Roasted Squash with Sage and Brown Butter

October. The clocks have gone back, the evenings arrive before you're ready, and the squash at the Saturday market are piled in crates like small, dense suns. I pick one up, weigh it in my hand, and that's supper sorted.

This is the dish I cook more than any other between October and Christmas. Squash wedges, roasted hot until the cut surfaces go deep gold and the edges caramelise into something almost toffee-like. Then brown butter, made in the time it takes the squash to come out of the oven, spooned over while it's still foaming and fragrant. Sage leaves dropped into the butter at the last moment, where they crisp and crackle and turn into something you'll eat straight from the pan if no one is watching.

A recipe is a conversation, not a contract. These are rough proportions, a starting point. Use more butter if you're feeling generous. Use less if you aren't. The squash will tell you what it needs, and your nose will tell you when the butter is ready. The whole thing takes about an hour, most of it hands-off, and the result is the kind of side dish that quietly takes over the table. I've served it beside a roast chicken and watched people go back for the squash.

I wrote it down in the notebook years ago. Just three words: squash, sage, butter. It didn't need more than that. It still doesn't.