Soup Series 2: Rescue Orange!

Bend your ear down to this soup: it’s so orange, you can hear a tiny siren sound.

I found some neglected carrots and abandoned squash in the crisper drawer. They had some soft spots. And a few wrinkly peels. There may have been some sprouting. All right, I admit it: parts of them were brown.

My poor vegetables weren’t going to win any beauty contests; that was for sure. But they were mostly intact and I hated to throw them out. Besides, it was I who had failed them. They deserved more from me. I owed it to them. “You will look just fine as soup,” I told them.

Cooked this way, they look (and taste) exciting and delicious again! A splash of orange juice and a sprig of tarragon rescues them from the trash can.

Carrot and Squash Soup with Orange and Tarragon
Serves 6

2 T butter or olive oil
1 c chopped onion
6 c diced carrots and/or winter squash, such as butternut and kabocha
1 qt broth
½ c orange juice
2 T chopped fresh tarragon
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the butter or oil in a stockpot. Sauté the onion until soft, about 4 or 5 minutes. Dump in the carrots/squash and sauté that for another 5 or 6 minutes, until things begin to soften up and start hinting at getting brown.

Add the broth and simmer until the vegetables are tender, maybe 15 minutes.

Purée the soup in a blender or food processor. For good measure (and if you need to impress someone), force the soup through a sieve; this will make it super-smooth.

Return the soup to the pot, add the remaining ingredients, and bring it up to piping hot. Serve to acclaim.

Venison, Wild Rice, and Squash!

A new job means new adventures, right? Well at least it means new colleagues—and, as it happens, a new window on the world of food.

My colleague Angi’s family are deer hunters, and they shot one this season. I’d been hearing about this dead deer for days: it was hanging in the garage. Angi had to bump past it every day to and from work. Her kids wanted to play with the legs. Her husband made sausage, which she did not want to help eat.

I must be doing something right, because guess what Angi brought me!

And I have a lot of little squashes piling up from my CSA, too. How fun would this be: squashes stuffed with a sausage and wild rice filling thing?

I chose three Sweet Dumpling squashes, each about the size of my two fists. I cut them in half, scooped out the seeds, and set them cut-side down on a rimmed baking sheet. I propped up each squash half on the rim of the sheet—like propping up a lid on the edge of a pot—so they weren’t flat on the metal.

While they were baking, I made a half recipe of fruited wild rice pilaf from a recipe card I found at Kowalski’s Market. I cut the recipe in half, fried up a cup of sausage, and mixed it in.

Then I stuffed my little squash friends full of fruity venison sausagey wild rice pilaf. Aren’t they cute? There was rice left over, so I could have made more or bigger squashes.

The dish was rich and sweet with a bit of tang from the fruit, chewiness from the wild rice, and crunch from the pecans in the recipe. Sage, stock, and aromatics permeate the rice. This would be good with a crisp salad of bitter greens. I pronounce it yummy. Thanks, Angi!

Kabocha is Squashspeak for “I Love You”

New Year’s Eve used to be my third most hated holiday.* But Beth has changed all that. New Year’s Eve is our anniversary!

I love Beth more than I can explain to you. I love the complement between her formidable intellect and her capacity for abject silliness. We laugh together every single day.

I love her giant heart: I have never met anyone who works as hard as Beth does to understand herself, to take responsibility for her actions, to extend a hand of compassion to others.

I love the fact that, though she’s a little tiny thing, she can eat an entire New York strip in a sitting. My baby can put the steak away, aww yeah.

So of course I made a steak for her on our special day. And there had to be something good to go with it. Bread? Pah! Baked potato? Fwuh! My girl loves squash. Imma make her some kabocha gratine.

Oh, kabocha. It is the most fine-grained, sweet, and creamy vegetable you could ever hope to meet. Its Crayola-colored rind peels away to reveal carrot-orange flesh streaked with green, yellow, and red. Can you resist sneaking a raw bite? It is crisp and sugary as a carrot, too.

