Just as I find a locally grown, heirloom tomato irresistible in the summer, so too do I find an acorn or butternut squash in the fall. But whereas tomatoes require so little effort to be enjoyed, squash at least seems more complicated. Slicing, salting, and biting into a raw, winter squash will not result in the same blissful experience as with a summer tomato. At least, not for me. And to be honest, I don't love squash the way that I love summer tomatoes. Nonetheless, they call my name every fall with their autumnal colors and fun shapes.
I won't even address spaghetti squash here, except to say, I don't understand it. I ate it as spaghetti once with a tomato sauce. I did not like it. It was all too mushy and sweet. You know what's good with tomato sauce? Pasta. I'm sure there is a spaghetti squash dish out there that will change my mind, but I haven't encountered it yet. However, I'm in full support of other people eating spaghetti squash. It's healthy! It's vibrant! It turns out, I will address spaghetti squash here. But there are all sorts of other delicious and interesting squashes I won't be talking about that are deserving of our attention. Squash has a long shelf life, is nutritious, and depending on the variety, is pretty affordable. Let's all get to know more squashes!
Between acorn and butternut, acorn squash is really the more striking of the two with its deep green skin and lovely ridges. But sitting in my fridge for the past two weeks was a butternut squash. I had gotten it when a friend was visiting, thinking I'd make a soup for a gathering I was hosting. However, I did not. When I come home from work hungry and tired, its thick skin and tough stem look daunting, and I opt for something like pasta instead. But it was starting to wrinkle and I didn't want to waste it. So, I turned to our vast cookbook collection at the library!
In Praise of Veg , opens a new windowby Alice Zaslavsky is a large, colorful book that I'd noticed before. It's has a less slick and more whimsical look than many modern cookbooks to me, and I appreciate that.
It is organized by color, which is quite fun and eye catching. It also highlights the beautiful kaleidoscope of colors in which vegetables naturally grow! Aren't they amazing. I found a very simple recipe for roasting a whole butternut squash. It was such a simple process, and one I've surely done before. It's like, each year I'm re-daunted by the prospect of tackling a winter squash. All you really need, as the author points out, is a "sharp sturdy knife." All I did was cut it in half length-wise, scoop out the shallow hollow of seeds in each half, drizzle it with olive oil and dust it with cumin, paprika, salt, pepper, oregano and cayenne. Then I threw a whole garlic cove in the hollow of each half, just for fun. As Zaslavsky says:
"If you're looking to roast something whole and serve it with theatrical aplomb to a tableful of plant-eaters, look no further than butternut squash."
Admittedly, my knife has gotten a bit dull and I had to hammer it into the stem a little to get the cut started. After it was wedged in though, the rest was easy. My halves weren't very equal, but that's ok! I roasted the squash cut side down at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. I was short on time or I would have gone about 5 minutes longer to get better caramelization on the edges. After the squash cooled, I stuck it back in the fridge with plans to use it in a few different ways, such as folding some into a cornbread batter, spreading it on toast topped with feta and arugula, and maybe there will be a soup with sage brown butter if I'm feeling up for it this weekend!
There are a lot of other tasty-looking recipes in this book using many parts of many vegetables in creative ways. This is a great book if you have a vegetable sitting in your fridge you need to use but can't think of anything to do with it. I get stuck in my cooking ways, and this book pushed me think more creatively.
If you're curious about another recipe in the "orange" section of the book, there is an amazing-looking "Carrot Souffles with Crispy Carrot Tops & Salsa Verde" that uses the carrot tops in the salsa verde and deep fried carrot tops! Zaslavsky swears it isn't "cheffy" and is a very approachable recipe for novices. When I have carrots in my garden again next year, I'll be giving it a try!
-Terese Winters is an Information Services Librarian at Lawrence Public Library.
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