Exotic Pumpkin & Butternut Salad on Whipped Feta

A delicious Salad to serve this Christmas!

Christmas is traditionally a meat festival, but a good host includes some vegetarian dishes as well, to serve as either a side for the meat-eaters in your midst, or for vegetarians to dish up as their main.

We often don’t cater well enough for vegetarians, but when you serve this salad you will find that many of your meat-eating guests will go back to serve themselves more too! It’s light, yet filling and as it can be served up warm or cold, it makes the perfect dish!

Ingredients

• 5-6 Exotic pumpkins and butternuts sliced into 2-3cm slices
  You can use only one or the other or use an even mix of both.

• 1 cup of olive oil

• 3 tsp smoked paprika

• 1 tsp cinnamon 

• 1 tsp coriander

• 20g fresh thyme

• 100g walnuts

• 200g plain feta cheese

• 200ml double thick greek yoghurt.

• 2 tbsp pesto

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

How to make the Butternut & Pumpkin Salad

1. Slice the butternuts and pumpkins into 2-3 cm thick slices and place on a baking tray, making sure not to crowd the tray. Rather use two trays if necessary.

2. Mix the smoked paprika, cinnamon and coriander with the olive oil and then drizzle over the butternut and pumpkin slices on a baking tray. Shred the thyme over the dish under and on top of the slices

3. Bake at 200 degrees Celsius (or 390 degrees Fahrenheit) for 25 - 30 minutes until they are slight charred and the flesh is soft. 

4. Toast the walnuts in a hot pan without oil.

5. Use a blender to mix the feta and yoghurt and blend on high speed until smooth.

6. Take out 4 tbsp of the feta and yoghurt mix and add it to the pesto.

7. It is time to assemble your salad:

   Spoon a thick layer of whipped feta onto a serving dish. Place the butternut and pumpkin slices on top. Sprinkle the toasted walnuts over. Lastly dot blobs of the pesto whipped feta mix. Season to taste with salt and pepper before serving. 

Enjoy! Please tag me on Instagram if you’ve made this recipe, I’d love to see it!

This dish is wonderful as a vegetarian main dish, a colourful side on your Christmas table (pairs well with this slow-roasted leg of lamb recipe). Any leftovers make a yummy cold lunch the next day, perfect for the hot summer afternoons at this time of year! 

More Christmas recipes:

---

About Shawn Godfrey

Photo credit: Niki M Photography

Shawn Godfrey is an entrepreneur based in Cape Town, South Africa. After the Covid-19 lockdown saw his business in financial distress, cooking was the creative outlet that helped to keep him sane. To keep track of his recipes, and encourage friends and families to join him, he starts his instagram account The Roasted Dad.

Fast-forward to late 2021 - on a whim Shawn (encouraged by his wife Lianne) enters MasterChef South Africa. It is a crazy time of life: running a 200 people business and struggling to keep it profitable, two small children with a third on the way, and about to move into a new house. But when Shawn gets selected to be one of the 20 contestants participating in the fourth season of MasterChef South Africa, he decides to go all in. Leaving his 7-month-pregnant wife to look after their then three and one-year-old children, he battles it out and comes back home five weeks later with the trophy and a million rand prize money in his pocket.

It all started with an Instagram account, but The Roasted Dad is so much more now. Shawn has stayed his entrepreneurial self and whilst he hosts Private Dinner Parties and Cook-with-Me Demos, does Restaurant Take-Overs, he still runs the lighting company and several other businesses.

On his blog, Shawn shares Restaurant Reviews and Accommodation Reviews, and gives an insight into the wild and wonderful life he leads together with his wife Lianne, and their three children Aiden (6), Olivia (4) and Harvey (2).

Sign up to the newsletter below to be kept up to date with events, new recipes and reviews, or contact Shawn to chat about recipe creation, restaurant takeovers and public speaking events.