A walk in the garden - Looking at the second course of my pop-up restaurant

Squish Squash. I still LOVE that name. So anyway, this week is about course 2 - squish squash. It's just something that happens when you're walking through a garden. Sometimes you step on something accidentally, and that's beautiful for me. 

Now the course. Butternut squash puree, roasted arugula, roasted cherry tomatoes, candied pecans, feta. The 5 elements of this dish. In the process of perfecting these elements, I encountered another of my favourite things about food...serendipity. In fact, serendipity changed 4 of the 5 elements in this dish, and all for the better.

The puree. Now when thinking of this, it was obvious that I'd have to splatter the squash. 

So, the simple way to do it was to roast the squash with some cinnamon, ginger and clove powder and then puree it with some oil to give it a nice smooth texture. Now that's a very simple way to do it, and that was the idea for the final meal. But that didn't happen. 

Case 1 of serendipity (Squash puree):  When I was in the US staying with my aunt, I decided to make this dish for her and her fiancee as a way of thanking them for letting me stay. While I was making it, I decided to use her immersion blender to puree the squash. However, there wasn't enough squash for the blender to work properly, so it kind of just shredded some of it and pureed some of it. But that beautiful mashed/shredded squash looked even more like a squished squash than the puree, so that's what I decided to use in the final meal. One piece of advice though, Take about a third of the squash and puree it nicely with some oil. Mash the remainder and mix the two. It'll splatter easier and still look nice. That's something I realised AFTER the pop-up, and I wish I'd done. 

The arugula. Arugula is pretty simple. Cut off some of the stem, toss it in some oil, salt, pepper, garlic and lemon, and then plate it. Nothing too difficult. And this would have made a great salad on its own. BUT, serendipity made a difference here again. 

Case 2 of serendipity (Roasted arugula): One of the nights, when I was making my salad, my helper mistakenly put the tossed arugula into a frying pan and roasted it nicely. That was probably the luckiest break in this dish. That little bit of roasting softened it up and made the dish SO MUCH more pleasant. It was seriously brilliant. 

The tomatoes. The only element untouched by serendipity, and the most boring one. Just tossed them in some salt, pepper and oil and baked them in the oven with a lot of garlic. That's literally all it was. The only thing was that I roasted it a lot, so it got really soft, which may actually have been a mistake.

The pecans. My favourite element. Those pecans could be eaten plain and still been a meal. Seriously, when I say that you have to try this recipe, trust me, YOU MUST.

The pecans are basically candied in water, brown sugar, cinnamon, salt, oranges and vanilla. They've got so much depth of flavour, and it's beautiful how each flavour hits at a different time. The orange is the first thing you taste, then the vanilla and the brown sugar, and once the pecan's off your tongue, the cinnamon.

Case 3 of serendipity (Candied Pecans): Now you're probably wondering, if the pecans are so good, where's the scope for serendipity. There is. You taste a lot on your tongue, but you don't taste anything as it's going down the throat. That's where cayenne pepper comes in. While I was in the US, I could not find my aunt's cinnamon powder. While I was searching, I accidentally pulled out her cayenne pepper. And that's that. I decided to add it to the pecans, and now as they went down the throat, they left a tiny bit of spice and a good amount of that chilli flavour.

Now it's about here that you start thinking, this is probably (at least partly) made up. It just seems like too much luck and serendipity. Well...for starters, I made this dish 6 times over. More importantly, though, I mess up a lot in the kitchen, and it's usually in those types of mess ups (like using an immersion blender when there definitely wasn't enough butternut squash, not watching what's happening to my arugula or pulling out cayenne pepper instead of cinnamon) that I get lucky like this. 

Case 4 of serendipity (Feta cheese): I forgot to buy feta while I was at the supermarket, so I had to order it instead. While ordering, I saw that someone had garlic feta on sale that day, so I ordered it. The garlic really helped the dish a lot, and the feta was actually a better texture than the usual one I buy. 

Of course, the plating. First, I splattered the squash puree. Usually, plants are planted in rows when they're being grown, so I decided to plate my arugula in one straight line, like it would be planted. Odd numbers are usually more attractive, so I decided on 5 tomatoes per person, and 5 pecans per person. The pecans didn't fit in a straight line over the arugula, so I zig-zagged them across the leaves. Then, all that's left is the crumbled feta and the edible flowers. I wanted some more contrast, so I went with purple and pink.

Oh and bonus...serendipity case 5 (edible flowers): I wanted to use white, but I didn't have enough for the sorbet and the salad, so I had to come up with another colour, so I decided to use pink and purple, and it looked better than my trial run where I'd used white. 

Recipe - 

YOU MUST TRY THIS - Candied pecans - https://www.inspiredtaste.net/47514/easy-candied-pecans/