Some married people cheat when their husbands go out for the evening; I eat chickpeas.
Craig doesn’t like chickpeas. He’ll eat them if they’re ground into a hummus, but presented in its original form, he’d almost rather eat anything else. I, on the other hand, adore them for their versatility: you can stew them, you can roast them, or — as in the case here — you can fry them in oil, add lots of aromatics and spices, and serve them over butternut squash.
This recipe comes to us from Claire Saffitz by way of Bon Appetit and the first genius thing about it is the way that you cook the squash. Everything you need to know is in the picture above: set the oven to 425, put a whole butternut squash on the rack, and bake for an hour until a knife goes through easily. That’s all there is to it.
While that’s happening, you can make a yogurt sauce by whisking together yogurt, grated garlic, lemon juice, and salt. I also added Aleppo pepper because I like it.
Once the squash is out of the oven, you can get started on the chickpeas. You drain a can of chickpeas on paper towels to blot them dry and then you fry them in a few tablespoons of olive oil in a non-stick skillet until brown and crispy all over.
Once you get to that stage, you can add a chopped onion and a few cloves of minced garlic. When those are good and soft, you add two tablespoons of curry powder. I really love the Burlap and Barrel brand, which is what I used here.
You toss that all around, add salt, and remove to a bowl. Then, in that same skillet, you sear pieces of squash that you can tear with your fingers — pulling off the skin in the process. (It’s kind of fun.) Let it get really brown, flip it over, and season.
And that’s all of the cooking you need to do. Now it’s just an assembly job: put some squash into a bowl, top with chickpeas, spoon some yogurt on, and sprinkle with chopped parsley for some pizzazz.
This is my kind of “healthy” dinner; “healthy” in quotes because there’s a lot of frying in oil. But what are you ultimately eating? Vegetables! Legumes! So many vitamins, so many nutrients. Craig doesn’t know what he’s missing.
Seared Butternut Squash with Crispy Curried Chickpeas
Ingredients
Method
- Heat oven to 425 degrees. Place the butternut squash on a rack in the oven and cook for an hour or longer (I placed a cookie sheet underneath in case of leaks), until a knife goes through easily. Remove carefully, remove the stem, and when it cools, tear into large chunks, peeling off the skin as you go. Discard the part with the seeds.
- While the squash is cooking, you can make the yogurt sauce by whisking together the yogurt, the grated garlic, the lemon juice, salt (to taste), and Aleppo pepper.
- In a non-stick skillet, heat two tablespoons of the olive oil on medium-high heat. Add the chickpeas, toss all around, and cook for a while — at least five minutes — until brown and crispy all over. Some of them might pop; don’t be scared. When they’re good and crisp, add the onion and remaining garlic and cook another five minutes, until the often is soft. Finally, add the curry powder, toss all around, sprinkle generously with salt, toss again, and remove to a bowl.
- Now, in the same skillet, heat the remaining two tablespoons of olive oil and sear your butternut squash pieces, cut-side down, until deep-golden brown. Flip, sear a little on the other side, and season with salt.
- To plate: lift squash into serving bowls, spoon on the chickpeas, dollop on the yogurt sauce, and sprinkle with parsley and pomegranate seeds, if you have them.
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