Thursday: Chipotle and adzukis

Adzuki butternut squash soup.

It's always a little bit of a fuss to cook dried beans, but if you want to use interesting varieties and get their full flavor, it's worth it. We pre-cooked these whole adzukis for a couple of hours (unattended) before adding them to frozen pureed butternut squash and frozen tomatoes to make this soup. The recipe called for canned chipotle peppers, which added a smoky flavor. Now we'll have to find some other applications for them, since we have a few left over.

Monday: Squash quesadillas, take two

Butternut squash-black bean-goat feta quesadillas with yogurt-lime-cumin sauce.

These were a snap since we could start from our frozen butternut squash puree - and the goat's milk feta provided just the right bite. We liked the idea of making a simple yogurt-based sauce, because we never have pre-made salsa in the house, and it's a bit of a fuss to make on a weeknight (especially when it's not even tomato season).

Tuesday: Stuffed acorn squash

Acorn squash stuffed with wild rice, oyster mushrooms, toasted almonds, and melted Sun Cheese.

We improvised this squash stuffing, as we often do. Basically any cooked veggies can be mixed with a grain and a nut and used to stuff a pre-roasted winter squash. We particularly liked the flavor added by the fresh mushrooms.

Thursday: Butternut squash soup

Butternut squash and white bean soup.

It's been a soupy month here at D4SA - and here's another, using our frozen butternut squash puree and fresh golden russet apples. The recipe was adapted from one of Alice Waters' cookbooks by a Winter Sun Farms CSA member. I used navy beans, which lend themselves well to soups, but this would be fine with any white bean that you happened to have in the pantry.

Monday: Thai stew

Thai kabocha coconut stew served on rice.

This easy stew (which basically just involves cooking the squash in some coconut milk, plus a couple other ingredients) was the first dish we had ever cooked using fish sauce. Fish sauce (or nam pla) is a condiment often used in Thai food which consists of fermented fish, often anchovy, along with salt and possibly some sugar. It can be added to dishes during the cooking process, but can also be served with the meal as a substitute for table salt, much as soy sauce is in some cultures. In this stew, the fish sauce added a little pungency along with its salty kick, but was surprisingly mellowed by the richness of the coconut milk.

Thursday: Heavenly Pizza

Homemade pizza with butternut squash "sauce," walnuts, green olives, ricotta salata and Pecorino Toscano cheeses, and fresh parsley.

We really can't say enough about how good this is. We got the inspiration from a few online recipes that used a roasted butternut squash puree as a pizza sauce, but from there we decided to improvise with the rest of the toppings.

The dough was made with our local half white/half whole wheat bread flour. This was the first time we'd made pizza dough solely with bread flour instead of all-purpose, and we found it drastically improved the texture, giving it that great chewy consistency that pizza crust should have. The flavor improved too: instead of just being a vehicle for the toppings, the crust itself was toasty and interesting.

One of our favorite butternut squash recipes is this pasta sauce, which also pairs the squash with parsley and tangy ricotta salata to cut its sweetness, so we decided to import the same flavor profile into this recipe. To make it more complex, we added a second cheese - the Pecorino, which contributed some pungency - some chopped walnuts for texture, and quality green olives for a salty kick.

This might sound like a lot of trouble for pizza, but actually if we had made the dough in advance and frozen it for later use, this would have been a remarkably fast meal. We already had frozen butternut squash puree from our winter CSA, but that's also the type of thing you could prepare in bulk and then freeze in individual servings for later.

Christmas Dinner 3: Return of the Brisket

Philadelphia Christmas 2009, clockwise from top: beef brisket, garlic-sauteed chard, butternut squash with mustard seeds, Lukas's cabbage, spinach-mushroom kugel, and mashed potatoes with gravy.

Well, you all KNEW we had left the door open to a sequel, didn't you?

We helped Lizz's parents with Christmas dinner in Philadelphia. They were mainly responsible for the brisket, cooked with 36 cloves of garlic (from the Gefilte Variations cookbook), and the mashed potatoes. You'd think we'd have tired of kugel by now, but we really liked this variation in which we swapped out the leeks for fresh wilted spinach. The squash recipe was a particularly nice addition to this meal since it is cooked with some brown sugar and is very sweet - it filled the spot typically occupied by something like a sweet potato casserole. (Which comes with marshmallows, if you are in Ohio. Which we luckily are not.)

