While tea cups are plenty inspiring it is truly my recent obsession with winter squash, and the many inquiries I've received about good ways to prepare it that has motivated me to post. Cheap, strange looking, and difficult to wrestle with a knife (the squash nearly always wins), it is a most awesome and delicious food. Book club this latest month was pretty stellar and my friend E made an incredible pasta salad (from fabulous 101cookbooks.com) and I've been copying the squash method ever since. Fry up some of these squash "croutons" and then I just put in anything and everything for instant deliciousness. Scrambled eggs, spinach and squash....squash in my fried rice, on my salads, and mixed into stir fry's. I've been roasting sugar pie's and making my friend's mom's incredible pumpkin cranberry bread with toasted and crumbled walnuts on top. Sugar pies also make wonderful pumpkin soup with a little cream and topped with some cilantro. This recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook was a big hit at book club and a healthy and delicious way to use up squash. I tried the recipe with pumpkins, though I heard butternut squash made it almost too rich. For something ever so slightly sweet, this is one of the more incredible things I have eaten, though I do like to add more spices than the recipe calls for. But by far the best way I've tried squash, and one of the most delicious meals I've had in a long while, was the collaborate effort between Emily, Rachel and I which resulted in a flavor explosion I must insist you try and put your own spin on. The ingredients were not measured, randomly thrown together, and there was no photo to prove its existence, but I think we're on to something with this recipe.
Acorn squash or other winter squash
Delicious and tender pasta (we used lasagnette)
Cilantro
Red Chili flakes
Bacon
Goat cheese
Salt
Little olive oil/butter
Remove skin and seeds and dice squash into cubes. Heat oil/butter (tbsp or so) in pan on medium or medium/high heat and sautee squash until coated (about 2 min or so). Sprinkle with salt and put lid on for 5 min or so until squash is tender. Add cilantro and some red chili flakes, depending on how hot you can handle. Turn up heat a little and brown squash. Put in bowl. Cook pasta until al dente and add to bowl as well. Dice bacon, brown in squash pan and add that to bowl of deliciousness. Crumble some goat cheese, stir all together, grab a plate and wait for some mind blowing amazingness.
Oh the possibilities. Toasted pumpkin seeds? Roasted hazelnuts? Arugula or another peppery green?
