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Posts with tag squash

Stuffed Carnivale Squash - Feast Your Eyes

Stuffed anything is good this time of year -- and stuffing the cooked vegetable back in its original shell makes for an especially festive treat. The blogger behind Kitchen Illiterate put it simply: "Stuffed squash is stuffed goodness."

We second that -- especially in such a vibrant, flavorful concoction. First, the squash is roasted on its own. In the meantime, you cook the stuffing on the stove, a spicy cumin-cayenne scented rice with black beans, peppers and queso fresco. Once the squash is softened, you toss in the stuffing and throw it all back into the oven for ten minutes to allow the flavors to meld together, a roasted richness permeating the entire dish.

And to prove you can never get enough of a good thing, Kitchen Illiterate has also bestowed upon us a Spaghetti Squash with Swiss and Pancetta Bechamel, a White Bean and Sausage Stuffed Delicata Squash and a Southwestern Style Stuffed Acorn Squash. So get creative this Thanksgiving -- and don't worry about washing those fussy serving bowls!


Become a member of the Slashfood Flickr pool to get a shot at having your photos featured in Feast Your Eyes.

Tip of the Day - Winter Squash, Decoded

We all know and love pumpkin, but here are a few familiar and unfamiliar wonderful winter squash cousins -- and ways to prepare them.

Continue reading Tip of the Day - Winter Squash, Decoded

Winter Squash on the Grill

squash segments on a pan
Photo: Erica George Dines Photography.
This time of year, one of the most delicious seasonal foods to grill is winter squash. Butternut, acorn and sugar pumpkin all benefit from the smokiness and caramelized flavors that the grill imparts.

And there are so many ingredients that complement winter squash -- from sage and thyme to sweeter flavors like orange, maple and bourbon. Even sausage and bacon are perfect matches for this fall favorite.

Grilled winter squash make a nice addition to everything from risotto to salads and can be a great side to serve with roasted meats or as a main vegetarian dish. Some of my favorite cheeses -- like goat, blue cheese and feta -- round out the smoky sweetness for melt-in-your-mouth flavor.

Continue reading Winter Squash on the Grill

Beekman 1802 -- Sweet Grilled Summer Squash

zucchini
Savory grilled summer squash. Photo: Brent Ridge, Beekman 1802.
Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell are the farmers and innovators behind Beekman 1802, a 200-year-old estate and farm in upstate New York. We'll be running recipes, gorgeous photos and tales from the farm as their crops come into season.

Why is it that everyone plants zucchini, even though it is blatantly obvious that one plant is enough to feed an entire village? (At Beekman 1802, we count ourselves among the guilty.)

Anyone who has ever grown one knows that this prolific plant produces far more zucchini than one could ever want. You never know what to do with it all, which is probably why zucchini bread was invented, and our neighbors pass it around like Secret Santa gifts: Someone is bound to come to your doorstep with zucchini right as you're ready to give some away.

Rumor has it that folks keep planting it because of our fabulous recipe for grilled summer squash. We dare you to find a recipe that beats this melange of fresh herbs and creamy squash for embodying pure summer.

Continue reading Beekman 1802 -- Sweet Grilled Summer Squash

Squash Feast - Slashfood Ate (8)

Squash
The term squash covers a whole host of scrumptious fruits - yes, they are fruits.

They are grouped basically into summer squash and winter squash. Summer squash is harvested as an immature fruit, and winter squash is harvested in the fall or winter when it has ripened. Zucchini is probably the most commonly used summer squash, and winter squashes include everyone's favorites: butternut, buttercup, acorn, pumpkin, and spaghetti squash. The skin of a winter squash is hard, and requires cooking.

Squash can be a great, healthier alternative to potato or pasta in many recipes. Here are eight great ways to serve up squash, starting with one you don't have to cook:

1. Carpaccio of Raw Zucchini
2. Smoked Sausage, Butternut Squash, and Wild Rice Soup
3. Winter Squash Mash (with kabocha squash)
4. Best Ever Roasted Pumpkin Seeds (works with other winter squash seeds, too)
5. Baked Acorn Squash with Brown Sugar and Butter
6. Yellow Squash Casserole
7. Herbed Spaghetti Squash (if you fail, just dump tomato sauce on it and lie)
8. Pumpkin Pie Straight from the Pumpkin

These recipes are varied enough that you could make them all for one giant meal and have a squash feast! If there's someone in your life you have to lie to about there being squash in what they're eating, spaghetti squash with pasta sauce is usually a safe bet. Or, you can totally get away with soup - picky eaters often don't pay attention to the broth, just the stuff floating in there. Good luck and happy squashing!

