A few weeks ago, I wrote about Joshua McFadden’s twice roasted carrots, one of many delicious vegetable dishes I had made from his cookbook, Six Seasons. I’ve since discovered another one: roasted squash with yogurt, walnuts and spiced green sauce. The spiced green sauce, I learned, is called schug (pronounced skoog, sometimes spelled zhug), originating from Yemen, a blend of herbs, chilies, and toasted spices. Josh describes it as a “workhorse recipe,” and notes that at his restaurant, Ava Gene’s, they use it on everything: vegetables, grilled meats, and snacks of all kinds. With one taste, I could see why. t’s a perfect match for sweet, roasted delicata squash, but Josh has other serving ideas, too: spread over grilled flatbread, seasoned in a pita pocket with sliced leg of lamb, and drizzled over roasted red peppers and crumbled feta, all of which sound delicious. I can endorse two other applications: 1. spread over toasted bread and layered with sliced salt-and-vinegar beets and 2. drizzled over roasted cauliflower and onions, as here.
Roasted Cauliflower with Schug
The recipe below is in fact the same formula as the roasted squash recipe: roasted vegetables + schug + lemony yogurt sauce. Here, the cauliflower and onions are tossed with olive oil, cumin, coriander, smoked paprika, and cayenne, but you could roast them simply with olive oil and salt. What I love about this dish is that you can replace the cauliflower or squash with any vegetable you like that takes well to roasting—flanked by creamy yogurt and herby schug, anything will taste good. A few notes: If you want to make it vegan, you could replace the yogurt sauce with a tahini sauce; if you want to bulk up this dish, you could serve it with some chickpeas; for a meaty variation, you could throw in some chicken, rubbed in the same spice mix, on the sheet pan and roast it alongside the cauliflower. The possibilities are endless. I’m dreaming of making falafel, drizzling it with schug, tahini sauce, and pickled turnips. As always, I’ll keep you posted. Here’s the play-by-play: Cut up a head of cauliflower. Season it with ground cumin and coriander, along with smoked paprika, cayenne, salt, and olive oil: Meanwhile, make the yogurt sauce: yogurt, lemon juice and salt. Ready to assemble? Smear some yogurt sauce over a plate. Have the schug nearby … Pile the roasted cauliflower over top and drizzle with schug. Serve with bread, of course. Here’s the roasted delicata squash with the schug and yogurt sauce: 5 from 8 reviews If you don’t feel like toasting and grinding whole spices, you can use ground. Regarding parsley and cilantro: I have simply been using 1 standard (vague, I know) grocery store bunch of each. In other words, each is not massive, each is not tiny. I measured the first time I made it; I haven’t measured since. For cilantro, you can use stems and all. For parsley, I cut off the thick stems at the end of the bunch, but otherwise, I don’t worry about plucking off each leaf. If you don’t have green chilies, I’ve had success making this without them and a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes, adding more to taste. I served this with toasted day-old overnight focaccia, but naan or pita would be particularly good — all of this bundled in a wrap would be delicious. Chickpeas would be nice alongside here, too.
