Now let’s cook
Roasted squash. Greek yoghurt is off the team sheet today: the sauce is suzbe, katyk that was given time to drain.
Ingredients
- 1400 g squasha sweet squash such as butternut, roasted with its skin on
- 1 tsp ground cinnamonready-ground cinnamon
- 90 ml olive oila third of it coats the squash before it goes in the oven and the rest goes into the coriander paste
- 50 g corianderfresh coriander, leaves and stalks together in the paste (50 g), plus a few more leaves for serving
- 3 g garlicfresh garlic (one clove weighs about 3 g)
- 20 g pumpkin seedsshelled green pumpkin seeds, dried off in the oven
- 400 g katyka thick fermented milk, thicker than ayran: milk is cooked down over low heat, then soured with a starter (the recipe uses ready-made katyk from a shop, and plain yoghurt works too)
- 0.5 g ground red peppera powder of dried hot red pepper
- ¾ tsp fine saltordinary table salt
Method
Line a sieve with gauze, put the katyk in and set the sieve over a bowl. Leave it in the fridge overnight, for about 8 hours: the whey runs off and about 200 g of thick suzbe should be left. If there is more, let it drain longer.
Heat the oven to 220 °C. Halve the squash lengthways, scoop out the seeds and cut it into wedges about 2 cm thick and 7 cm long, leaving the skin on.
In a large bowl, toss the wedges with the cinnamon, a third of the oil and the salt, until the oil coats every wedge.
Lay the wedges skin side down on two baking trays and roast for 35–40 minutes, until they are soft and starting to colour on top. Take them out and leave them to cool.
In a small food processor, blitz the coriander with its stalks, the garlic, the rest of the oil and a pinch of salt into a fine paste.
Turn the oven down to 180 °C. Spread the pumpkin seeds over a baking tray and dry them off for 6–8 minutes, then let them cool.
Just before serving, stir the ground red pepper into the suzbe. Arrange the wedges on a platter, spoon the suzbe over them, then the coriander paste, and finish with the seeds and a few coriander leaves.
