Roast the squash, crisp the chickpeas
Two things get browned properly and the dressing is mostly jam. It eats like dinner, not like a side.
At a Glance
Story
Delicata is the one winter squash you do not peel. The skin goes tender in the oven and holds the half-moons together, which is why this is the squash for a salad and butternut is not. The chickpeas want the opposite treatment. Dry them properly, then leave them alone in a hot dry-ish pan without stirring, and the outsides blister and split while the insides stay creamy. Stir them and you get a pan of warm chickpeas, which is a different and worse thing.
Ingredients
- 1 delicata squashhalved, seeded and cut into half-moons
- 1 chickpeasdrained and patted dry
- 2 oz arugula
- 2 cloves garlicroughly chopped
- 2 oz fetacrumbled
- 1 ½ tbsp dried tart cherries
- 1 bunch mintleaves picked
- 1 tbsp fig jam
- 1 tbsp pomegranate molasses
- 2 tsp honey
- 1 lemonquartered
- olive oilsalt, pepper
Method
A salad in the sense that it arrives cold in places, but nobody is going to mistake it for a starter. The dressing is fig jam and pomegranate molasses, which means it is thick, sweet and sour all at once, and it clings.
- Oven to 450F. Squash on a sheet pan with olive oil, salt and pepper, spread properly apart. 20 to 24 minutes, until the edges have gone dark and the flesh gives.
- While that happens, whisk the fig jam, pomegranate molasses, honey, the juice of two lemon wedges and a long pour of olive oil. Season it. It should be thick enough to coat a spoon.
- Film of olive oil in a pan over medium-high. Chickpeas in one layer, then hands off for 5 to 7 minutes. They will pop, which is normal and briefly alarming. Garlic in for the last 2 to 3 minutes, off the heat, then the juice of the last lemon wedges.
- Everything into a big bowl, arugula and dressing together. Toss until the leaves are barely wilting from the heat of the squash.
- Cherries, feta and torn mint over the top. Tear the mint at the last second; cut mint goes black and sulky within minutes.
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