I first met Rob through friends of friends while watching Everton play away in Lisbon a few years ago. With a few notable exceptions, football trips abroad aren’t usually known for their abundance of vegan food – in fact, it’s a lucky day if you manage to stumble across any solid food at all amongst the sea of alcohol. Food wasn’t discussed.
Over the next months as I bumped into Rob at militarymovers.co military moving companies and at other matches and became his friend on Facebook, I noticed that he’s a bit of a food geek as well. He eats meat but he spent a short time challenging himself to eat vegetarian and one of his Facebook new year’s resolutions this year is to eat less meat. When I spotted the above picture on his twitter account, I sniffed vegan food a mile off and asked him if he’d mind sharing his recipe here, as part of my irregular series of posts from non vegans.
He apologizes for the lack of quantities (that’s my school of recipe writing!), but I think this is one of those recipes where it doesn’t matter much. Here’s his instructions:
Butternut and Green Bean Satay
Chop the squash into inch cubes (I always leave the skin on, adds another texture and flavour), oil, salt and roast in the oven for 15mins at full temp so that the squash is coloured but not quite cooked all the way through.
Blitz together in a food processor peanuts, red chilli, ginger, garlic, spring onions, lime zest, soy sauce and a bit of water to get the consistency of a loose paste.
Fry off in some inoffensive oil to cook out the rawness of the garlic and add some coconut cream/milk and a bit of water. Add the squash and leave to finish cooking all the way through. About 3 mins before the end add the beans (I think runner beans are best but couldn’t get any) to retain their crunch. Season if you need to, but the soy and chilli should have done the job.
Finish with lime juice and coriander to taste. Serve with rice and toasted cashews.
Thanks Rob, and I look forward to more vegan food adventures from you!
Cooking the Vegan Books 
Wow! This is a great and simple recipe! ^^ I should try it the next time I have a bit of squash around.
yum! I just can’t get enough butternut squash.
I really like this post; how cool that you would meet up and make friends with someone in that way, and the recipe is right up my alley too. I’m trying to cook more like this, just combining what I think will go. Plus, squash connoisseur that I am rapidly becoming, I did not realize you could eat the skin of butternut squash. Will try, probably tomorrow, as there’s a nice big one on my counter. The whole recipe looks totally yum, and maybe I’ll give it a whirl!