Roasted Pumpkin Salad With Pumpkin Seed Pesto Dressing
The very first time I visited the USA and stayed with some friends, I offered to cook them some dinner.
As per modern Australian cuisine, I got sucked into making a fancy salad with all the beautiful trimmings.
With copious amounts of roasted vegetables, nuts, feta cheese, a delicious dressing — you name it… this was gourmet. Just how I, and many of my fellow fancy millennial Aussies, like my salads.
But much to my surprise, there was something in this salad that caught my American friends by surprise…
Roasted pumpkin.
Roasted Pumpkin Salad With Pumpkin Seed Pesto Dressing
Now, I get there’s this whole discord between Australians and Americans over what constitutes a pumpkin and squash. If it’s orange-ish in color, to me, it’s a pumpkin.
And, one observation I made as a visitor to America? The pumpkin is strongly associated with pumpkin pies, muffins, and lattes — all sweet foods. In Australia, we tend to use pumpkin a lot more in savory cooking.
The beauty of this recipe is that we can cast our differences aside and just use whatever we can get our hands on.
Whether that’s a pumpkin or butternut squash or even a sweet potato, if that’s what you have, use it! What really matters is that this is a prime growing season for squashes of all sorts, so we need to find delicious ways to eat them up!
This salad is much less gourmet than that night’s version. It’s simple, beautiful, and nourishing.
In this recipe, roasted pumpkin is paired with a homemade pumpkin seed pesto dressing!
The pumpkin pesto may be slightly darker in green color than a typical pesto because of the color of the pumpkin seeds. Don’t fret – it takes equally as delicious as any ordinary pesto. Not to mention you’ll save money because pine nuts are so darn expensive!
Do you ever add roasted squashes or pumpkins to a salad?
- 3cups pumpkinalready chopped and roasted
- mixed salad leaves, arugula or baby spinach
- 1tablespoon Wildly Organic Centrifuge Extracted Coconut Oil
- Wildly Organic Himalayan Pink Salt
- 1cup packed fresh basil
- 1/2cup Wildly Organic Soaked & Dried Pumpkin Seeds
- 1/2cup parmesan
- 1/3cup Wildly Organic Olive Oil
- 2cloves fresh garlic
- Wildly Organic Himalayan Pink Saltto taste
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Roast the chopped pumpkin in a preheated oven at 350F for 30 mins or until the edges start to crisp.
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Meanwhile, blitz the pesto ingredients in a food processor or blender until smooth.
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Place your salad greens in a bowl. You can either serve the pumpkin hot or cold. To turn the pesto into a dressing, and to make it easier to stir through the salad, spoon some into a cup & mix a little bit of water through to thin it. This will allow you to evenly stir it through the salad.
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Serve and enjoy!
- The pesto can be stored in the fridge for up to 3-4 days.
- Simply take what you need to make and add some water to use it as a dressing.
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