What’s cooking today: Butternut with prosciutto and feta

It was astonishing how much of the flavour of the prosciutto imbued the flesh of butternut halves while they were cooking in the coals, wrapped snugly in their shiny foil sleeping bags. There was really good full cream Jersey feta in them too, which melted beautifully. Cook as many or as few butternuts as you like to feed a crowd or just yourselves.

Ingredients

(For 1 butternut; multiply as needed)

1 butternut, halved, seeds removed

1 round of Dalewood Fromage full cream feta from a pasture-fed Jersey herd (or other quality feta)

80 g Richard Bosman prosciutto (or other quality brand)

Salt and black pepper to taste

Olive oil

Method

Retain 4 to 6 rashers of prosciutto and chop the remainder into small pieces.

Crumble feta and mix it with the chopped prosciutto, seasoning it lightly with black pepper.

Halve the butternut/s and scoop out the seeds. Season the cavities and the flat area with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil.

Share the feta-prosciutto mixture equally between the two halves, pushing it hard into the cavities. Pile the remaining crumbled mixture along the flat surface of the butternut, squashing it with your palm to make it stick.

Drizzle olive oil over (so that it does not stick to the foil) and wrap tightly in double-folded heavy foil.

Braai in hot coals until tender but not so long that they dry out. About 25 to 30 minutes. Pierce with a skewer to test whether they are soft all the way through. DM/TGIFood

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Champion of the Year 2021. His book, foodSTUFF, is now available in the DM Shop. Buy it here.

SUBSCRIBE: There’s much more from Tony Jackman and his food writing colleagues in his weekly TGIFood newsletter, delivered to your inbox every Saturday. Subscribe here. Also visit the TGIFood platform, a repository of all of our food writing.