Happy Thursday Darling Lovely readers! As a vegetarian, I have to say that I find traditional Christmas food particularly awful. What can you give a veggie for Christmas lunch except for nut roast, not my favourite food in the world, or the side dishes that come with the meat eaters’ main meals?

Luckily, we have a very marvellous food blogger, Chloe Adlington of The Loveliest Food, on hand with a delicious vegetarian feast with a Mediterranean edge that will blow tradition out of the water. Of course, this dish is wonderful year-round, but I wanted to put it up just before Christmas in case any of you have a veggie coming for Christmas dinner and wanted to whip them up something easy and special. Thank you so much, Chloe, for your wonderful recipe – I will hand over to our guest chef now!

Squash, roast vegetable and feta cous cous

Chloe here from The Loveliest Food popping in to say hello… I know it’s customary for guests to bring sweet treats (maybe next time) but instead I’ve got an easy, healthy and very tasty mid-week dish for you.

It’s one of our favourite suppers at the moment, I concocted it a few weeks ago and now it’s become a weekly staple.  You can use whatever vegetables you have in the fridge and goat’s cheese works too if you’re all out of feta!

You will need

♥ Half a butternut squash, peeled, cored and cubed
♥ 1 yellow pepper, roughly chopped
♥ 1 courgette, sliced
♥ 1 red onion, sliced
♥ 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
♥ Fresh thyme leaves
♥ 1 block of Feta, cubed
♥ 3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
♥ 5 tbsp olive oil plus extra for drizzling
♥ 1 tbsp mixed dried herbs
♥ 400ml cous cous
♥ 3 heaped tsp of Swiss Bouillon powder made up to 700ml of stock

Step one

Preheat your oven to 200’c then in a small bowl mix the crushed garlic, olive oil, mixed herbs and balsamic vinegar together.

Step two

Pour this dressing over the cubed squash in an ovenproof dish / tin and roast for 30mins or until soft and golden at the edges.

Step three

In a separate dish drizzle olive oil over the chopped onion, courgette and pepper. Sprinkle over some fresh (or dried) thyme leaves and roast for 20mins, or until soft and browning slightly.

Step four

Around 10 minutes before the all the roast vegetables are ready make up the vegetable stock and pour over the cous cous in a pan. Simmer with a lid on for a few minutes or until all the stock has been absorbed. Turn off the pan and leave for a further five minutes.

Step five

Fluff up the cous cous with a fork then stir in the roasted squash, vegetables and cubed feta.

Step six

Serve with a drizzle of olive oil and a few extra thyme leaves.

It will make enough for four, or two suppers and two office lunches. I hope you enjoy and you’re very welcome to pop over to TLF for more lovely food any time… Chloe x