get the sausage like that. Pinch it with your hand like that. And it comes out like a rustic little ball. Very, very simple. Straight in like that. The better the sausages, the better this dish will be.
Soon as we've got a little bit of color happening here, what we can do is add some nice fragrant things. Right, we want to get some spice happening. So, half a little cinnamon stick like this. Just snap it. That will go in. That will start toasting up in all that frying fat. I'll season generously with black pepper, which I like. Then I'm going to use two little spice hacks here. One is smoked paprika. The smoked paprika gives you that beautiful smoky flavor like it's been cooked over a fire. Then I'm using a little Cajun spice. Now, these little kind of Cajun spices, jerk spices, ras el hanout, curry powders, these are quite genius, right? Because they're little blends. So, there's about like eight or 10 spices in here. Oregano, all the peppers, you know, garlic and onion powder. So, I'm going to put two of these heaped teaspoons in. It's just delicious. It's going to give it real length, a really nice savory spice that I absolutely love. Just toast that onto those lovely sausage meatballs. Look at that. That's properly rustic.
And then I'm going to just highlight a little product that I kind of rate. You can use onion, carrot, and celery. So, the Italians will call that a soffritto. And this is a frozen product. So, if you go to the supermarket, you get bags of frozen carrots, celery, onions. It's just a nice little hack. I really like supporting the frozen veg. I think it's genius. It's brilliant for like just taking handfuls, two handfuls, not wasting stuff. I think for busy people that want to cook lovely food, these little cheats are amazing. You know, it's not just about frozen peas. I want to use like two or three cloves of garlic. That's how you're going to get that really deep, comforting flavor. Nice little trick actually using balsamic vinegar. Couple of tablespoons, right? If you think about the sweetness in the veg that we're dragging out, this will give it a nice little kind of tang. And it will give it the most delicious depth of flavor and a gorgeous color. Look at that.
What I love about this dish is it's a family favorite. Everyone loves it. Like, you're using sausages, cheapest chips, you know, go for the best ones you can get. We're getting loads and loads of veggies into this dish. And also, it's like an amazing excuse to get more beans in, right? Because we expect to have beans in a chili con carne. So, any beans you like: white beans, cannellini beans, borlotti beans, butter beans, black-eyed peas, kidney beans, even chickpeas. So, I'm going to use a little bit of rosemary in here. Rosemary is a great herb. Really good with butternut squash, sausage. It's a lovely savory herb. So easy to grow. So, just a couple of sprigs. Just finely chop that.
What I love about making casseroles, chili con carnies like this, is it's got a really nice flow. You add the sausage, you add the spices, you add the garlic and the veg. You know, it just gets more and more interesting as time goes on. Look at the colors, the orange and the green and all the kind of gnarly bits of sausage. Absolutely beautiful.
Now we go in with the wet stuff in the form of lovely tinned tomatoes and some lovely kidney beans. Use any beans you want. I'm using kidney and black beans. Go in juice and all. That little liquid is perfect for creating an amazing sauce. Then some lovely tomatoes. Going to make it sweet and delicious. And look, if you wanted to do a veggie version of this or a vegan version of this, that's fine. Just pull out the meat. And I would sort of suggest using some fresh and dried mushrooms to get that umami, that depth of flavor. Just let it come to the boil. Give it a little season with salt and then pop it into the oven.
Now, what's nice about popping it in the oven is it will continue to simmer and cook. So, essentially stew, but from the top it's going to bake or roast. So, we call that braising, right? That means you're going to get color on here. You're going to get reduction of liquid, but concentration of flavor. It's going to be amazing. So, I'm very happy with that. Let's get that in the oven now. Normal oven, 180 degrees C, 350 Fahrenheit. And then I'll show you what to do next.
While that's cooking, please click the like button and give us some love. And don't forget to subscribe. Oh, and remember to turn on that notification bell so you know what's happening. Now, back to the recipe. So, it's had an hour and a half, and it's just been blipping away. Have a little look at that. I mean, it's a real picture. So, you can see how it's reduced down. Oh, it looks so comforting. So, I want to give you a little tip on extra deliciousness. Okay. It's a good one. Potato masher. So, if you just go to one little side of the pan, just mash one side. Right. So, what's that doing? This is breaking up some of the sausage, some of the beans, and some of that lovely butternut squash. Right? So, just do it to about a third of this pan. And what does it do? It gives you a creaminess and it gives you a real smash of deliciousness and sort of extra flavor. So, once we've finished doing that, we fold it through with all the chunks again. So, that I believe is how you get really incredible texture. And oh, it smells amazing. It smells amazing. This is when we have a little try.
