Meera Sodha's vegan recipe for butternut squash with noodles
This is probably a middle-aged thing, but it only takes something small to make my day. Usually, that's bumping into a friend on the school run, spotting a cheeky green parakeet in the tree-tops or lighting a few candles at dinner in the evening. When it comes to food and today's recipe, however, I rather childishly like to say the words 'noodle soup' out loud, as if my mouth is pursing in anticipation of the noodles. I love using a whole butternut squash in a dish – that is where a cook's satisfaction lies. And, for my sins, I adore slurping the noodles out of the bowl.
Feel free to tone down the chillies, if you prefer. You can buy fresh makrut lime leaves from most big UK supermarkets or cheaper, frozen ones from Chinese and south-east Asian specialists. Thai Taste makes the best vegan fish sauce. You'll need a blender for this dish.
Prep 15 min
Cook 1 hr
Serves 4
1 medium butternut squash (1kg), halved, deseeded, peeled and cut into 2cm pieces2 tbsp rapeseed oil
6 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped6 fresh makrut lime leaves (or frozen and defrosted), deveined and chopped2 lemongrass stalks, bottoms only, chopped1 small onion, peeled and chopped3 green finger chillies, chopped3 tbsp sun-dried tomato paste1¾ tsp fine sea salt, or to taste400ml tin coconut milk
2 tbsp agave syrup
2½ tbsp vegan fish sauce, or to taste
To finish250g ramen noodles
25g Thai basil, leaves picked1 lime, quartered
Heat the oven to 240C (220C fan)/475F/gas 9. Put the squash chunks on a large oven tray lined with reusable baking paper, drizzle over the oil and toss to coat. Spread out into a single layer, then roast for 25 minutes. Set aside about 20 pieces of the roast squash, and tip the rest into a blender with 800ml water. Blitz smooth, then pour into a jug.
Without rinsing the blender, drop in the garlic, lime leaves, lemongrass, onion, chillies, sun-dried tomato paste and salt with about 150ml of the coconut milk and blitz to a smooth paste. Put a large saucepan on a medium heat and, once it's hot, add the paste and cook, stirring regularly, for 10 minutes. Add the liquidised squash, the remaining 250ml coconut milk and the agave syrup, then bring to a brief boil. Add the fish sauce to taste – I used two and a half tablespoons – then take off the heat.
Cook the noodles according to the packet instructions, then drain and rinse. Reheat the coconut soup, if need be, then distribute between four bowls. Divide the noodles between the bowls, top with the reserved chunks of squash and a small handful each of picked Thai basil, spritz the lime over the top and serve.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mirror
11 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Astonishing fight over hidden treasure worth billions that anyone can find
The lure of sunken gold under the waves has wreck-hunting salvage investigators scouring the sea beds to make their millions – but ownership of the lustrous loot is always hotly contested A treasure trove of gold coins, Chinese porcelain, emeralds and pearls worth £15 billion from sunken Spanish galleon San Jose has been discovered at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. Images of the 'holy grail' of shipwrecks were taken by salvage investigators this week, showing the final resting place of the warship. Its contents were bound for the Spanish treasury until it was ambushed by the British Navy three centuries ago. Since then, adventurers have dreamed of finding its legendary loot – including 200 tonnes of gold, silver, gems and possibly diamonds – originally destined for Panama. The lure of retrieving sunken gold has seen wreck-hunting treasure seekers go to extraordinary lengths - often in very controversial circumstances. The Spanish frigate Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes was sunk by the British off the coast of Portugal in 1804 - taking with it millions of silver – known as pieces of eight – and gold coins, said to be worth £370 million. A US treasure hunter, Odyssey Marine Exploration, scoured the sea bed in 2007 and recovered almost 500,000 of them, taking them back to America. An ensuing legal battle resulted in the treasure returned to Spain, where it is now on display in a museum in Cartagena. A notorious wreck hunter in 1988 fought for the new-found riches of the Californian gold rush, from the 'ship of gold," which sank off the coast of South Carolina in 1857. The SS Central America was carrying 21 tonnes of gold nuggets, ingots, dust and coins when a hurricane sank it on its way from Panama to New York City - scattering the gold on the sea bed. Treasure hunter Tommy Thompson used sonar to bring up thousands of gold bars and coins, worth around £220m today. He was jailed in 2015 after failing to disclose the whereabouts of the missing loot. And while a judge earlier this year agreed to end his sentence, saying he was no longer convinced 'that further incarceration is likely to coerce compliance,' he immediately began a two year sentence for a related criminal contempt charge. Finding sunken treasure is no mean feat - explaining why salvage companies want a cut of the spoils. Shipwreck detective Nigel Pickford, a maritime historian and author of Samuel Pepys and the Strange Wrecking of the Gloucester: The Shipwreck That Shocked Restoration Britain, tracks down wrecks. He tells The Mirror: 'I start with history books. I like to get back to original letters, diaries, journals, log books, particularly if there were other ships in the fleet which had log books. Perhaps those involved in the sinking or battle.' The San Jose, he says, was relatively easy to locate, because it was extremely well documented in log books of British ships involved in the skirmish. 