Another autumn evening, another squash dish. A tray bake is always welcome, especially such a low-effort one: chicken and squash with shawarma-style spice marinade.
Marinade ingredients
The flavours are inspired by a classic Middle Eastern shawarma: meat roasted on a spit. The combination is classic: cumin and coriander, paprika and turmeric, with a hint of cloves and lots of black pepper. That mix is combined with yoghurt because yoghurt makes any marinade more efficient.
It acts like a guide, leading the spices deeper into the meat than they would manage on their own, thus enhancing the flavour. Yoghurt also tenderises meat: calcium and lactic acid it contains help break down proteins and interact with enzymes in the meat, encouraging them to relax. And it gives meat a nice caramelisation which is especially important in a dish like this: you don’t want watery chicken to make the squash soggy on the tray they share.
Yoghurt is only added to the chicken strips but the spice mix is used to flavour the squash as well. Once you’ve mixed the spices with honey, oil and cider vinegar, set aside about three tablespoons for the squash and add the yoghurt to the remaining mixture: that’s for the chicken.
How to prepare the squash
Crown prince is one of my favourite squashes, because its flesh is slightly starchy, sweet and dense rather than watery or stringy like acorn or spaghetti. Squashes come in all sizes and hues, and they differ in texture as already stated, but the taste, let’s be honest, is not the most distinctive. Hence marinating the crown prince as well as chicken helps make two rather bland ingredients turn into a tasty and flavoursome dish.
You can leave the (hat on) skin on in most squashes but this one is a toughie, and the greenish layer underneath the skin also needs to go. Use a vegetable peeler and lots of care, especially when cutting it in half – as I said, it’s one tough customer.
When peeled and halved, scrape the core and seeds with a spoon and now you can chop the flesh as you wish – I suggest wedges this time.
One tray bake
The tray had better be large, to fit all the squash and also the chicken strips in one layer. You can line it with parchment to minimise the mess, though experience tells me there will always be a tear in the parchment somewhere, or it will get scrunched up and leak.
The squash goes in first, for about half an hour, turned over once.
Once it is looking nicely caramelised around the wedges-edges, push it all to one side to make space for the chicken.
It will only take five to ten minutes to cook through, as long as it’s spread on the tray in a single layer.
How to serve the chicken and squash?
A very versatile dish, it can be served traditionally with rice, pasta or baked potatoes on the side.
But since it’s inspired by shawarma, I like to serve it with a flatbread, pita or lavash, like a proper Middle Eastern kebab or a Greek gyros. The flatbread of course can be shop-bought unless you’d like to explore baking them.
And another, lean and healthy, way of serving the chicken and squash is drawing on the south-east Asian lettuce cups. Serve the dish alongside a pile of lettuce leaves, Romaine, Cos or even iceberg, with some cucumber slices and a yoghurt dip. The diners will load a leaf or two with the meat and squash creating a cup of sorts, dip in condiments and eat with their fingers. It’s as messy as it’s enjoyable.
More chicken recipes
Korean cheese buldak, chicken chunks in a spicy sauce covered with a layer of cheese melted under the grill, is just as tasty as it sounds. I add mushrooms to the chicken, to bump up my plant intake, and they go deliciously with the dish.
Orange chicken, spicy, fresh and sweet, ready in twenty minutes including all the chopping, is an easy stir fry lighter and healthier than the orange chicken from American Chinese restaurants. Especially delicious if you top the dish with caramelised orange segments.
Oven cooked chicken shawarma, fragrant with spices, is made from chicken thigh pieces marinated overnight and threaded on skewers. Serve with a warm flatbread for the home-cooked equivalent of beloved Middle Eastern street food.
More squash recipes
Acorn squash stuffed with a vegetarian mix of mushrooms and rice, topped with cheese, baked in the oven, that’s one of the best squash recipe ideas. And an easy, delicious autumnal supper to boot.
Five-spice butternut squash in cheesy custard, with orange rayu (Japanese chilli oil) is precisely the treatment the squash needs to be a great dish. No surprise, it’s a recipe from Ottolenghi.
Kabocha squash gratin, a creamy, cheesy, delightfully comforting winter dish using a lesser known squash, also known as Japanese pumpkin. The recipe is thoroughly homely though: kabocha slices baked in cream and cheese flavoured with thyme.