Dessert was once again a couple of lovely pies made by Lizz's dad: one made with real mincemeat, and one pecan.



Merry Christmas everyone!

Thursday: Curried Squash

Curried acorn squash with walnuts, served with soba noodles.

Though it's "curried," this isn't actually an Indian dish - it's Japanese. Premixed "curry powder" is popular in everyday Japanese home cooking. Here the squash is just cooked in a little butter and curry powder, followed by a quick braise in a little water.

Monday: Squashmas

Pasta with roasted butternut squash and ricotta salata, served with hot mulled apple cider.

We originally got this recipe from the Times, but have made it a few times since then and come to love it. It's quite easy: just cube and roast the squash, then toss with cooked pasta and grated ricotta salata cheese. A little parsley and sage or rosemary go in for flavor and color.

Oh - and as you can see, Christmas has arrived here at D4SA...

Sunday: The great pumpkin (soup)

Apple-cheese pumpkin soup with cranberry-walnut pumpkin bread.

This soup is possibly the simplest preparation of a soft-type winter squash - butternut, pumpkin, buttercup, etc. (If you're not familiar with the majestic cheese pumpkin in its natural habitat, check out our recent post here.) Any soft winter squash can be cubed, sauteed with a little onion, simmered in stock until soft, pureed, and then reheated with cream or milk if desired. We did the same here, just adding a couple of tart apples, sliced, to saute with the squash.

The bread is an import from Metropolitan Bakery in Philadelphia. (Highly recommended to our Philly readers.)

Monday: Taco night, redux

Roasted butternut squash tacos with black beans, parsley and toasted almonds.

As we were titling this post, we realized this was actually our second Monday taco night in only a couple months. (What is it about Mondays?)

When we recently made butternut squash roasted with warm spices, we had the thought that it might be very nice in a taco. And indeed it was. We riffed on the squash by adding some black beans simmered with a little cumin and a bay leaf, then stuffing both into softshell tacos along with some fresh chopped parsley and chopped, roasted almonds.

Sunday: Steamed squash

Steamed ambercup squash on spinach greens, with walnuts and sherry-honey-shoyu dressing.

Often the skin of winter squashes isn't eaten, but in this recipe you peel off half the skin (ideally in a pretty pattern - not as easy as it sounds) before steaming the squash slices. The remaining skin ended up tender and nice to eat.

Spinach has finally started to show up at the market! - this is the first time we've bought it this year. Before we started going to farmers' markets we didn't know spinach was really a winter vegetable. Here it's used raw as a bed for the squash, though it wilts a little from the squash's heat.

Wednesday: Squash salad

Warm butternut squash and chickpea salad with pita.

Before this year we actually didn't cook much with butternut squash, despite it being the most common winter squash in grocery stores. At most, we'd make a Thanksgiving squash puree as a side dish. We're still exploring the higher culinary potential of the humble butternut, and this recipe was another nice addition to our repertoire. The only tricky part is trying to make homemade tahini by grinding toasted sesame seeds with some water.

Quick Saturday Lunch

Fried spiced chickpeas and roasted acorn squash.

This is a slightly odd pairing, but it made for a nice quick lunch. Sometimes we make fried chickpeas to supplement a meal that needs a protein: it's basically a quick curry. Just heat a little peanut oil in a skillet; add whole cumin seeds and let them brown; then add ground coriander and stir for a second; next add a can of well-drained chickpeas along with a little bit each of turmeric, cayenne, and amchur (powdered dried sour mango - use lemon juice to substitute). Then stir and fry the chickpeas until they are looking slightly crisp and are warmed through. They'll reduce a tiny bit in size when they're done.

These chickpeas are crispy and nice as a side dish or on top of a salad.

Saturday lunch: Fall Feast

Butternut squash braised with spices (from Madhur Jaffrey via Nate - thanks Nate!), turnip greens with roasted cashews in sesame oil, and cornbread.

