Nothing says fall to me quite like sage. Just to look at it makes me feel like leaves should be turning and falling from the trees. I think of roasted pork, brown butter, and of course the collectively revered turkey and dressing. Rubbing the soft, almost plush leaves with your fingers not only feels like the velveteen green melts into your fingers, but also releases their aroma. It has a pronounced scent that somehow remains soft—nothing too intrusive or pungent, not from just one leave anyway—and herbaceous. Parsley tastes as green as its leaves are, and I feel similarly about this synesthesia with sage; its pale gray-green color tastes darker, softer, muskier than verdant green-leafed herbs. It has notes of eucalyptus, cedar, dried mint and the slightest hint of lemon. It’s incredibly fall-esque. It’s assertively warm, playfully bitter and a bit like dried grass, and while I know that saying something tastes like a bale of hay isn’t exactly enticing this is different; it has this amazing ability of tasting more like harvest-time than the actual harvest.
But sage gives me guilt. Much as I love it I sometimes feel like I hold it with too high a sacrosanctity. I reserve it for stuffing into the cavity or under the skin of a bird, mixing into a dressing for Thanksgiving, or something with a really good pork sausage that’s studded with fennel seeds. It grows in the garden all summer long, beautifully, and yet I can hardly touch it. I will say that the guilt is slightly fleeting because, planted ornamentally it’s beautiful; it grows into a gorgeously mounding shrub, silver-green leaves almost sparkling in the sun, and in the late spring or early summer it blooms tiny purple trumpet-like flowers along a tall, narrow stem. But for the purposes of cooking, it is so much more than the Thanksgiving herb. It is excellent with apples and pears in savory, sweet and cocktail applications. The Italians love it with veal for the Roman dish saltimbocca. A leftover holiday ham bone can be used to make split-pea soup as my mother always did, but frankly I’d much rather use it for a white bean soup with sage. You can see why it also pairs so well with other fall and winter-harvests, like squashes and sweet potatoes, because their sweetness accepts the herbal and assertive grassiness of the sage. It can’t be used with the reckless abandon you would get away with using parsley because it can overtake the dish with even just a pinch too much of the herb.
While sage works with sweet things impeccably, it craves something sour or the slightest bit bitter, and while I can’t validate its culinary significance, there has been a recent influx of cucumber-sage candles on the market and, though it sounds odd, is really fabulously pleasant. But, really, this isn’t surprising when you consider that, with sage in your garden, should you have it and one, that when a cool summer breeze grabs it and you catch a whiff, it is absolutely ethereal. In fact, white sage, though a different variety than the common culinary sage, is used by Native Americans to cleanse, purify and bless people and their dwellings, and I’ve read that some cultures consider sage a bringer of good luck and fortune when planted at the front of your homestead.
I think the best way to celebrate sage (and fall) is with this salad. Butternut squash gets tossed with some sage, its aroma rubbing onto the squash’s sunburst orange flesh, and roasted until soft and sweet. The sage kind of tames and sullies the custardy-sweetness of the squash so that it’s meaty and savory rather than something akin to pie filling. The dressing combats this sweetness, too. Roasting the lemons not only gets the essential oils in the rind flowing, perfuming the everything with the pure aroma of the lemon, while the pulpy flesh scotches a little and takes on a smoky-sweet flavor. The juices you get from these lemons are darker—almost cloudy, like old gold—and with more bitterness. This is exactly what you want, because it creates harmony; bitter lemon, sweet squash, warming herbaceous sage, and slightly pepper arugula. I like shaving some sharply salty Parmigiano-Reggiano on to it, but a bleu cheese crumbled overtop would be fantastic, too.
The other thing that I love about this salad is that there is virtually no waste when it comes to the squash. I scoop out the seeds, wash them, dry them and then roast them in a little olive oil so they add a little crisp and crunch to the salad. So to that harmony of bitter, sweet, herbaceous, peppery, and salty, now add crunchy. It’s perfect. I serve it as a meal but you could easily serve it as a side or first course. Frankly, if you cut back on the arugula a little, just tossing in a handful or two of the tender and peppery leaves, you could make this as a side dish rather than a side salad.