'They could work out say within probably 100 square miles where that ship was,' he says. 'But now we're searching for wrecks in 10,000 square miles.' According to the United Nations, there are at least three million shipwrecks lying across our ocean floors, not all contain treasure, but are still of historical interest. As a maritime nation, many lie within our territorial waters. 'When you think that everything went by ship until quite recently, there are many shipwrecks around the British Isles that haven't been found. And there are some interesting aeroplane wrecks too – with gold on them,' says Nigel. 'There are probably millions of wrecks around the world. But there are many we can't touch – like the ones in shallow water around Europe, which obviously means they get looted instead. 'You'd be surprised how much is still being shipped around. It might not necessarily be gold coins, but they're still high-value cargos,' says Nigel. But looters often beat bona fide recovery operators to the treasure. 'I was looking at a 17th century Dutch wreck recently which does have the location, and there are quite a lot of Spanish shipwrecks that are charted, but they're always in shallow water. These days I'm really only interested in deep wrecks,' says Nigel. 'Trawling destroys more shipwrecks than anything. Shallow shipwrecks may be easier to find, like the San Jose, but the deeper you go, the better the bounty. 'A shallow wreck might have been trawled through, dispersed, or looted. And wreck diving is dangerous. Things go wrong, and divers can only really go down to about 300ft. You can see much better using remote-operated vehicles (ROVs). And if you're looking in 15,000ft of water with an ROV, you can be fairly sure there won't be many people that have been there before.' The type of ship also matters. Wooden wrecks like the San Jose will fall apart if touched. 'You just need to know where the cargo that you're interested in might have been stowed,' says Nigel. 'You can see from the photos, coins from the San Jose are all over the sea bed. A bit of excavation with your ROVs will bring that stuff up. 'But steel wrecks have quite a high chance of still being intact. You might have to open it up on the seabed in order to get to the cargo. The most important thing on a steel wreck is to know the stowage.' Lost deep under the waves, gold treasure can look as good now as on the day it sank. 'Gold doesn't tarnish but silver does – it goes black, but it's not seriously damaged,' explains Nigel. 'I've been working on an East India cargo with a lot of porcelain, which is almost perfect. It is extraordinary what remains on a sea bed, particularly if it's really deep and there's no oxygen.' Meanwhile, thousands of First and Second World War ships are on salvage hunters' radars. 'My father Thomas Henry Pickford was in the Navy Salvage Department during World War II,' reveals Nigel, a teacher until he joined the family business. 'There was a lot of gold coming out of Europe before the Germans invaded,' he explains. 'France, Belgium and Holland were all trying to get their gold out, as was Britain. We shipped all our gold over to Canada.' British steam merchant vessel RMS Gairsoppa was hit by a German U-boat in February 1941 and went down with 85 men and a cargo full of silver bullion. A US exploration firm recovered 48 tons of silver worth £150 million in 2011, making it one of the largest and heaviest recoveries of precious metal from a shipwreck. Passengers on board the passenger ship SS City of Cairo to Brazil didn't know their ship was carrying the multi-million pound cargo. When the ship was hit by German torpedoes in November 1942, 109 people perished and its huge cache of Indian silver rupees, bound for melting for war materials in Britain, lay undisturbed until a British expedition discovered them 1,000 miles off the African coast in 2011. One of the treasure wrecks Nigel was involved in salvaging was the £32m of silver bullion that went down with the SS Tilawa en route to East Africa in November 1942. Japanese submarines torpedoed the ship, which was known as the Indian Titanic, killing 280 and more than 2,000 silver bars, due to be minted into coins, plunged to the sea bed near the Seychelles. 'I worked on a ship in the Indian Ocean with a very, very large cargo of bars of silver. That was technically extremely successful,' adds Nigel. But while a British team successfully retrieved the treasure, a court ruled the bullion belonged to South Africa. Many shipwreck finds end in a tussle between the countries who owned the ships, the country where the treasure was found, and the salvage companies, who want their share of the bounty. And not just anybody can dive for treasure. 'There's all sorts of permits needed these days, especially environmental permits,' says Nigel. 