Layer the slices in a baking dish and cover them with velvety cheese sauce, and you have decadence incarnate. The squash bakes to melting tenderness in a surprisingly short amount of time. The gratine is unctuous and rich, bathing the senses in deep flavors and smooth texture. Want to render your lover speechless with pleasure? Just slip a few spoonfuls of this onto her plate.

*After Christmas and Valentine’s Day. We fixed Christmas, but we still hate Valentine’s Day.

Kabocha Gratine with Four Cheeses

The remains of our Sparklemas cheese plate went into the sauce. More fun than the traditional Swiss!

A kabocha squash, peeled, seeded, and sliced
¼ cup (half a stick) butter
2 T flour
1 c milk or cream
1 c grated/shredded/mangled cheese, divided. I used scraps of chevre, Manchego, Parmesan; and mostly mozzarella. Swiss would have been better than mozzarella, but that’s what I had.
A dash of fresh-ground nutmeg
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 350°. Butter a glass or ceramic baking dish. Arrange the squash slices in one layer, slightly overlapping them so the bottom of the pan is covered.

Melt the butter in a saucepan and sift in the flour. Whisk until smooth. Pour in the milk or cream and cook, whisking constantly, until thick—right before the liquid comes to the boil. Take the pan off the heat and stir in ¾ cup of cheese. The sauce should be thick and the cheese completely melted. Add the nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

Pour the sauce over the squash, taking care to cover it up well. Put the pan in the oven and bake until bubbly and browned, about 30 minutes. The squash should be tender. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top and put back in the oven until melty and toasty, another 5 to 10 minutes.

Serve to acclaim.

Zucca Due Colori

It’s that time of year again. Sparklemas is on its way, and I’m experimenting with what we should have for dinner. Last year I made a giant porchetta and pumpkin ravioli. This year, I want to mix it up a little. I like the flavors of squash and sage, but I don’t want to paint myself into the corner of making labor-intensive ravioli every year.

I tried a pan-fried squash dish and served it over gnocchi. Gnocchi are a favorite of mine: pillowy little dumplings of potato and flour, chewy and surprisingly filing. They’re comfort food and just the thing for me on a deep, dark winter night.

Problem, though: the softness and blandness of the gnocchi do not make much of a contrast for the squash. And, as it turns out, not everyone likes their texture. (Cough. Beth. Ahem.) I felt the sweetness of the dish needed a little something… perhaps a splash of balsamico.

Overall, I’d call the squash a win as a side dish. The squash is sumptuous and sweet; the savor of onions, garlic, and sage complement it well.

Zucca Due Colori
That is, two-color squash. Butternut and Festival are what I happened to have in the fridge. Who knew they were going to look so pretty together?

1 butternut squash (orange flesh), peeled, seeded, and cubed
1 Festival squash (yellow flesh), peeled, seeded, and cubed
1 onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
12 dried sage leaves
3 T butter
Salt and pepper
A pound of cooked pasta, if you want
A fistful of Italian parsley, chopped
A sprinkling of grated Parmesan

Heat the butter in a large sauté pan and fry the onion until it is translucent. Toss the garlic and sage in after it and fry a minute more until they start to give off scent.

Throw in the squash cubes. They should fit in one layer; if they are too crowded, you may need to do this part in two shifts. Stir and toss the squash constantly until they start showing sear marks. If your pan is getting too sticky, throw in a tablespoon or two of water to release the caramely bits and keep things moving.

When the squash shows evidence of browning, add a quarter cup of water to the pan, turn down the heat, and cover. Let the squash cook until soft, ten or fifteen minutes. You should start the pasta during this time if you are going to serve the squash on top of it.

Turn the squash into a serving bowl, deglaze the pan with a little more water, and pour all the browned delicious bits over the squash. Toss with pasta if you are going that route. Sprinkle the bowl, or each serving, with the parsley and cheese. A splash of balsamic vinegar might brighten things up, too.

Mangiamo!

Thank You for Not Liking Delicata Squash

I got home today to find a squash stuffed in my mailbox.