Slashfood Ate (8): Food in a food

pumpkin souffle in a pumpkinAt every major meal event, I have to limit my mother to one "food in a food" -- meaning one dish where the plate/bowl is also edible. It's true that serving food this way can make for a killer presentation, but there's a fine line between killer and overkill, so I try to limit her to one dish. That said, here are some fabulous for serving food inside of food this fall...

1. Fall yams served in orange cups, from Epicurious.

2. Pumpkin souffles inside pumpkins, from Martha Stewart

3. Roasted butternut squash pastina served inside a pumpkin (or inside winter squash, perhaps?) from Food Network

4. Clam chowder in a bread bowl from yumsugar

5. Cappuccino Mousse in chocolate cups from All Recipes

6. Stuffed bell peppers from Simply Recipes (this counts because the recipe just looks so good!)

7. Lemon sorbet in frozen lemon shells from Homemade Ice Cream Desserts

8. Fruit salad served in melon from Fine Living

Have a beautiful serving idea of your own? Please share!

A Harvest of Pumpkins and Squash, Cookbook of the Day

cover of A Harvest of Pumpkins and Squash

You can tell that we here at Slashfood are knee-deep in autumn: some of us are swilling pumpkin beer and mixing pumpkin cocktails; some of us are making comfort food from soup to pot pie; and no few of us are stuffing Halloween candy into our mouths. So what better time to share a slim, marvelous volume devoted to recipes and techniques for autumn's centerpiece ingredient?

Yes, a pumpkin is a squash (and squashes, by the way, are gourds), and so are crooknecks, acorns, butternuts, zucchinis, chayotes, pattypans, carnivals and all of the summer and winter squashes that take center stage in A Harvest of Pumpkins and Squash. The book begins with cookbook author Lou Seibert Pappas' thoughts on squash, from their history to their purchase and preparation, followed by a wonderful and useful squash glossary (squashary?). From there we proceed to squash recipes (squashipes?).

Continue reading A Harvest of Pumpkins and Squash, Cookbook of the Day

Slashfood Ate (8): Ways to devour acorn squash

Preparing acorn squash
Acorn squash is one of the many vegetables I look forward eating in the fall. Aesthetically, Acorn squash is nature's masterpiece with its distinctive longitudinal ridges and sweet yellow-orange flesh and its shape that resembles that of an acorn. Although it's available in the fall, acorn squash belongs to the same species as summer squashes, such as zucchini and yellow crookneck squash.

The sweetness of Acorn Squash makes it a delicious vegetable to eat baked, sauteed, and steamed. It's high in fiber and potassium. Not only can you eat its flesh, but you can also toast its seeds and snack on them.

Below are 8 ways to devour acorn squash:
  1. Savory ricotta-squash tart
  2. Mashed acorn squash with apples
  3. Acorn squash and pear pie
  4. Roasted squash with maple syrup and sage cream
  5. Beet soup in roasted acorn squash
  6. Garam masala scallops over acorn squash
  7. Apple-filled acorn squash rings with curry butter
  8. Orzo and cheese baked in acorn squash

Foodie Flicks: Cutting butternut squash



With the chill in the air, and the last days of summer falling away in the blink of an eye, it's time to start thinking of fall foods. Squash are starting to overtake the stores in a pile of shapes and colors, and with that comes the big conundrum: When you're not just baking a butternut squash to eat, how in the heck should you remove the skin and seeds?

Marisa offered a long blanching option back in February, and now here's another technique, if waiting for the squash to cool doesn't sound appealing. Above, Roni at GreenLiteBItes shares her butternut chopping system. This allows for great, uniform strips for fries, but should work just as well for soup chunks and other uses.

Good luck, and if you have any other cutting techniques, share them below!

Lasagna with a twist of Pernod

lasagna
Yesterday, my fridge was in dire need of a cleaning out -- not with disinfectant and a sponge, but with a hungry stomach willing to devour a whole ton of almost-bad veggies. At first, I was thinking about a veggie casserole. Then I remembered that I had dried some homemade egg pasta into fettucini and lasagna noodles. Ding, ding!

Picking up some fennel and cheese at the store, I decided to make a Pernod/Anise-flavored kitchen-sink lasagna. It was oh-so-good (even if I had to wait until 10 PM for it to be done), and shows just how versatile the classic dish is.

Instead of spinach in my ricotta, I sauteed some bok choy with a sprinkle of anise seeds to mix in. And then I set about preparing my lasagna's two layers. One consisted of the fennel, misc. peppers, and onion, with some anise seed sprinkled in as it sauteed, and the other consisted of quickly fried petit pan squash slices. Meanwhile, I reduced a quick sauce of a can of chopped tomatoes, some spices, and some Pernod.

All layered and baked, there was a nice freshness from the vegetables, with the Pernod adding a good zap of flavor to make up for the missing meat. Anise flavor in Italian food is just magic, so if you have any good recipes, please share them below.

