The Learning Garden’s newly formed Education and
Outreach Committee presented How to Cook
Your Squash and Grow It Too, which included demonstrating the cooking of winter squash, roasting the
seeds, and even saving seeds for next year’s planting. There also was the
opportunity to taste some dishes that use a variety of squashes, including a
soup, a main dish, a side dish, and a dessert. Yes, winter squash is that
versatile. Tasty and nutritious, too. And it’s so easy to store (just plunk it
on your counter or any other room-temperature spot), you can stock up now from
our farmer neighbors and have it ready to include in your dinner plans all
winter long.
For
those of you who couldn’t make it to the Old Gregg School Indoor Farmers’ Market,
here are the recipes for the dishes some of the Gardeners prepared for tasting:
Savory
Butternut Squash With Fresh Sage (Recipe from Tait Farms!)
Ingredients:
1 butternut squash
olive oil (minimal) Almond oil works
beautifully too!
fresh sage leaves (6-12)
salt to taste
Peel the squash and cut it LENGTHWISE into
long wedges. About 8
strips for a medium size squash. Lay
them close together in an oiled
baking dish, alternating ‘bulb ends’ to
make for a nice presentation.
Tuck individual sage leaves between the
slices, maybe two or three
per slice, random but regular. Then
drizzle it all over with olive oil (or
almond oil). Don’t overdo the
oil..the squash shrinks as it bakes and
could end up too oily if you overdo
it. Sprinkle with salt and bake at 350
degrees for about 45 minutes to an hour,
until the squash is tender but
not completely mushy. Roasting causes
the sage to become very mild in
flavor, so don’t worry about having too
much.
Moosewood’s
Curried Squash and Apple Soup
2 cups chopped onions
2 tablespoons butter or vegetable oil
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon salt
6 cups peeled, seeded coarsely chopped
butternut squash
2 cups peeled, cored, coarsely chopped
apples
2 cups peeled and coarsely chopped sweet
potatoes
4 cups water
In a large nonreactive soup pot sauté
onions in the butter or oil until soft and translucent, about 10 min.
In a small dry skillet toast the seeds on
low heat for 3-4 minutes, until aromatic and lightly browned. Cool for a
few minutes and grind to a powder. Add the spices, salt, squash, apples,
sweet potatoes and water to the onions.
Bring to a boil, then lower heat, cover and
simmer on low heat for about 30 minutes, until all ingredients are
tender. Puree the soup in small batches or use an immersion
blender. Serve topped with sauteed greens, plain yogurt or cilantro.
*Time saving tip: Cut squash in half, take out seeds,
wrap in foil and bake for ½ hr @ 350. Scoop out of skin and add to soup during
simmer phase.
Squash
Bars!
Any orange-fleshed winter squash or pumpkin
may be used for this recipe
Bars: Frosting:
4
eggs 3 oz. cream cheese
2C sugar 1/2 tsp
salt 1 stick butter
1C
oil 2 tsp
cinnamon 1 tsp vanilla
2C squash 2 tsp baking
soda powdered sugar
Bars: Bake squash at 375 until well cooked, remove skin and seeds.
Mash into a pulp or puree in food processor. Beat together eggs and
sugar. Add oil and 2 C squash, mix well. In a separate bowl, stir
together the flour, salt, cinnamon, & soda (a wire whisk works well for
this) and add to the squash mixture. Pour into greased 12 x 17 x 1
pan. Bake 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool completely before
frosting.
Frosting: Allow cream cheese and butter to soften, then cream together
with the vanilla. Gradually add in powdered sugar until desired
thickness/stiffness is reached.
Pumpkin Stuffed with
Everything Good [Epicurious | October 2010]
by Dorie Greenspan
Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes From My Home to Yours
For
this recipe, an outline is about the best you can do. It’s a hollowed-out
pumpkin stuffed with bread, cheese, garlic, and cream, and since pumpkins come
in unpredictable sizes, cheeses and breads differ, and baking times depend on
how long it takes for the pumpkin to get soft enough to pierce with a knife,
being precise is impossible. Omit the bacon or sausage and you’ve got a great
vegetarian entrée for Thanksgiving.
