Spiced pumpkin & pomegranate salad

If Father Christmas was a salad, he'd be this salad.

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I’ve tried to grow so many aspirational pumpkins. If you’re new to veggie gardening maybe you don’t know that aspirational pumpkin growing is a thing. It totally is.

I have grown big pumpkins, small pumpkins, pumpkins with dark knobbly braille-like skin, pumpkins with fancy names and pumpkins that are blue-grey and so huge they need to be cut with a butcher’s knife. But I have decided that nearly all of that was wasted energy. The only pumpkin I should have been growing, all these years, was the butternut.

No other pumpkins I have ever grown (or tasted) compare in terms of texture or flavour to the butternut. Butternuts are sweeter, smoother and - when roasted long enough and hot enough - turn to caramel on your oven tray. They are not only worthy of a spot in your garden (and will happily pop up uninvited from your compost bin), they are worthy of a spot on your dining table. Toss them with lemon juice, rocket, roasted almonds and bright red pomegranate jewels* and you’ve got yourself the only salad you’ll need this Christmas.

*Pomegranates are another super hardy and fantastic edible tree to grow in your own backyard!