I landed in Cagliari, Sardinia, to research recipes and scout promising locations for a week-long culinary tour of the mountainous interior. But Cagliari, on the coast, is a fish lover’s heaven, and I planned to indulge in as many seafood stews and crudos as I could fit into 12 hours.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived at Josto, a restaurant specializing in contemporary takes on traditional dishes. The menu item that stood out was roasted squash and wild green salad. Maybe this should not have been surprising because Josto itself is a bit hard to peg; neon paintings of ghostly faces adorn the walls, the wine list was no joke, the waiter was dressed like he had worked at Le Cirque, and the whole experience projected a slightly punk aesthetic. So perhaps it was not surprising that I went there to order fish and, instead, my heart and palate were captured by a marriage of root vegetable and greens.

When it arrived, the electric orange roasted winter squash was covered, almost hidden, by a jumbled salad of wild herbs. The dense, sweet squash was dressed in a simple vinaigrette of olive oil, lemon and some pureed fresh mint (also in the salad). The salad was even more simply coated – just a hint of lemon, plenty of olive oil and salt. The flavors were bold and the preparation simple; wild greens offset the sweetness of the squash. After all, bittersweet is the hallmark of thousands of dishes around the world for a reason.

Back at Milk Street, we replaced hard to find wild herbs with peppery arugula and salty parsley. We kept the mint. For ease, we call for kabocha squash which has an edible skin (a great time-saver) and with the same sweetness and dense texture of the local squash used at Josto.

As for the vinaigrette, we used mint but also some of the parsley in the salad. We chop our herbs on the cutting board, adding salt as we go to help them break down and soften. Part way through, we remove roughly chopped mint and parsley for the salad and then continue chopping the rest until they are finely minced. The vinaigrette gets spooned onto deeply roasted wedges of squash. The salad is dressed as it was at Josto—a squeeze of lemon, olive oil and salt—and then mounded on top of the squash.

It just goes to show. You travel to the coast of Sardinia to eat fish and you end up ordering a salad. That’s the thing about culinary tours; you just never know.

Rosie Gill

Rosemary Gill is the Director of Education at Milk Street Cooking School. An educator dedicated to helping people create lasting home cooking habits, she oversees the development of hands-on and online cooking classes as well as Milk Street's community initiatives.