Oh. Oh, it's so good. A little extra virgin olive oil, not as an oil, but as a kind of ingredient, right? And you get that lovely grassy fresh flavor and it gives it the most wonderful sheen. And on the floor is my little dog, Conker. He's got very wet. He's chilling out, but he's very excited about this sausage chili con carne. A little bit of balsamic. I know we put some already, but that's cooked away. But just a little thimble of vinegar. Any vinegar can often lift a ragu. That's beautiful. I'm going to pop that back in the oven just for a little bit while I do the rice.
We're going to go in with some rice. That same mug, like a typical kind of cup of tea mug. I'm going to fill this up twice. If you wanted to add some nice flavor, you know, you could take a little mixture of herbs, right, and just put that in there as well and get a lovely, lovely sort of fragrance and flavor to it. So, this goes in and we'll boil that for 12 minutes. By that time, everything's going to be perfect.
Let's get some nice serving bowls. What should I do it in? Let's do it in that one. Looks really lovely. Let's have a little look at this rice. It's had about 12 minutes. It goes from boiling and then that noise stops and that's when you normally know it's just lightly frying. So, that's a good sign. So, then we can take out the herb. That's the brilliant thing about herbs, man. They've done their job. And just use a fork or a spoon or something, just to fluff it up. Can you see how light and fluffy that is? Every time a winner. So, I like that method.
Smells amazing. Let's just portion up a little bit. I love rice. You can see the little flecks of herb in there. Let's
Get our lovely chili out. Look at these beautiful chunks. So, chili con carne, but not as you know it. And then for me, just a lovely little bit of yogurt in there, some pepper, and just a little olive oil. You can finish that with a little soft herb like coriander if you want. For me, that is beautiful comfort food for this time of year when the weather's closing in. You get epic flavor in there and texture.
It's delicious. Sausage chili con carne. Super simple. Like get it all going. You can double the recipe. You can triple it. It's not like spicy chili spicy like my little seven-year-old would have no trouble with that at all. It's very mild. It's very layered. There's lots of nice little surprises, but perfect for this time of year when things get a little bit miserable. But this is delicious.
Okay, the next recipe is absolutely gorgeous. It's a cross between like a lasagna and a cannelloni. It's called rotolo rolled up. It's gorgeous. Beautiful roasted squash. I'll show you that in a minute. With amazing spinach, gorgeous cheese, tomato sauce blipping away, golden crispy. You are going to love it. And it's real fun to make. First, prepare your squash. Scoop out the seeds and peel off the skin. But don't chuck them away. You can eat them. Georgie, can we just bake that in the oven? Cuz I think that that tossed through a lovely sort of mixed salad would be fantastic.
Then mash up the squash, season, and boom, job done. That's it. Just beautiful, natural, gorgeous squash in all of its simple glory. It's going to be really, really tasty.
It's heavenly. Absolutely heavenly. The best baby food in the world, minus the salt. Uh, fantastic as a base for a soup. Just a few onions and some basic herbs, you know. Uh, liquidize it with some stock. Fantastic. I love those kind of principle recipes. Like all of you have got to try doing that. Skin off, seeds out, mash it up. Unbelievable. Use it like a mashed potato. Phenomenal. Okay, enough of that talking. For the next layer of your pasta filling, the spinach bit. Start by chopping one red onion.
I've got some olive oil in the pan. I'm going to go in with some onions here. And we'll fry this off. So, we start getting some flavor in there. A nice pinch of salt and pepper goes in. Right. Give that a nice little toss. Let that start to fry. We're going to make a really dark, delicious, dense spinach. Really, really nice. Okay? And for that, there is absolutely no point and no advantage of using fresh spinach. Okay? So, bear with me. Now, when you're going to cook down spinach uh into soups, stews, do nice little gratins with cream and parmesan. In this case, we're cooking it down with herbs and onion to go inside this beautiful pasta dish. Uh when you do that, um you really kind of cook it hard. So there's no benefit in using fresh spinach, which by the way is quite pricey and massive in volume. It really takes up a lot of space. So come over here. I love fresh spinach. I grow it. I buy it. But I also love the frozen stuff. And genuinely, genuinely it's really useful and it's just going to give you that nice dark deep kind of flavor. Amazing with kind of curries, sort of Bombay spinach. Beautiful. Um, so I'm going to toss up these onions. As soon as they get soft, I'm going to throw these in. In actual fact, I'm going to throw these in right now.
