Full Blown Autumn

I'm starting to get collywobbles about case rates again. Trying not to, but the dreaded virus has come very close through personal and work things (not always literally close, but, you know, it's different when several people you know are down with it at once). I've just been for a PCR test in fact, which meant I missed the recurrence of the evening presser of doom, so that was nice. A research test rather than a symptoms/exposure one, but nonetheless, they are never jolly. 

Halloween is coming up fast, bringing with it the anniversary of Unconfined Walks (I am starting again officially on Halloween, which is when the clocks change, if you'd like to do numbered day walks along with me), and the anniversary of lockdown 2 announcement, one of the lowest points of last winter for me for some reason. Portents and harbingers. 

So I've been cooking comfort food again. Mostly. The A to Z of Pasta has definitely been an inspiration, and not just with its own recipes. I've been cooking starch, and buying more fancy shapes too. And two of my classic autumn ingredients (chestnuts and squash) have reappeared. I'll be sick of them in three months, but they are very welcome right now. 

This is a classic combination: butternut squash, sage and ricotta. But not as you might expect, or at least I didn't. It manages to use a load of pans while being pretty simple. 

Oven on, butternut chopped and into it, with a lot of sage leaves, seasoning, a splash of oil, and several cloves of garlic, unpeeled. Recipe says cover with foil; it will not cook when you do this, so open it up after a while... When the squash is getting squidgy, blob a load of ricotta all over it and return to the oven for 5-10 minutes to firm up the ricotta. That bit was really good, it got more interesting than the fresh out of the tub stuff. 

Boil your pasta, and frizzle some sage leaves in butter which you then pour over your pasta. This was fine, but I reckon you can live without it. 

And when meetings overran today so I had no time for making soup, the leftovers made an excellent inna bun.

The soup though, is happening. It's chestnut and chickpea, with what should be fresh pasta offcuts (it's from the A-Z of Pasta. But easy to amend to dried, I found. 

Based of chopped onion and celery, sweated off till soft. Add a pack of crumbled chestnuts, and a tin of chickpeas (two tins if you want it for several people). Add rosemary and garlic. 

 

You need liquid, which might be the chickpea water, but you'll probably need more water, and I ended up using a stock cube because I was also adding dried pasta that needed longer cooking at this point. 

It's about 20 minutes at a not too hard boil. Gloopy soupy stew, of pleasing autumnality.

But sometimes, I still want bracing. And boy, does the crunchy fresh section of Crave have some recipes that work for that. Lunches earlier in the week were carrot salad. 

Well, carrot and lemon. Actual bits of lemon, mixed in with grated carrot (should be shredded in ribbons which is lovely if you have a julienne peeler and an afternoon), with bits of shredded mint and sesame seeds. 

 

The dressing is orange flower water, ground ginger, oil, honey, and the juice that ran out of the lemon while I was peeling and chopping it. 

Bread, cheese and a salad that smacks you round the chops. We'll get through this. 

 ETA Doh, forgot to mention pears. Stewed, in sherry, with water, sugar, lemon peel, cardamom, cinnamon, bay, fennel, ginger, I forget what else. Autumnal though: