fall food in summertime

It's always disconcerting to go grocery shopping in late August and see that the entire front of the store is filled with ripened pumpkins and butternut squash. Surely those things shouldn't be ready until after Labor Day, at the earliest. We're talking about common decency here, and keeping fall things in their proper season, which is fall, which has no business starting in August. (Though last night's horrible weather at the Museumsufer Fest felt like a jump straight back into mid-winter; clearly Frankfurt has no sense of weather decency.)

And yet here I am contributing to this late August indecency, because I bought myself a butternut squash at the end of last week. For shame. I spent a while wondering Friday what I was going to do with it until finally stumbling on a recipe I'd seen before, on both Smitten Kitchen and Orangette, no less, which is pretty much the closest thing a recipe gets to an official stamp of "this is going to be delicious."

Warm Butternut and Chickpea Salad with Tahini Dressing
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, who adapted it from Orangette, who adapted it from Casa Moro

Yield: four servings (more like two servings as a main dish, four as a side)

For salad:
1 medium butternut squash (about 2 to 2 1/2 pounds), peeled, seeded, and cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
1 medium garlic clove, minced or pressed
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt
One 15-ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed (1 1/2 cups)
1/4 of a medium red onion, finely chopped (I don't love red onion and so used white onion instead)
1/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro or parsley (I went with parsley)

For tahini dressing:
1 medium garlic clove
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 tablespoons well-stirred tahini
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more to taste
sea salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 220°C/425°F.

In a large bowl, combine the butternut squash, garlic, olive oil, and a few pinches of salt. Toss the squash pieces until evenly coated. Roast them on a baking sheet for 25 minutes, or until soft (25 minutes was just right for me and my mini-oven). Remove from the oven and let cool a little.

Meanwhile, make the tahini dressing: In a small bowl, whisk together the garlic and lemon juice. Add the tahini, and whisk to blend. Add the water and olive oil, whisk well, and taste for seasoning, adding salt and pepper if you want. The sauce should have plenty of nutty tahini flavor, but also a little kick of lemon. I added a little bit of extra olive oil and water to balance things out, and a few cracks of pepper and sea salt.

To assemble the salad, combine the squash, chickpeas, onion, and cilantro or parsley in a mixing bowl. Add about a third of the tahini dressing to taste, and toss carefully, and serve with remaining dressing on the side.

I stored the leftover dressing separately from the salad and added it to taste just before eating. You can warm the leftovers back up in the microwave before dressing and eating, or so I hear; having no microwave, I can only vouch for the fact that the leftovers are also quite tasty left cold.