Mike van de Elzen: Warm butternut salad with black olive honey

Warm butternut salad w black olive honey & rocket oil 

Cook time: 25 minutes 

Prep time: 20 minutes 

Serves: 6 

Butternut salad

1 large butternut  

12 small tunnel house tomatoes  

2 tbsp sunflower oil  

flaky salt & black pepper 

Handful rocket leaves  

150 gm danish feta, crumbled  

1 cup walnut halves, toasted till crispy  

Kalamata Honey

12 pitted kalamata olives  

1 tbsp honey  

Rocket oil  

1 handful of rocket  

1/2 cup sunflower oil salt 

Preheat oven to 180*C.  

Carefully cut butternut in half and scoop out seeds.  

Slice into wedges and toss in a large bowl with the oil and flaky salt, spread out onto a roasting tray. Roast in oven for 25 minutes. After this time add the tomatoes onto the tray and cook for a further 10 minutes.  

Make the black olive honey by simply blitzing the olives and honey together until smooth.  

Remove the butternut and tomatoes from oven and arrange on serving dish, top with rocket, feta and toasted walnuts.  

Drizzle with the olive honey and rocket oil.

To make the black olive honey

Simply blitz olives and honey together until smooth.  

To make the rocket oil

Bring a pot of salted water to a rapid boil. Drop in your rocket and count to 5, remove and drop straight into boiling water. Once cold, squeeze out excess water and blitz quickly with oil. Pour over a sieve with a chux cloth and allow the oil to drip through slowly. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News talks 'b.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
It is time to talk to our resident chief, Mike
vander Ellison. Good morning, Good morning, love me to have
you with us. We're going to give people some inspiration
for winter salads because you get to about now and
you've been tuning out the same thing nine after night,
haven't you. It's good to have a little inspiration. Although
what I find quite funny is we're going to sort
of talk about pumpkins and butternuts and things today, and

(00:34):
that's all I've kind of been roasting up for the
last month, and I think everyone would quite like me
to move on. But this riskly does sound divine.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
It is, and the photo is amazing too. If you
have a look up at the photo, it's just it's
such a spectacle of color. So we harvested our pumpkins
and butternuts. Maybe I'll be coming up two months ago now,
so they've been sitting in the kiosk for two months,
and over that period the flesh just colors up and

(01:02):
also a lot of the flavor of the pumpkin develops
because they it concentrates so you lose a little of
that moisture and so that the flesh that's remaining is
a little bit stronger and a little bit sweeter.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Okay, I didn't know that. Well, I didn't know that
you could potentially well it makes sense, but I didn't
know that you could taste the difference.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
And the trick is to store them on their stalk okay,
upside down on the stalk, and then they won't go rotten.
Oh okay, yeah, that's a stalk up. They will tend
to go rotten over a period of times. Stalk down
they stay good for months and months and months. Incredible,
isn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah. Have you got your tomatoes and a tunnel house
as well?

Speaker 3 (01:45):
Yeah, so we So this recipe uses tunnel house tomato.
So we're in the depths of winter, you know, it's
not we're not in tomato season. So the tunnel house tomatoes,
some of those real small ones.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Are actually quite delicious.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
So if I was to use tomatoes at this time
of the year, I'd go for the little, tiny, kind
of still on the vine tomatoes. They tend to be
the best. So, yeah, it's a great, it's a great.
You've got to add a little bit of acid sometimes
into a salad, and I find that these little sweet
tomatoes that have been slightly roasted will do that.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Okay, talk us through the warm butternut salad with black olive,
honey and rocket oil. Sounds great.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
So that the butternut's pretty easy. Just take a large button,
cut that in half, scoop out the seeds, cut add
into maybe some big wedges, pop them into a bowl,
toss over a little bit of sunflour oil, a little
bit of flaky salt, spread them out onto a roasting
train and roast them on one hundred and eighty. They're
going to take about twenty five minutes. And whilst those

(02:48):
are roasting, you can do the color matera olive it.
I think I've spoken about this before in the past.
It's quite a unique combination with the saltiness of the
color mater olives and the sweetness of the honey, those
two going together. So it's twelve pitched color matera olives,
and I put them into like an old food processor
with like a table spoon to two tablespoons of honey,
blitz them together and it creates this sweet, salty, delicious

(03:15):
sort of dressing. That you drizzle over the top of
the buttonnut when it's ready. Just for the buttonnut's ready,
just chucking your tomatoes, a little bit of oil on there,
a little bit of salt. They'll take about ten minutes
on one eighty, just as you finish off the butternuts.
And then to make the rocket oil. The rocket oil
is not essential for this, but it does make it look.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
It gives it a bit of bougie.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
It gives it a bit of style because it heaps
the color. So to make the rocket oil, pot of water,
chuck some salt in there, bring it to a rapid boil,
take a handful of rocket, drop it into their counter
five remove it after five seconds straight into ice water.
After that time, squeeze out any excess water in that rocket.
Drop it into a blender with half a cup of

(03:57):
some flow of oil, and blend it on as high
as you can for as short as you can so
that maintains that beautiful color. Once that's blended, then you
pour it into a serve an inside the sieve. I
just put it like a clean chuckscloth. Pour that rocket pure,
I guess, into that Chucks cloth and just allow it
to drip through the chuck cloth into the bowl underneath.

(04:18):
Doape force it, otherwise it becomes very cloudy. Just let
it drip and it'll be super clear and vibrant and
colorful and all taste of the rocket. So pull your
button ut out of the oven, arranged that around on
your platter. I've got some Danish fetter, which is like
a cow soft fetter. Crumble that over the top, a
cup of walnuts that have been toasted. Drizzle over that

(04:39):
color mater olive dressing. And then finally you've got your
crystal clear, vibrant green rocket. All that drizzles over the
top of that to finish it really is quite a
It's a beautiful salad to serve it this time of
the year.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to use talks. There'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.