Vegan Recipe: Thai inspired Roasted Squash over Satay Sauteed Peppers with Coconut Rice

Roasted Squash over Satay Sauteed Peppers with Coconut Rice

One of my favourite things about being vegetarian is looking forward to the new produce as it comes into season. Strawberries in summer. Greens in the spring. When I think of autumn, I am most excited about the abundance of pumpkins and squash! I like lots of different types of gorgeous gourds, but butternut squash is easily my favourite. It's so versatile, easy to cook and easy to find that you can't really go wrong

For this butternut squash recipe I took the commonly seen flavour combination of butternut squash in coconut curry and got a little crazy by putting the coconut into the rice. I know, I know, what can I say I'm a rebel.  So then I thought, what is the awesome sauce that would make coconut rice truly rocking? Satay. 'But you can't make satay sauce if you haven't marinated it overnight' you say. To which I reply: Let's do this thing.

Thai inspired Roasted Squash over Satay Sauteed Peppers with Coconut Rice

This is a recipe in 3 parts and will take about 40-60mins from start to finish and it was well tasty...

Roasted Squash Ingredients

1 butternut squash
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp all spice

Coconut Rice Ingredients

1 cup of rice
1 cup water*
1 cup coconut milk *

*This is a bit of a ball park, the trick with rice is to pour double the amount of water into the pot as rice by volume and then cook it off. So when you pour the rice into the pan, look at how high it is on the side and the pour the water/liquid so that it's double that height.

Satay Saute Ingredients

1/2 tbsp peanut oil
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp sweet soy sauce
1 - 2 heaped tbsp of crunchy peanut butter
1/2 small chopped onion
1 small chopped yellow or red pepper

1.  Heat the oven to Gas Mark 7. Cut your squash open length ways and then scoop out the seeds. Next score the squash with a knife and then rub in the olive oil. Sprinkle the spices on top and then pop it in the oven for 30 - 40 mins or until soft and brown.
2. For the rice you, cook like normal rice but instead of using water you use diluted coconut milk. So pour the rice into a sauce pan, then add the liquid and then simmer until cooked through. Be careful to keep stirring the rice as coconut milk is more likely to increase the chances of the rice burning.
3. Now to the satay sauce. I generally use the last bit of the peanut butter jar, or a few peanut butter jars to do this which means I can put all of the sauce ingredients into the jar and then just shake them up...which makes me happy. Once the sauce is shaken, you can add your peppers and onions, and then shake it a little bit more. I treated my sauce more like a coating, but if you want liquid then you could add some coconut milk.
4. To make my satay saute, I heated about a tablespoon of peanut oil in a skillet and sauteed the saucy peppers & onions until aldente. Whilst cooking, the satay went a sort of dark brown and started to make crunchy bits, so I made sure to keep stirring as I went along. 
5. By the time the peppers are cooked and the rice is ready to eat i.e. when the liquid is absorbed and the rice is soft, you should be able to remove the roasted squash from the oven and serve. Yum yum.