The bonus here is to have that much spinach in a pan. I'd have to buy like four bags, right? It's going to be really expensive. Izzy, how much is 500 g of frozen spinach versus, you know, fresh? Is it a massive difference?
Yeah, it's a huge difference. Frozen spinach is a tenth of the price of fresh spinach.
Tenth. So, you're telling me that if I bought a bag of spinach for £1, the same equivalent 10p? There you go. That's what I'm talking about. Top your spinach off with some nutmeg and leave to cook down slowly for 15 minutes. Look at the colors, the squash and the spinach. Beautiful. Really, really beautiful.
Next, a super quick and super delicious tomato sauce. Slice up four cloves of garlic and a chili if you like a bit of a kick. Just chop it up. So this can go in a pan with a little olive oil. And then over here we're using some passata. 700 mls of passata. It's already kind of been sort of milled and pureed. So look, as soon as that garlic gets a little bit golden, pour it in. Look at it just sizzling away. Going to get a bit of water to clean out the jar. Also, these jars are worth keeping. They're great for sort of sauces and preserves, vinegars, stuff like that. If you do any of that sort of stuff, just mix that in. Really, really nice. Simple, very, very simple tomato sauce. Mix it in. We'll bring that to the boil. Remember, of course, the tomatoes are already cooked. You're just reheating them. So, my friends, it's time to make the rotolo.
I'm using fresh pasta lasagna sheets. If they're a bit stiff, you can just stick them in a bit of boiling water for a few seconds. I'm just doing it for 20 seconds just to stop it from cracking, you know, cuz I'm going to roll it up. I don't want it busting over the place. You might not have to do it. You make the call. Lay them flat and grab your smashed squash. Now, the fun bit. We're going to divide the squash between the six pieces of pasta here. So, think of uh each one of these little filled pastas that it's got to be good. It's a little present. Do you know what I mean? The fact that this is beautifully seasoned is up to you. It's totally your responsibility to taste it, season it, uh, and and love it. There's nothing cheffy about this at all. This is kids play. This is like mud pies when you're a kid, you know. Just spread it out. Now, the spinach layer. Look how dark that is. You can hardly see the difference between the spinach and the pan. Just kind of just shake off around. Divide it roughly. So, I'm just going to mix up this spinach. Look at that.
To give my dish a lovely cheap punch of extra flavor, I'm going to crumble over a fine layer of feta cheese. If you want to be more classically Italian, you could just use ricotta instead. I want about 50 g of feta. Again, look at the colors. Just sprinkle that across the top. Look at that. Oh dear. Oh dear. Top it all off with a layer of parmesan.
So, look at what we got, guys. We've got these beautiful six bits of pasta. We got this tomato sauce here. Can you just see it blipping away? Ah, that needs a little bit of salt. But basically, very, very nice. Let me show you the next bit. The most exciting bit. Very simple. I'm just going to roll it up. Just think of this like a savory Swiss roll. Cut it in half and then cut each half in half again into quarters. Look at that. I mean, that's what we're talking about. That's kind of what the story is about. Just those intense, beautiful flavors. White, green, purple, purple. Just go with it. Purple. So, that's what we've got. We're going to plop that into that tomato sauce and just buddy them up next to each other.
Ben.
Um I've used frozen spinach here. Um if I cook this and add leftovers, could I freeze it again?
Yeah, you could do probably better to freeze it at this stage. Now we've done all the filling. Let it cool down a little bit, tub it up, put it in the freezer, and then it's a really quick meal one night.
Right. Okay. Tuck your pasta rolls into your dish until they're all squeezed in, snuggled up tight. Finish with a little more grated parmesan and some fresh sage. Put a little oil on the sage. Toss it in the oil. Very important this way. You're going to take this woody old herb that only gets used for stuffing. We're going to put this on the top of our pasta here and it just transform the perfume, the flavor, and it kind of cooks like little crisps. Absolutely phenomenal and is unbelievable. Please, please have a go at this. So, look, that's all there is to it. Now, we've had a little bit of fun. It's a cute dish to do. You know, a lasagna is always a pain in the backside. It's always a bit of an assembly. I have to say, I think this is easier. You know, you haven't got the meat ragu to do. You haven't got the white sauce to do. Um, but you're getting the same kind of enjoyment and eating quality. Whack that hot Italian mama into the oven at 180° C and bake for 40 minutes.