We made the cornbread with local whole wheat bread flour, which in our opinion really improved the flavor and texture. We also omitted the canola oil that was in the original recipe (since Giselle has purged the canola from the house) and added an extra egg instead.

The turnips themselves are destined for another recipe later this week, but today we used their greens, which don't store very well. One nice way to add a little protein and bulk to greens is to throw in some roasted chopped nuts, so that's what we did.

These butternut squash were an AMAZING saturated dark orange color on the inside, as you can see in the photo of their innards below.


squash, deconstructed

They also provided the opportunity to make one of our favorite snacks - roasted winter squash seeds. This is a fun thing to do anytime you carve a pumpkin or make any variety of winter squash for dinner. First, pick out the seeds from the pulp and wash them in a few changes of water until they are fairly clean:



Pat as dry as possible with paper towels. There are a few ways to go, flavor-wise, with the actual roasting: one option is to stir the seeds with some olive oil and salt. Another is to stir them with a clear oil (we used peanut), some ground cinnamon, and a little sugar. Either way, next spread the seeds into a single layer on a baking sheet, and roast in the oven at 350F for about a half hour, stirring occasionally so they roast evenly.


cinnamon-sugar seeds

Thursday: Birthday dinner

Very simple late-night birthday dinner: roasted acorn squash with melted cheese, served with broccoli and quinoa.

We know, we know...not too exciting, but law school respects no birthday, and Giselle wanted an easy dinner after her court visit, client interview, and evening class. More exciting birthday activities will follow.

Monday: Kabocha-hominy stew

Chillied kabocha-hominy stew (flavored with sweet peppers, toasted cumin and cilantro).

This might be one of our all-time favorite recipes; we always make it around this time of year. Kabocha is a small, dark green Japanese winter squash varietal. It's actually pretty common - you might find it halved for sale in a supermarket. It's good for stew, since its cubes soften nicely but retain their shape instead of becoming mush.

Hominy, for those who aren't familiar, is corn kernels treated with lye. When mashed, corn treated this way becomes "masa harina," the flour that tortillas are made of. Whole canned hominy, for that reason, sort of has that "tortilla" taste. Both white and yellow hominy is available in many supermarkets. We used both in this recipe, but we generally prefer the flavor of the yellow kind.

After red onion is sauteed with a little oil, the cubes of squash are thrown in and sauteed until they begin to soften. Flour, cayenne and cumin seeds are then added and stirred to coat the squash. Finally, hominy and broth are added, and the stew simmers for a while - the flour thickens it so that the minced pepper added at the end is suspended throughout. The final step is a cilantro garnish. It's pretty foolproof, but comes out looking (and tasting!) like restaurant food.

Tuesday: Octopus fried rice

Fried rice with octopus, plus roasted acorn squash (not pictured).

Somehow, over five years of cooking, we've never until now attempted fried rice. That's rather silly, considering that it is not too difficult: just saute garlic, ginger and scallion in oil, then add cooked rice and stir for a few minutes; next, pour two lightly beaten eggs into the center of the rice and continue stirring until the egg scrambles throughout. We added tinned octopus to this dish, as well as soy sauce to flavor.

Monday: rustic fall dinner

Roasted Carnival squash with white bean croquettes.

Last time the croquettes appeared on this blog, they were done with ginger, garlic and soy sauce as flavors. This time, we switched it up and used scallions and a pinch of allspice.

Roasted squash is a winter standby for us - some types, like butternut, fall apart and therefore are only suitable for soups or purees, but acorn and similar types can be halved, roasted and eaten from the shell:

ROASTED ACORN SQUASH

Cut the squash in half and scoop out the seeds and pulp (a grapefruit spoon works well). Salt the squash.
Cover a roasting pan or tray with foil and grease it slightly. Place the squash halves in, cut side down.
Pour about 1/2 cup water into the pan around the squash halves (that's just to keep things humid as they roast).
Bake at 400 degrees F for 40 minutes.
Then pull out the pan, flip the squashes to cut side up, and grate in a little of your choice of cheese. Replace in the oven just long enough for the cheese to melt.