Butternut Squash

So I'm discovering that working a full-time job is not conducive to keeping up with the blog. I have been cooking alot lately, I just haven't been taking the time to take any pictures! Or maybe the food is just gone before I get around to that... I'll let you decide ;).

At any rate, I wanted to share a few of my new season's favorite recipes --- before all of the butternut squash on your grocery store shelves is replaced with eggnog!

I absolutely love butternut and acorn squash. Unfortunately, no one else in my family seems to share my affinity. Growing up, roast acorn squash was one of the meals Mom and I would make for dinners with just the two of us. And now my husband swears he doesn't like squash.

So here are three ways I've found around my family's unjustified hatred of squash. I'd recommend trying these on the squash-haters in your family... I think you may even get your Dad to like them ;).

Maple-Roasted Squash 

An Ina Garten favorite I posted in February.

3-ingredient Butternut Squash Soup

The idea from this soup came from Metrocurean, a local DC blog, but the secret ingredient is all my own! This was the best squash soup I've ever had.

Ingredients (Serves 4)

1 medium butternut squash, peeled and diced

4 cups of chicken broth (less if you like thicker soup)

1/4 - 1/2 cup coconut milk

1. Place diced squash and chicken broth in a sauce pan, making sure the broth covers the squash. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 20 minutes, until the squash is soft.

2. Carefully transfer the mixture to a blender (don't burn yourself!) and puree until smooth.

3. Return mixture to pan and slowly drizzle in coconut milk until soup reaches your desired consistency and taste. Season to taste with salt and pepper (I'd recommend this, even though it does bring your ingredient count to five ;)).

This was excellent served with grilled cheese sandwiches. And it may have been even better in my lunch the next day.

Butternut Squash Pasta with Browned Butter, Sage, and Pine Nuts

Adapted from the Kitchn

Ingredients (serves 4)

1 medium butternut squash, peeled and diced

1/2 a sweet onion, chopped finely

3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced

2 T +1 t olive oil, salt, and pepper

4 T butter

1 bunch fresh sage

1/2 cup pine nuts, toasted

half a pound of dried spaghetti (the original recipe called for farfalle, but I like how the squash coated the spaghetti noodles. Plus I was out of farfalle ;))

freshly grated parmesan cheese, to taste

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees. Place squash, onion, garlic, and 2 T chopped sage in a sheet pan. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Toss to coat. Roast, stirring every 15 minutes, until squash is soft and slightly browned, about 45 minutes.

2. When the squash is close to done, cook pasta to al dente.

3. While the pasta is cooking, heat 1 T butter and 1 t olive oil in a large saute pan. When the bubbles start to subside, add remaining sage leaves and cook, stirring frequently, until sage is crispy. Remove sage with a slotted spoon. Crush the leaves with the back of the spoon, and set aside.

4. Return pan to stove and add remaining butter. Cook over medium heat until butter solids begin to brown and the butter smells nutty. 

5. Add squash to pan and mash mixture until just a few small pieces of diced of squash remain.  Add drained pasta, pine nuts, and sage. Saute for a few minutes to pan fry the pasta and evenly coat it in squash mixture. If you have a smaller saute pan, you may want to do this in two batches.

6. Sprinkle with freshly grated parmesan cheese and enjoy!

Fig experiment, take 3: success!

At last, a conclusion: I like the taste of dried figs, but not the texture. The solution? Chopped dried figs!

Combine a little chopped figs, a few chopped apricots (for my husband, who decided after experiment #1 that he disliked figs...), some lemon zest, honey, and goat cheese, and you have the most amazing fig muffins to ever grace your Saturday morning breakfast table.

At this point, some of you are thinking "gee! that sounds too healthy for me," "goat cheese in muffins??" or "still not sure about those figs, Rebekah..."

Well, the muffins certainly are healthy. I found them in last month's edition of Eating Well. Goat cheese, honey, and figs did seem like an odd combination--but odd enough to be intriguing. The goat cheese has a cream cheese-like consistency, but a delicious tang. And trust me on those chopped figs--just chop them finely. I promise you won't lose any of the health benefit.

How I got my husband to eat squash.

I think I've mentioned that my husband will eat anything. Well, almost anything... Squash is, unfortunately, one of the exceptions.

A couple of months ago, we celebrated our town's "Restaurant Week" by dining at one of our favorite restaurants. The soup of the evening was a roasted butternut squash soup with spiced mascarpone, cocoa nib, and a chocolate drizzle. It was exquisite. (If I ever did find a recipe close to it, I'm sure that the ingredients would probably cost more than just ordering it at the restaurant.) My husband wouldn't even try a bite.

I love a good roasted squash, especially on a cold winter day. Unfortunately, I think my husband's main experience with the dish had been in this form:

Yeah, I probably wouldn't eat that either.

(For those of you who like spaghetti squash, I have no doubt that there is a way to make this vegetable taste good. However, I'm pretty sure there is no way to improve the texture.) For those of you like me, here is a better way:

Krispy Kale

Today's post comes from my friend and faithful blog reader, Natalie Glaser. As much as I enjoy vegetables, I must admit I was a bit skeptical about this recipe. I was even more skeptical after the first time I made it, and it turned out a slimy, chewy glob of green leaves. Even my husband wouldn't eat it.

But Natalie had raved about this recipe so much, I thought I should probably give it another try. Plus, I still had half a bunch of kale in my fridge! Not one to waste food, I looked around online for a better method of making this dish.

Natalie's method called for sautéing the kale in a very hot skillet (or "flash frying" it, as she calls it--which is a pretty cool name, I think!). I deduced that I did two things wrong the first time I made it: I used too much oil, and I didn't cook it long enough. The first problem I solved by tossing the oil with the kale first--this way I could use whatever amount of oil I wanted, but since it was evenly distributed, the kale would cook evenly. Secondly, I tried using the oven instead of a skillet, which again, caused the kale to cook more evenly.

The oven method worked much better for me. After 10 minutes at 400 degrees, the the kale was bright green, with lightly browned edges. The kale shattered when you bit into it--a vast improvement from the "stewed" version I came up with last time. When you cook kale this way, it has none of the bitter taste you usually associate with kale, and easily takes on the flavor of whatever aromatics you flavor it with (salt, garlic, lemon juice, etc.). And there you have it: a tasty side dish for about 15 cents per serving!