When the rotolo is ready, it's golden and crispy and just makes you long to stick a fork in it. I've done pastas like this before and I call it honeycomb pasta cuz it kind of just looks like a honeycomb all cooked into each other. The tomato sauce between all the little gaps. Really, really gorgeous. And don't forget, you've also got those roasted seeds and skin from the squash, which will be amazing in a green salad. Don't think I'm going OTT on the old saving money thing. It It's delicious. This rotolo is incredibly tasty, but also super cheap to make. For not much more than a fiver, you can feed six people. It's 91p a portion. Comfort food. Something a little different. Really good fun to make. Come on. What you waiting for? Go cooking.
And there's no better way to keep cozy outside than with homemade sausage rolls. But I'm giving them a twist, literally by making them into a super festive sausage roll wreath. So, I'm doing one with beautiful sausage meat and another with gorgeous roasted squash. So, I'll start with the squash. I'm just going to get myself a large knife carefully cuz it's round. Put this down like this. Tip goes in the middle. Don't put too much weight down, right? Because this can be a little bit tricky. And then go down. So, split these into eight.
And then I want to give you the seasonings that make this squash sublime. So, here we've got the basics, salt and pepper. But then we can bring the squash to life with a little bit, just a tiny bit of chili, some coriander seeds, and a little bit of cinnamon. Those five seasonings are going to really transform that squash. So, get yourself a roasting tray. We'll go in with some olive oil, just a little bit. And then in a pestle and mortar, we'll add a teaspoon of the coriander seeds, a nice pinch of the salt and pepper, and a little pinch of the chili. I don't want it to be spicy, just a little bit of background hum. And then with the cinnamon, just a little bit. Get your squash. Get a spoon. Just remove those little seeds there. And then in with the amazing seasoning. Give it a nice little mix up. So, that is going to be beautiful. I'll roast that for about 45 minutes at 180° C. And that will go sweet, delicious, intense, and it will be a brilliant filling for my sausage roll.
So, use the fork to mash up all of that skin and flesh. Look at that. Then, let's add some really nice complimentary Christmas flavors. So, a little handful of vacuum chestnuts. Just break them up in your hands. Maybe sort of like 10 or 12 of those. And then what else is Christmas? Cranberries. Dried cranberries. They're sweet. They're sour. Then a little bit of cheese for seasoning and kind of holding it all together. So that goes in. Then we just mix it all up. Have a little taste. [clears throat] Salt, pepper, a little tweak if you want to. And look, if you're wondering what we would do with these, you will never ever regret having leftover squash in the fridge. You can tear that into a pasta, risotto, noodle dish, a stew. That goes to one side. Now it gets really fun. So, we are going to cheat. We're going to use pre-made puff pastry. All but a puff pastry. You don't want to be making this at home. You've got way more important things to do. I've got two packs here. Unwind it and you're good to go. All I have to do now is cut each sheet into two lengthwise. So go right to the middle here and just cut through the pastry like so. We're going to do sausage first. A good Cumberland sausage, free-range pork. Just get a knife and run it down the sausage like that. And do that to all four. So just take the skin off and place that in the middle of your pastry. And look, exactly the perfect size.
So then we've got our lovely filling here with our squash. So take that filling, make it even all the way along. So I've got two runs of sausage roll, one run of the lovely squash, and then I'm going to do a little surprise with that one. So get an egg in a bowl, whisk it up. Egg wash is what we use to stick pastry together or give it a beautiful glossy finish on the outside. I want to get more flavor and color onto it. So, I'm going to use a little bit of English mustard. A heaped teaspoon goes in. We're just going to turn this over. So, pull it up like that. Let the pastry stick to this side like that. Use your fingers just to press it together. We'll do exactly the same on our amazing sausages here. Push your finger down like that. And then get yourself a fork and just use that to kind of crimp that lovely edge. This would be amazing. You can cook them whole like that. Put them on a big table, a big board. It looks really, really cool. But I want to go to the next level. It's Christmas, guys. So, we're going to do a sausage roll wreath. For that, get the biggest tray that comes with the oven. Right, like that. We're going to take a piece of greaseproof paper. We're going to put that on here. We're going to get a regular kind of like bowl in the middle like this, and we're going to build around it. Now, the great thing about Come on, my big boy. How are you?
You want to help me with this sausage roll wreath?