There
are many ways to vary this arts-and-crafts project. Instead of bread, fill the
pumpkin with cooked rice—when it’s baked, it’s almost risotto-like. And, with
either bread or rice, you can cooked spinach, kale, chard, or peas (the peas
came straight from the freezer). Nuts are a great addition, as are chunks of
apple or pear or pieces of chestnut.
Yield: Makes 2 very generous
servings or 4 more genteel servings
Ingredients
1 pumpkin, about 3 pounds
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 pound stale bread, thinly sliced and cut into 1/2-inch chunks
1/4 pound cheese, such as Gruyère, Emmenthal, cheddar, or a combination, cut
into 1/2-inch chunks
2–4 garlic cloves (to taste), split, germ removed, and coarsely chopped
4 slices bacon, cooked until crisp, drained, and chopped or 1 pack of Cow-a-Hen
Farm’s hot or savory sausage, cooked and drained
About 1/4 cup snipped fresh chives or sliced scallions
1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme
About 1/3 cup heavy cream
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
Preparation
Center a rack
in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with a
silicone baking mat or parchment, or find a Dutch oven with a diameter that's
just a tiny bit larger than your pumpkin. If you bake the pumpkin in a
casserole, it will keep its shape, but it might stick to the casserole, so
you'll have to serve it from the pot—which is an appealingly homey way to serve
it. If you bake it on a baking sheet, you can present it freestanding, but
maneuvering a heavy stuffed pumpkin with a softened shell isn't so easy.
Using
a very sturdy knife—and caution—cut a cap out of the top of the pumpkin (think
Halloween Jack-o-Lantern). It’s easiest to work your knife around the top of
the pumpkin at a 45-degree angle. You want to cut off enough of the top to make
it easy for you to work inside the pumpkin. Clear away the seeds and strings
from the cap and from inside the pumpkin. Season the inside of the pumpkin
generously with salt and pepper, and put it on the baking sheet or in the pot.
Toss
the bread, cheese, garlic, bacon, and herbs together in a bowl. Season with
pepper—you probably have enough salt from the bacon and cheese, but taste to be
sure—and pack the mix into the pumpkin. The pumpkin should be well filled—you
might have a little too much filling, or you might need to add to it. Stir the
cream with the nutmeg and some salt and pepper and pour it into the pumpkin.
Again, you might have too much or too little—you don’t want the ingredients to
swim in cream, but you do want them nicely moistened. (It's hard to go wrong
here.)
Put
the cap in place and bake the pumpkin for about 2 hours—check after 90
minutes—or until everything inside the pumpkin is bubbling and the flesh of the
pumpkin is tender enough to be pierced easily with the tip of a knife. Because
the pumpkin will have exuded liquid, I like to remove the cap during the last
20 minutes or so, so that the liquid can bake away and the top of the stuffing
can brown a little.
When
the pumpkin is ready, carefully, very carefully—it's heavy, hot, and
wobbly—bring it to the table or transfer it to a platter that you'll bring to
the table.
Serving
You
have a choice—you can either spoon out portions of the filling, making sure to
get a generous amount of pumpkin into the spoonful, or you can dig into the
pumpkin with a big spoon, pull the pumpkin meat into the filling, and then mix
everything up. I'm a fan of the pull-and-mix option. Served in hearty portions
followed by a salad, the pumpkin is a perfect cold-weather main course; served
in generous spoonfuls, it's just right alongside the Thanksgiving turkey.
Storing
It's
really best to eat this as soon as it's ready. However, if you’ve got
leftovers, you can scoop them out of the pumpkin, mix them up, cover, and chill
them; reheat them the next day.
