When autumn leaves start to fall

A salad with grunt, the trick to excellent quickled onions, and DIY chili crisp.

Autumn leaves aren’t so much falling at the moment as they are rushing down the gutters of my street, carried by torrents of water. Not for us Keats’ ‘season of mist and mellow fruitfulness’, or at least not today.

I realised after writing last week’s newsletter that one of the reasons that Easter is such a good time for people who like to cook (and eat) is that it’s in peak autumn. Current downpours and meteorological unpredictability notwithstanding, mid-autumn is as culinarily exciting as spring. It’s go-time for pumpkins and mushrooms and nuts, for apples and pears. It’s mostly dark by 6pm, you may as well stay indoors and make the most of them all.

This salad came to me in a kind of autumnal fever dream. Everything in it (well, except maybe the feta and the lentils) is bang-on in-season. If pumpkin isn’t your thing, you could sub in beetroot or carrot, but you’ll need to cook them a while longer. The red onions add some bright acidity, but if you just can’t face quickling them, a bunch of finely chopped spring onions will do the trick for oniony-ness.

Green lentils with roasted mushrooms, pumpkin and walnuts

This is a salad with a bit of grunt to it, but it’s not a chore to eat. Nor is it a chore to make - it’s not too tricky to master prepping the various components at the same time - and you can cook the lentils and/or the vegetables in advance if that makes life easier.

Serves 4 as a main dish sort of salad with some bread to mop up the juices, or more as a side salad

For the salad:

1/2 cup green lentils

2 cloves garlic

1 bay leaf

3 Tbsp olive oil

300g button mushrooms, wiped with a damp cloth and halved

300g peeled, de-seeded butternut pumpkin, cut into large dice

100g walnut halves (about two handfuls)

1 small red onion, ‘quickled’ in red wine vinegar (see below in Good Things for more info)

2 large handfuls of fresh flat leaf parsley, leaves picked (you could also use baby spinach here, or finely shredded kale)

100g feta, crumbled

For the dressing:

1 clove garlic, squished to a paste with 1/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard

1/2 tsp honey (or sugar)

2 Tbsp red wine vinegar

6 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Heat the oven to 180C. Put the lentils, garlic and bay leaf in a medium pot and cover generously with boiling water. Set over medium heat and simmer for about 15-20 minutes, until the lentils are tender to the bite. Drain and set aside. Discard the bay leaf. If you love garlic, chop it up and put it in the salad later, it will be mild but still add some essential garlicky-ness.

While the lentils are cooking, spread the butternut pumpkin and mushrooms across a lined oven tray. Drizzle over the olive oil and season well with black pepper. Toss to coat, then bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Remove the tray and flip the vegetables over (a fish slice is handy here). Scatter the walnuts on top and return to the oven for 10 minutes, or until the walnuts are toasted (not burnt!) Remove from the oven and set aside.

Make the dressing while the vegetables are cooking. Put the squished garlic and salt, sugar, honey, mustard and vinegar in a small jar with a lid. Shake well to combine, then add the oil and shake again until emulsified. Taste - it should be a pleasantly garlicky, mustardy blend - and adjust with more olive oil, vinegar, honey or salt.

Now - show time. Put the lentils, cooled vegetables, most of the feta and most of the parsley in a large serving bowl. Toss gently to combine. Add about four tablespoons of the vinaigrette and toss again. Scatter the remaining feta and parsley on top, then drizzle over a little more of the dressing. Leave at room temperature to meld for about 20 minutes before serving if you can. Leftovers are good for a couple of days in the fridge, but are best eaten when they’re not fridge-cold.

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Good Things

This is a photo of a photo by Carolyn Robertson in Homecooked - I love the way it has a very 1970s Woman’s Weekly Cookbook vibe to it.

How to quickle an onion

Having a jar of ‘quickled’ red onions in the fridge is the best cheap culinary life hack I know. We eat these with everything - in salads, on pasta, in toasties - because they instantly elevate just about any dish to something more exciting.

There are two ways to quickle: hot and cold. The ‘hot’ version is sweeter and more ‘pickled’, the ‘cold’ version crunchier and slightly more refreshing. Either way, you can reuse the vinegar in either method. Take your pick:

HOT QUICKLED: Put ½ cup white wine vinegar, 1 Tbsp caster sugar and 1 tsp salt in a small pot set over medium heat. Bring to simmering point, stirring until the sugar and salt have dissolved. While you’re waiting, thinly slice a red onion and put in a small heatproof bowl. Pour over the hot vinegar and leave to steep until cool.

COLD QUICKLED: Put 1 tsp caster sugar and 1 tsp salt in a small bowl. Whisk in ⅓ cup red wine vinegar. Add a finely sliced red onion and stir. Cover and let steep for at least 15 minutes before using as detailed above.

Caledonian Road

This has been out for a year but it’s taken a while for me to work my way up the library borrowing list. It’s a compulsive, gripping read about one man’s spectacular fall from grace, set amongst the backdrop of crumbling post-Covid/post-Brexit Britain. Not all of the writing hits right but lots of the story (obviously inspired by real-life events) and its odious characters feel depressingly true.

DIY Very Nutty Chili Crisp

In more cheerful news, I finally ticked off a long-held life goal this weekend and made my own Chili Crisp (more specifically, I made Very Nutty Chili Crisp to a recipe from James Park’s 2023 book, Chili Crisp). Making it wasn’t difficult, the hard part was remembering where I’d seen the recipe. For your benefit, it’s in Shayne Chammavanijakul’s excellent newsletter ‘That One Dish’ here (Shayne also has a great index of all the recipes he’s shared before below). So many things to make, so little time.

Next week on Fancy Butter… not your usual Anzac biscuit recipe.