Roast Squash & Spinach Salad with Tofu
Seriously, the weather this last month has been hard to work out. One minute it's ultra mild and trees begin to bud, the next it's chilly with snow and storm warnings. A gal doesn't know whether to rustle up comfort food or salad! Of course, you could cheekily do a bit of both with this colourful dish. Lots of fresh green spinach becomes the perfect foil against caramelised roasted chunks of your favourite squash and a zingy sweet ginger marinade for tofu adds a warming note.
I had a beautiful display of various winter squashes in a bowl which I had spent admiring for a few weeks (I like bowls of vegetables as a display, flowers are not the only plants I like to gaze upon) and I needed to use them up.
A rummage in the fridge left me with a block of tofu, some baby spinach leaves and knobbly ginger. This year I've been experimenting with Japanese flavours* and I've developed a constant yearning for miso, shoyu and sesame combinations so I reached out for those ingredients and whoosh… soon I had the makings of a great salad. This is one dish I'll be returning to again that's for sure.
Do try and let me know what you think of it.
Roast Squash & Spinach Salad with Tofu
Serves greedy 2 as main, 4 - 6 as a side
400 grams firm tofu
900 grams butternut squash or your favourite mix, peeled / sliced
3 - 4 handfuls baby spinach leaves, washed and dried
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon chives, finely chopped
2 tablespoon mixed seeds (sunflower, pumpkin, sesame)
Marinade
fresh orange juice
lemon zest
squeeze lemon juice
3 cms fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated
1 tablespoon shoyu
1 tablespoon red miso
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons maple syrup
Method
Before you cube the tofu make sure you have squeezed out all the water it has been stored in by placing it on a couple of layers of kitchen roll, place more kitchen paper roll on top, cover with a plate and weigh it down with a heavy weight.
When all the water has been squeezed out, cube the tofu into approx 15 mm cubes.
Mix all the ingredients for the marinade in a shallow non-metallic dish. Toss in the cubed tofu making sure all sides get covered in the marinade. Cover with cling film and allow to marinate for a couple of hours or overnight. The tofu will absorb the wonderful asian inspired flavours more the longer it is left.
Preheat the oven to 220C.
Peel the squash (if necessary, some have thin edible skins which roast beautifully) and then slice up or cut into chunks. It doesn't really matter which as long as all the squash pieces are roughly the same size so they will cook at the same rate.
Toss the squash in the tablespoon of sesame oil. Place the squash slices / chunks on an oven tray and roast in the oven for 20 mins or until the squash begins to colour. Remove.
Add the roasted squash to the marinated tofu (leaving marinade in the dish) and place the marinade dish in the oven to roast the tofu along with the squash. Roast for 15 mins. Then remove and allow to cool a bit before building your salad.
Meanwhile toast the seeds in a dry pan until they begin to colour or pop!
Layer the roasted tofu and squash with the spinach leaves on a serving platter. Scatter over with the toasted seeds. Sprinkle with the finely chopped chives.
Bring to table and share.
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*I bought recently published cookbook, Hashi by Reiko Hashimoto. It's fantastic for beginners to Japanese cuisine, I highly recommend it.