'A country's territorial waters extend 12 nautical miles out, then there's the contingent zone which goes out another 12, then economic waters which can go out to 200 miles. Increasingly, nations are claiming control of all shipwrecks within economic waters. 'A friend of mine had his ship seized in Spain's territorial waters. He's adamant he was outside them. In UK waters you probably wouldn't get arrested in quite the same way, but it's best working in international waters.' Even once a sunken wreck is found, many countries choose to leave the treasure where it is. In 1771, a Dutch ship loaded with precious works of art destined for Catherine the Great of Russia was caught in a storm and sank. 'It was found off the coast of Finland in 1999,' says Nigel. 'But the archeologists say no one should touch anything. I don't know if the paintings have survived.' Famous sunken treasure ships yet to be discovered include the 16th century Portuguese carrack Flor de Mar, which sank off Malaysia laden with treasure on its way to the king, and a British 17th century galleon, The Merchant Royal, which was carrying £1bn in gold sits untouched 30 miles off the coast of Cornwall. Nigel says: 'Personally, I wouldn't waste my time with the Flor de Mar. I would be worried that a lot of the cargo has been pillaged. 'But I've looked for the Merchant Royal three times – it's a fantastic wreck. I'm sure I know where it is now!' And there's the Portuguese galleon Santa Rosa, which sank off Brazil after a gunpowder explosion in 1726. Nigel enthuses: 'It has a very, very valuable cargo of gold. Probably even more gold than the San Jose.' A treasure hunter's work is clearly never dull!
Daily Mirror
13 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
'I survived plane crash by sitting in seat 11A like sole Air India survivor'
After the tragic Air India crash yesterday, a Thai singer has opened up about his haunting experience surviving a similar ordeal almost 30 years ago Following the news that one man survived the horrific plane crash in western India yesterday, a Thai singer and actor has revealed that he also made it out of a crash alive – after sitting in the exact same numbered seat. Ruangsak Loychusak, 47, survived the 1998 Thai Airways plane crash that killed 101 passengers after diving into a swamp. He was in seat 11A – the same number as Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, the British man who was the sole survivor of the Air India tragedy on June 12. In 1998, The Thai Airways plane was carrying 132 passengers and 14 crew members – and only 45 people survived. Ruangsak told the MailOnline: 'The lone survivor of the plane crash in India was sitting in the same seat number as me, 11A. I want to offer my condolences to all those who lost loved ones in the tragedy.' He went on to describe how the trauma impacted his life after the terrifying ordeal, and said that he had trouble flying for a decade. 'I would struggle breathing, even though the air circulation was normal. I avoided speaking to anyone and always stared outside the window, blocking anyone from closing it to maintain my sense of safety,' he explained. Ruangsak also said that he can still remember the sounds, smells, and the taste of the swamp water, almost three decades later. The Air India flight yesterday took off from Ahmedabad at 9.08am and was set to land later that day in London Gatwick. However, within minutes, it crashed into a dining hall for medical students in a residential area. The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner was carrying 242 people including 53 Brits, 169 Indian nationals, seven Portuguese people, and one Canadian. While at first, the city's police chief told AP that there appeared to be no survivors, it was soon reported that Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, was alive. Shortly after the crash, he told the Hindustan Times: "When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was scared. I stood up and ran. There were pieces of the plane all around me. Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital." Ramesh was on the flight with his brother, who was seated in a different row. He said: "We visited Diu. He was travelling with me and I can't find him anymore. Please help me find him.' Another of Ramesh's brothers, from Leicester in the East Midlands, said the family were 'shocked'. He continued: 'I last spoke to him yesterday morning. We're devastated, just devastated. He said: 'I have no idea how I exited the plane.'' The UK's prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, said in a press conference: 'The images and news from India is absolutely devastated and I speak for the entire country in saying our thoughts are with each and every one of those involved. There will be British and Indian families across the land who are absolutely impacted by this and our thoughts first and foremost are with them.' He confirmed that an investigation team has been deployed, led by the foreign secretary. He said they were working with the Indian authorities to establish the facts of what happened, and would provide an update as soon as possible. 'I would say to all families, friends of anybody affected to please contact the foreign office for further information,' Starmer said.
