Ed Smith. Photograph: Sam A Harris
Award-winning food and recipe writer Ed Smith cannot remember a time when he didn’t love cooking. Growing up in the Vale of Evesham in Worcestershire, he would come home from school and make dinner for himself and his three brothers. “My mum went back to work, so it was either cook for everyone or wait until seven or eight to eat. As a result, cooking became my enjoyable household task throughout my childhood,” he says.
Given the choice again, he would probably have opted for a career in food straight after Durham University, where he took a history degree. “But I’d always done well academically and it didn’t seem like the obvious thing in those days to go into restaurants or food,” he says. Instead, he trained as a lawyer and joined the global law firm, Freshfields, where 60 to 80 hour working weeks quickly became his norm, leaving no time for cooking or making plans to eat out – “the two things I most enjoyed”.
As an antidote, Smith started a website, rocketandsquash.com – still thriving on Substack 15 years on – that covered recipes, restaurants and all things food-related. “That was the handcuff I needed to make sure I cooked something new and ate in a new restaurant every week.”
It wasn’t long before he realised he preferred creating recipes such as spaghetti squash with roast tomatoes and pesto or sticky soy, sesame and ginger chicken on his laptop with a stove nearby, to 14 hour days ploughing through witness statements and regulatory reviews. So, he left Freshfields for catering college.
With four cookbooks now to his name, including Good Eggs, On The Side and The Borough Market Cookbook, Smith has zero regrets about quitting corporate law. He also writes for all the major food magazines, newspapers and websites, including Mob, and has a huge Instagram following (106K). What’s the secret to his social media success? “I think it’s about consistency and building a community. You have to let people into your life and create a persona they can really identify with. Then, every time people see you’ve posted a new video they know they are going to like the food and enjoy spending time with you,” he says.
Next spring will see a fifth, chicken-themed book, Peckish, which was “fun but hard to write because of the infinite possibility and versatility of chicken. There is so much you can do with it. Every time I thought I’d finished the book, I’d think of another 10 recipes that were better.”
Smith cooks chicken a lot for his wife, the poet and author, Laura Mucha (co-writer of his book about children’s food, Welcome To Our Table) and their son. And with autumn underway, squash is another ingredient that appears often on the family menu. This recipe is for onion squash, also known as potimarron or red kuri, “but whatever you call it it’s delicious, probably my favourite tasting squash,” says Smith “with a lower level of sweetness than butternut squash, along with a bit of chestnut and almond nuttiness”.
Alongside crowd-pleasing orzo, the dish also features ‘hot honey’. When did that become a thing? “It’s a bit of a fad but quite a good fad,” he says, “dragged over here from the US where it popped up first in trendy pizza places, drizzled over pepperoni on a pizza. It’s sweet, with a tingle of heat, and acts as a seasoning rather than a sickly pudding effect. You can make your own by slightly warming honey with chilli flakes or fresh chilli, or just pick it up at the supermarket for a couple of pounds.”
Interview by Lisa O’Kelly
Squash, Sage & Hot Honey Orzo. Photo: Mob
Squash, Sage & Hot Honey Orzo
To me this dish is a perfect example of autumn comfort food: pieces of hyper-seasonal winter squash provide bulk and interest on top of the loose and silky orzo. There’s also texture from roast squash seeds and crisp sage, plus a little tickle of heat thanks to chilli flakes and hot honey.
My strong preference here would be to use an onion squash (also known as potimarron or red kuri), which is perfectly in season right now. (Good alternatives include Delica pumpkins and Crown Prince squash.) Once roasted, the flesh is sweet, quite chestnutty and incredibly moreish. It’s also velvety smooth and makes an excellent purée. Which could be a soup. Or might also be used as a sauce, as it is here in this orzo dish.
Serves 2
Ingredients
1 800g Winter Squash (600g flesh without seeds)
1 White Onion
2 Vine Tomatoes
2 Garlic Cloves
½ tsp Chilli Flakes
20g Sage Leaves
160g Orzo
20g Salted Butter
300ml Chicken Stock
50g Hot Honey
30g Parmesan
¼ Lemon
Rapeseed Oil
Method
Heat the oven to 200°C fan.
Cut the squash in half from stem to tip. Scoop out the seeds and set to one side. Keep the skin on the white onion and quarter it through the root. Halve the tomatoes.
Cut each half of the squash into 4-6 wedges and spread over a baking sheet, making sure there’s plenty of space between each piece. Arrange the onion quarters, tomatoes and unpeeled garlic cloves in the gaps, cut-side down, then drizzle with a generous glug of rapeseed oil, turning the squash pieces so they’re glossy. Sprinkle with the chilli flakes and a generous pinch of salt. Roast for 35-45 mins, until the squash are bronzing and blistering at the edges, turning the wedges over after around 25 mins.
Meanwhile, spread the squash seeds over a small baking sheet, using two forks to separate the seeds from the flesh. Don’t worry too much if some are attached or there are still clumps of flesh – it all tastes good. Drizzle with a glug of rapeseed oil, and add a good sprinkle of salt. Roast in the oven for 20-25 mins until golden, shuffling the tray once or twice. When there’s 10 mins left, add the sage leaves to the tray, dragging them through the oil first.
Cook the orzo in salted boiling water for a touch less than the packet time, until the chalkiness is just gone, but the grains are not totally soft and swollen. Drain through a sieve and rinse under a cold running tap to cool them down. Mix with a fork to separate the grains then return to the saucepan.
Once the squash pieces are tender and coloured at the edges, transfer half to a blender, along with the tomatoes, onion pieces, garlic and any juices on the tray (remove the skins from the onion and garlic as you do this). Add the butter, a pinch of salt and ⅔ of the stock to the contents of the blender and blitz until it’s a silky smooth sauce.
Drizzle the remaining squash pieces with some hot honey, then return to the oven (turning it off at the same time).
Pour the sauce into the orzo pan and set over a low-medium heat to warm through for 2-3 mins. Grate in ⅔ of the Parmesan and squeeze in the lemon juice. The orzo will swell and stiffen but you want something that flows like the loosest risotto, so add more stock if you need to, then check for seasoning before dividing between pasta bowls or plates.
Top with the squash wedges, a grating of Parmesan, the roasted seeds and sage and a really generous drizzle of hot honey.
Ed Smith’s latest cookbook is Good Eggs. For his weekly recipes, see rocketandsquash.substack.com.