Sprout & Pea

I love nights when spon­tane­ity takes over and before you know it you’re sit­ting down enjoy­ing a big home cooked meal and a mil­lion laughs with a few of your clos­est friends. Sun­day was one such night, and I wanted to make some­thing spe­cial for the won­der­ful folks gath­ered around my table, so I decided to get fancy and break out the truf­fle oil. I also had a big but­ter­nut squash lay­ing around that I had for­got­ten to include in a veg­gie roast the other night, so I wanted to fig­ure out a way to incor­po­rate it into the meal.

I’ve always wanted to try mak­ing a truf­fle vinai­grette so I scoured the inter­net for a few recipes and then thought to myself, why not roast the but­ter­nut squash and toss it into a salad with the vinai­grette. I wanted a lit­tle extra fla­vor and tex­ture to bring it all together, so I decided on toasted pecans and a lit­tle shaved Pecorino. I whisked together an impromptu dress­ing, com­bin­ing a few recipes I found, and added my own lit­tle sweet twist. To my delight, in the midst of flow­ing con­ver­sa­tion, my friends all paused to give this on the whim salad a rav­ing review and I humbly had to agree. Les­son learned — you can’t go wrong with a lit­tle truf­fle. Here’s how to make it…

1 box organic mixed greens
1 but­ter­nut squash
1 tbs extra vir­gin olive oil for roast­ing squash
1 cup toasted pecans
1/​2 cup shaved Pecorino

Dress­ing:
I wound up tripling this and added a prob­a­bly lit­tle more here and there. You may want to add more truf­fle oil if you like an intense fla­vor.
1.5 tbs white wine vine­gar
1.5 tbs lemon
1.5 tbs white truf­fle oil
1 tbs extra vir­gin olive oil
1/​2 tbs honey
Pinch of salt or truf­fle salt

To roast the squash, cut into small cubes, dis­card­ing the skin, toss with olive oil and bake in a pyrex for about 30–35 min­utes. Let cool to room tem­per­a­ture (I placed squash in the refrig­er­a­tor for a few min­utes after cool­ing a bit). While it’s cook­ing, toast the pecans in a pan over low-​​medium heat, toss­ing every 30 sec­onds or so, mak­ing sure they do not burn.

For the dress­ing, mix together all ingre­di­ents, adding the honey and truf­fle salt last. Adjust ingre­di­ents as desired depend­ing upon how much truf­fle or sweet­ness you like.

Com­bine the salad, pecans, squash and Pecorino in a large bowl and slowly mix in the dressing.