A Spoonful of Sugar

I don't think I've ever cooked with dried sage, let alone fresh, which is pretty shocking when you consider how much sage and onion stuffing I've scoffed in my time. I picked up some in Sainsbury's earlier this week with the thought of making a roasted squash recipe I spotted in last month's Good Food Magazine and was surprised at how wrinkled, grey-green and... fuzzy the leaves were. I think I had expected it to look somewhat like fresh bay leaves--a vibrant green, glossy, and inviting. This stuff reminded me of caterpillars, to be honest. If it wasn't for Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Kalyn herself this week, I probably would have omitted the sage entirely.

According to Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food, sage is part of the mint family. Looking more closely at the leaves, I can see the resemblance, although sage is definitely more fuzzy/hairy than any mints I've encountered so far. I nibbled on a raw leaf and it tasted a bit peppery and, well, grassy.

I have to admit that sage is playing more of a supporting role in this recipe than parading around in the limelight like a Hollywood starlet. The real stars are the vegetables. The butternut squash goes all squishy and incredibly sweet as do the tomatoes. I usually roast cherry tomatoes for far longer than five minutes until they've collapsed in on themselves and are incredibly sticky, but I think that would have been too much in combination with the sweetness of the squash. The tomatoes were just soft and only beginning to caramelise so they still had a tiny bit of acidity. Perfect. The chorizo did burn a little as I cut it very small in an effort to spread its flavour over all the veg, but I don't think it suffered for it. I quite liked the occasional bit of crunch amidst the meltingly soft squash, squidgy tomatoes and just-tender pasta. The sage helped to cut through the fattiness off the chorizo, I think, but I couldn't honestly pick out the flavour, even with some freshly shredded leaves sprinkled over. I guess I need to cook with it a bit more?

Now that we've got our own house I'm trying to figure out where best to site a herb garden and of course what to grow. Perhaps next to the plum tree? There must be plenty of light there. I think I could be persuaded to squeeze in a sage bush somewhere....