Scottish Sun
13 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
I escaped devastating plane crash that left 101 dead…while in SAME 11A seat as Brit sole survivor of Air India disaster
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) A LUCKY man who survived a fatal plane crash has revealed he was sat in the same seat as the Brit sole survivor in the Air India disaster. Ruangsak Loychusak was onboard the Thai Airways flight TG261 from Bangkok to India when it stalled and plunged into a swamp - killing 101 people on board. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 13 Ruangsak Loychusak was on the doomed Thai Airways flight TG261 flight that crashed and killed 101 people Credit: Asia Pacific Press via ViralPress 13 Loychusak has now revealed he was sat on seat 11A Credit: Asia Pacific Press via ViralPress 13 A picture of Loychusak being rescued Credit: Asia Pacific Press via ViralPress 13 Vishwash Kumar Ramesh is the sole survivor of the Air India Crash 13 Picture showing his flight's boarding pass But the singer revealed he was sitting in seat 11A when the plane went down in 1998. The tragedy left 101 of the 132 passengers and 14 crew members dead. Some 45 people were injured. It comes as... Follow The Sun's live blog for all the latest updates Ruangsak said he had "goosebumps" when it was revealed that the only survivor from the Air India crash was seated in 11A as well. Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, cheated death after being flung from his seat on the flaming Air India jet - escaping with minor injuries and filmed walking away after the wreck. He said the plane broke off after the crash and his seat flung out of the wreckage. Ruangsak said: "The lone survivor of the plane crash in India was sitting in the same seat number as me, 11A. Is THIS the moment that saved the sole Brit survivor? Vid shows debris fly from Air India jet…is it door he fled from? "I want to offer my condolences to all those who lost loved ones in the tragedy." Although the Thai man no longer has his ticket from the doomed flight almost three decades ago, he said the newspaper reports from the time had recorded his seat number. It would also be available on the flight records, he added. He said: "I had difficulty flying for 10 years after the crash. I would struggle to breathe, even though the air circulation was normal. "I avoided speaking to anyone and always stared outside the window, blocking anyone from closing it to maintain my sense of safety. "If I saw dark clouds or a rainstorm outside, I would feel terrible, like I was in hell. "I can still remember the sounds, smells, and even the taste of the water in the swamp the plane crashed into. "For a long time, I would keep the feelings to myself." The Boeing 787 Dreamliner with 242 passengers on board - including 53 Brits and 11 children - smashed into a doctors' hostel in the west of India on Thursday. 13 A newspaper report about the Thai crash Credit: Asia Pacific Press via ViralPress 13 Loychusak in a hospital aftr the crash Credit: Asia Pacific Press via ViralPress 13 13 The plane was seen disappearing behind buildings before the huge blast Credit: X 13 The plane was seen wedged in a building Credit: Reuters But Ramesh miralously escaped from the burning aircraft, becoming the only person to make it out alive. Incredible footage shows him walking away from the wreckage almost unscathed. Flanked by the locals, he can be seen making his way towards an ambulance with blood caking his face. His boarding pass revealed he was sat on seat 11A, next to the flight's emergency exit. Ramesh revealed how he survived the tragic crash that killed everyone on board but him. Speaking in Hindi, he said: "Everything happened in front of me and I couldn't believe how I had come out alive. "I thought for a second that I was going to die. But when I opened my eyes, I realised I was alive. I tried to slip out of the plane. "I saw the air hostess, other passengers all in front of me. Within a few seconds, it felt the plane had stopped, and the green and white lights switched on. "It felt like maybe [the pilot] suddenly accelerated to take off, but it went down to a hostel from there at high speed. I saw everything. "The door broke [near me] broke off and I tried to slip out. The opposite side of the plane hit the wall. That's why others could not get out. "When I got out, I was taken to the ambulance and rushed to the hospital. My treatment is going well, and the people are very supportive." 13 Huge plumes of black smoke could be seen billowing into the sky 13 The plane crashed into a doctor's hostel Credit: EPA 13 The Boeing 787 Dreamliner with 242 passengers on board - including 53 Brits - smashed into a doctors' hostel in Ahmedabad in the west of India. The plane was headed to London Gatwick with 232 passengers and 10 crew on board when it crashed just seconds after take-off. The Dreamliner lost contact just seconds after take-off, according to flight tracking website Flightradar. A final alert was last logged less than a minute after it started the journey from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport. It had only reached 625ft at the time, officials believe. Seconds before the crash, the Boeing was filmed flying low over the Meghani Nagar residential area with the pilots appearing to be in a desperate bid to keep the plane in the air. Moments later, it was seen disappearing behind buildings before a huge blast was seen in the distance.
