Autumn salad with roasted veg & cumin paprika dressing

When I was younger, I would always say Autumn was my favourite season. The colours of the trees still excite the artist in me, as I suspect they do for anyone who loves nature or colour. Deep reds, bright, sun burnt oranges, yellows and bronzes. I don't see the impending death they foreshadow, only a last glorious attempt to reveal their true nature. Still, it's a shame they don't reveal these colours in the Spring, heralding in the warm heady days of Summer to come, like a prelude to all the fun. These days I would be more likely to say Summer was my favourite season, for obvious reasons, (I live next to a beach, for one), but I still love the trees, even though it's slightly diminished with a companion who sighs and says Winter is coming every time he sees a red leaf.

If we can reflect these colours in our cooking in the Autumn, we can feel happier knowing we are eating seasonally. Nature provides a vast array of these colours at this time of year anyway. Squashes in a rainbow of different shades, peppers, twisted and often multi coloured, beets, blood red, sunset yellow and striped candy pink and root vegetables like knobbly celeriac and sweet parsnips. Whereas in the Summer all the colours are bright and true, the colours of Autumn vegetables become deeper and richer, reflecting the intensity just before they fade. I decided to make a roasted vegetable salad, partly inspired by a Moroccan cookbook I recently bought which has become a new favourite. The earthy, heady flavours of cumin, turmeric and paprika seem to resonate well with Autumn and pomegranate molasses adds a sweet, tangy edge.

This salad is basically my Autumnal version of a Summer roasted vegetable salad. For that I used farmers' market vegetables in shades of bright pink and red and colourful heirloom tomatoes like the striped green zebra and the deep red carbon. The peppery leaves growing in my little garden provided an alternative to the spicy Summer leaf mix I used back in the Summer. The one common element was the bell peppers, enjoying a long, leisurely season of growth, thanks in part to their ability to thrive in green houses.

Recipe : Autumn salad with roasted veg & cumin & pomegranate dressing

1/2 medium sized kobacha squash

2 beets

2 tomatoes

1 large bell pepper

a couple of cauliflower florets

2 garlic cloves

1/2 an onion

1 chili pepper

2 tbsp oil

salt and pepper

a handful of mixed greens

Dressing

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 tbsp pomegranate molasses

1 tsp apple cider or white vinegar

1/4 tsp ground cumin

1/4 tsp paprika

a little salt

Preheat the oven to 400oF.

Cut the squash in half, remove the seeds and then cut into chunks, (no need to peel yet). Peel the beets and cut into quarters. Halve the tomatoes. Seed and cut the bell pepper into large chunks. Chop the onion into thick chunks. Leave the garlic cloves whole and seed the chili pepper if you want a milder taste or leave whole if you like it spicier. 

Throw all these vegetables, including the cauliflower, into a baking tray and drizzle with the oil. Season generously with salt and pepper and roast in the oven for about 45 minutes, by which time most of the vegetables will be very soft and place in a large bowl. You may need to let the beets roast a little longer. Either remove them to another smaller baking tray and roast for a further 15 minutes or so, or remove everything else from the main baking tray to a bowl and put the beets back into the oven. After 15 - 20 minutes, the beets should also be soft enough to pierce easily with a knife. Remove from the oven and add to the bowl with the other vegetables, (you can now peel the squash, which can be literally squeezed out of it's skin and also squeeze the garlic from it's papery skin and crush with a fork to mix into the salad).

Add the greens and stir well, but very carefully. This was the first time I have cooked Kobacha squash and was immediately smitten with it's earthy, sweet and nutty flavour with a scent a little like roasting chestnuts. It became very, very soft, however and the reason it is popular for soups became apparent. It will probably turn to mush in this salad, as it did in mine, but don't despair, it adds a silky smooth texture.

For the dressing, mix the ingredients together in a bowl and beat well with a fork to emulsify the oil, molasses and vinegar. Taste the dressing. It should be warm and earthy, a little spicy, tangy, sour and sweet. Adjust to your liking, adding a little more of this or that and adding a few pinches of salt also, if you like. When you are happy with it, pour over the salad and mix together well.

I enjoyed the salad just as it was, but some flat bread and hummus or the eggplant dip baba ghanoush would make a nice accompaniment. The salad would also be a great colourful side dish to a piece of roasted meat or stuffed into a pita bread with some kebabs and chili sauce.

Even though it's been stated many times before, remember to be careful if you use the deep red beets. The relentless juice will bleed and stain everthing it touches a deep pink, which is very attractive but also a nuisance. It will stain your cutting board, your hands and all other vegetables until everything becomes unrecognizable in it's own right. The stain will fade from your hands pretty quickly and can successfully be removed from chopping boards with warm, soapy water and time, but your vegetables will not fade. This can also be a very handy culinary trick and a piece of beet is often used to turn pickled turnips bright pink and even give tomato consomme a more intense colour. If you don't disturb the beets too much during cooking, you can create some very attractive marbling effects on vegetables such as onions.

Finally, I used a few of the pickled carrots I made previously, see here, in the salad. The taste is intensely bitter and salty, (quite similar to pickled lime chutney very popular in Indian food) and they need to be used very sparingly, but they do add another element to the kaleidescope of tastes already present in the salad.