Ember-baked squash with kale pesto

Autumn

Squash has all the right qualities for cooking directly in the embers. Its resilient skin protects the flesh as it cooks, and although the skin burns, it doesn’t affect the overall flavour. In fact, it improves it. The firm orange flesh inside doesn’t take long to tenderize, just keep turning the squash every so often. Squash is naturally sweet. That’s why it goes so well with this kale pesto (a revelation, I might add), which has a slightly bitter note. You can easily double or triple this recipe if you’re feeding a crowd.

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

3–4 squash
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
200g (7oz) labneh (strained yogurt; see 'Pancetta with wild garlic'), to serve

For the kale pesto

100g (3½ oz) curly kale
60g (2¼ oz) toasted hazelnuts, plus extra, bashed, to serve
75g (2½ oz) aged cow’s or sheep’s cheese, grated
1 small garlic clove, grated or crushed to a paste
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
100ml (3½fl oz) extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra to serve

Method

Get a nice, hot fire going. You want a good-sized bed of chunky, glowing embers and smoky wood before you start cooking the squash. Once you’re happy with the fire, create a few hollows in the coals with a stick. Nestle the squash down into these spaces – ideally, they’ll be surrounded by really hot embers, so will bake from all sides. If this isn’t possible, just arrange the squash around the edges of the fire or over the fire on a grill. Either way you want them to be pretty close to the heat and you’ll want to turn them periodically, so they cook evenly – they will take 1–2 hours altogether to get nice and soft, and blistered in places. In some cases, they’ll be so giving, they’ll start to split. At this point remove them from the fire but keep them warm.

While the squash is cooking you’ll have plenty of time to make the kale pesto. Strip the tender kale leaves off their stalks. It’s also worth pinching out any obvious thinner veins that look a bit coarse, too. Roughly chop the kale leaves and pop them into the bowl of a food processor. Add the toasted hazelnuts, cheese and garlic and season with some salt and pepper. Whizz the ingredients up until they’re fairly fine. Now add the vinegar and extra-virgin olive oil and whizz again until you have a nice, textured pesto. Taste and adjust the seasoning with a touch more salt if it needs it.

To serve, tear or cut the warm squash into large pieces, discarding the burned skin and the stringy centres and seeds. Season them all over with plenty of salt and pepper and trickle over the extra-virgin olive oil. Dot the squash with generous spoonfuls of pesto and labneh and finish with a scattering of toasted bashed hazelnuts.

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