Baked squash with feta and mushrooms

baked squash with feta and mushrooms
When I get excited about large amounts of delicious-looking fresh produce for too-cheap-to-refuse prices, I go overboard. Way overboard. My eyes light up, reason goes out the window, and I pick up everything tasty that I lay my eyes on. Sometimes I'm pretty good at coming up with immediate possibilities for the produce, so that I don't have so much that it'll go bad before I get to it. Tomatoes are mentally whipped up into salsa. Potatoes become a nice and creamy potato salad. But sometimes I buy with no clue, just driven by a veggie consumerist hunger.

That's what happened when I picked up a big basket of squash and zucchini over the weekend. I had no idea what I'd do with it, but I had to have them since they were only a few bucks. For once, I'm so glad that I did because I created my first moan-worthy meal in a while. Check it out after the jump.

Continue reading Baked squash with feta and mushrooms

Need to brush up on your food prep skills?

Now, I'm sure most of the readers of this blog are seasoned chefs with tons of practice and experience. But even the best of us need a little reminder sometimes, even on the basics.

Bear with me - or skip over this entirely - if this is old hat to you, but if you need a little help, don't worry, we won't tell.

How to...

Thanksgiving: Marisa's round-up of possible side dishes

a thanksgiving table, ladden with side dishes
For the last couple of weeks, I've been posting links to good Thanksgiving sides. Some of them have come from the recesses of my brain and some of have been pinched from other sites. I thought it might be helpful to round all those posts up in one place so that you can see some options in one place and narrow down your finalist dishes.

It all started with the Autumnal Casserole I made that combined potatoes, squash and cheese into one creamy, savory dish. Next came the Vanilla Flecked Sweet Potato Puree that Heidi at 101 Cookbooks posted a couple of years ago. Kim O'Donnel's Parsnip-Potato Mash was next, followed by Alanna's recipe for Cauliflower Cream (the recipe she posted today for a Spinach Casserole also looks like a winner). Finally, there was my cousin Jeremy's recipe (if you can call my loose instructions a recipe) for Gingery Squash.

If after all those posts, you still don't think you have enough side dish options, I'd also like to point you in the direction of the oven roasted brussels sprouts I made last month. They are also excellent (and add a nice, green counterpoint to your plate) on the Thanksgiving table.

Ginger squash puree

half of a raw acorn squash
Late last week, I happened to drop mention of the Ginger Squash we often have for Thanksgiving around my family table. I got several requests for the recipe and so I'm now going to do my best to create one for you, despite the fact that this is not a dish I've ever tried to write down and I don't think I've ever made it exactly the same way twice.

My cousin Jeremy is the one who first innovated this dish, using freshly ground ginger (although dried works) and a lots of cream. One year he wasn't able to come and so I did my best to create something akin to his regular offering. Depending on how many people are going to be at dinner, I buy either two slabs of Hubbard Squash or two Butternut Squashes (Acorn Squashes also work well). I steam them until they are fork tender on the stove top because the oven is occupied with the turkey.

When the are completely cooked, I scrape all the flesh off the skin and put it into a large bowl. I mash it together with butter (2-3 tablespoons), a little whole milk, fresh ginger grated on a microplane (between 1/2 a teaspoon and a teaspoon, depending on how pungent it is and how much squash you are working with), salt and pepper. When everything is combined, I pull out the trusty old immersion blender and give it a few whirs with that to ensure a smooth texture. I tend to think that the squash is plenty sweet just the way it is, but if you like it a bit sweeter, feel free to add a little brown sugar.

An autumnal casserole

pumpkin, potato and cheese casserole
Sometime last week, while I was on the phone with my mom, she said, "Just a second, there's a recipe I want to read to you." Pulling out an ancient pumpkin cookbook, she proceeded to narrate a recipe that consisted of pumpkin, potato, cheese and egg, all mashed together and baked in a casserole dish. It sounded yummy, but a little plain, and so I tucked it into the back of my mind to let it hang out for a couple of days.

Then Friday rolled around and I needed a recipe that would be delicious, seasonal and just ever-so-slightly impressive because it would be my offering at the first-ever Philly food blogger potluck. I called my mom for the exact recipe to use as inspiration and then went my own way with the dish. The final product was amazingly good, full of acorn and butternut squashes, yukon gold potatoes, gruyere, parmesan, sage and nutmeg. It was something of a hit with the food bloggers and by the end of the night there was only a little bit left in the far corner of the pan. If you're looking for something new for your Thanksgiving table, this would be an excellent way to go.

Continue reading An autumnal casserole

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Tip of the Day

Drying fruit is easy, mostly hands-off and yields a sweet and healthy snack.

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