Mark Hix offers roast pumpkin and pickled-walnut salad recipe

Mark Hix, a restaurateur and writer based in Lyme Regis, Dorset, has published a recipe for a roast pumpkin and pickled walnut salad that combines roasted and shaved squash for contrasting textures.

Hix says he grows several squash varieties and used a ripe crown prince for this dish, though he notes any ripe, orange-fleshed squash will work. The recipe, which serves four as a side, calls for about 400g squash flesh, rapeseed or olive oil, salad leaves, optional tarragon and four pickled walnuts; the dressing is cider vinegar, a tablespoon of pickled-walnut liquor and 3–4 tablespoons of rapeseed or pumpkin-seed oil. He instructs shaving a third of the flesh into ribbons and chilling them in iced water, roasting the remaining chunks in hot oil at 200C for about 30 minutes, then whisking the dressing with any leftover roasting oil and finishing with toasted pumpkin seeds if liked.

Hix writes that squashes keep for months and ideally need to cure and ripen before use; he also says a friend, Rob Corbett, recently gave him several specimens from Castlewood vineyard in east Devon. He plans to try different varieties in a prepared, composted bed mulched with seaweed, and his latest limited-edition book, Fishy Tales, is published at £90.

Key Topics

Culture, Mark Hix, Lyme Regis, Dorset, Castlewood Vineyard, Rob Corbett