First, the squash is cut open, gutted, has its skin peeled off and cut into 1” cubes.
Toss them with a little olive oil and minced sage and into a 425° oven they go.
Dump the squash guts and seeds into a bowl of water, squish them around to free the seeds. Pull out the seeds, dry them on some paper towel and then toss them in an oven-safe non-stick skillet with a little olive oil and salt. Toast them in the oven for 8 – 10 minutes, until they’re toasted and tanned.
Cut up some lemons—preferably unwaxed—toss them with a little olive oil and roast these, too. About 15 minutes is all they need—you want them scorched and caramelized, their pulpy flesh having almost turned to a jam. Set a fine-mesh sieve over a bowl, plunk in the lemon wedges and push on them with a wooden spoon so their cloudy juices drain out and all the seeds are held back. Whisk in some salt and extra virgin olive oil until it all comes together. It should taste bitter, as it is this slight shock to the jaw that combats the exuberant sweetness of the squash. If it is too bitter though, then whisk in just a pinch of sugar to help reestablish balance.
By this time the squash should be done. Toss it with more fresh minced sage and tumble it over a bed of baby arugula (and baby kale, too, if you want), and shallots that are sliced into thin rounds.
Sprinkle or crumble on some cheese—shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano or asiago, grate over Romano, drop little baby t-spoon-sized dollops of ricotta, or crumble bits of pungent bleu cheese.
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| Servings | Prep Time |
| 4 | 20 minutes |
| Cook Time |
| 40 minutes |
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Sweet butternut squash get the autumn treatment with fresh sage and a roasted lemon dressing for this fabulously fall flavored salad.
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- 1 butternut squash about 3 pounds
- 4 - 5 ounces baby arugula or a mix of baby arugula and baby kale
- 1/4 cup fresh minced sage leaves divided
- 2 shallots thinly sliced (enough to yield about 1/2 cup)
- 2 lemons quartered
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- Parmigiano-Reggiano, Romano, Asiago, Ricotta or Bleu cheese per preference
- 1 small pinch sugar
- Scant 1 t-spoon kosher salt
- Preheat oven to 425°F
- Peel the butternut squash and split it down the middle from the stem-end downwards. Scoop out the pulpy, seedy innards and throw into a bowl of water. Squidge the mush with your fingers to free the seeds and remove to some paper towel to dry.
- Toss the bone-dry seeds in an ovenproof skillet with a drop or two of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt. Place in the oven and roast, stirring every few minutes, until they’re toasted—about 8 – 10 minutes.
- Chop the squash into approximately 1 sq. in. cubes. Toss them with a little more of the olive oil, a good sprinkling of the salt, and about half of the sage leaves. Scatter on a baking sheet in a single layer and roast for 30 minutes, or until tender (I would check within 15 minutes just to see how it is progressing – sometimes it takes a mere 25 minutes, while other times, mysteriously though it is, it can take up to 40).
- In a separate, smaller, tray or tin, drizzle the lemon with a little olive oil—no salt yet—and place in the oven. Roast for 15 minutes, until they’re bronzed and scorched, the pulp having turned almost jam-like. Remove from the oven and drop the lemons into a fine mesh sieve placed over a bowl. Squish them down with a wooden spoon to extract their smoky-sour and cloudy juices. Season with a little salt and allow it to cool before whisking in the extra virgin olive oil. Taste the dressing—it should be a well-balanced mix of fresh, sour, smoky and bitter. The bitterness is important because it will offset and accentuate the sweetness of the squash and the sage’s musky earthiness.
- Once the squash is fully cooked, remove from the oven and toss them, on the tray, with the remaining bits of sage.
- Arrange the greens and shallots on serving plates, top with the squash, drizzle with the dressing and sprinkle with the roasted seeds. Top the salads with your cheese of choice and serve.
-To make this vegetarian make sure you choose a cheese that doesn't have rennet in it (a lot of ricotta doesn't). Make sure to check the label--just know that, at least I'm pretty confident, you can't get true Parmigiano-Reggiano without rennet.