Some people might be puzzled by this, but I knew exactly what it meant. It meant my neighbors with the Harmony Valley CSA do not care to eat this squash.

"Seriously?!" I asked the mailbox. Mailbox didn't answer. I looked up and down the street. No one. I snatched the squash and hurried inside.

Quickly, now, before they change their minds.

Caramelized Delicata
1 delicata or other thin-skinned winter squash
2 T butter
Salt and pepper
2 T Madeira

Slice the squash into rings. Pare the squash innards out of the middle of each ring.

Heat the butter over medium heat until the foam recedes. Turn the heat down a bit and lay the squash rings in the pan. Cook gently for about five minutes. They should be turning a caramelized brown on the outside.

Turn the rings over. Cook another five minutes.

Sprinkle on salt and pepper to taste. Shake the pan around a little. Remove the squash rings and deglaze the pan with the Madeira. Pour the sauce over the squash.

Thank you, neighbors. You can kick your undesired squash over here anytime.

Circle Salad

“You know, I can still remember when we found this salad,” Beth said, fork poised over our favorite early-autumn meal.

It was on a trip to New York. We wandered around in that city with its thousands of food options—so many you could starve to death trying to choose what to eat. That’s what was happening to us as we stumbled through neighborhoods, just a doubt away from being lost. And creeping up on us was the indecisive fog that comes with having postponed lunch too long.

Pausing smack in the middle of the sidewalk, blinking owlishly, we presented maximum obstruction to the annoyed pedestrians elbowing past us. I looked up and saw a storefront name I knew from a previous visit: Le Pain Quotidien. “Daily Bread.” I grabbed Beth’s arm and pulled her into the familiar restaurant.

The salad they brought us—well, we fell in love with it instantly. A pesto-lime dressing clung to fresh mixed greens piled in a circle of colorful roasted vegetable slices and medallions of chevre. It was a perfect balance of sweet and tangy, soft and crunchy, bright tastes and deep ones. Quite simply, it’s beets, squash, cheese, and greens holding hands and singing.

“We should remember this salad,” I told Beth. “We could make it at home.” And we do, every autumn, when beets and squash come to market and before summer’s basil and lettuces fade away. Whenever I announce that I’m making “the circles,” I’m always greeted with appreciation and approval.

There’s only one problem with circle salad, and it played itself out at the end of the meal tonight. Beth sat scowling at the scrap of lettuce and single bite each of cheese, beet, and squash on her plate. “I can’t decide what I want to taste last.”

Guess I’ll just have to make it again soon.

Circle Salad
I don’t remember what Le Pain Quotidien called this salad. Probably something more French and less prosaic.

1 butternut squash – it should have a 3-4”, narrow neck if possible.
4 golf ball sized beets
Olive oil for brushing on vegetables
4 oz chevre
4-5 c mixed baby field greens

The dressing:
1 c loosely packed fresh basil leaves
2-3 T pine nuts
¼ c grated Parmesan cheese
1 clove garlic
¼ t fresh ground black pepper
¼ - ½ c olive oil
Juice of one lime
Salt to taste

Heat the oven to 400°. Peel the squash and cut the neck into 12 slices, each about ¼” thick. Brush with olive oil and lay them on a cookie sheet. Brush the beets with oil and wrap them individually in aluminum foil. You can put them on a cookie sheet, too, or set them directly on the oven rack. Roast the beets and squash for 25-35 minutes or until they are easily pierced with a fork. Remove from oven and cool.

Slip the skins off the beets, trim off their tops and tails, and cut each beet into three crosswise slices.

Divide the room-temperature chevre into 12 equal pieces. Roll each portion into a ball and flatten into a disk. Refrigerate the disks to firm them up.

Run all the dressing ingredients in a blender or food processor until they are a pourable paste, thinner than pesto but still rough-textured. Add extra oil if necessary to keep things flowing smoothly.

Get out four plates. On each plate, arrange three pieces of chevre as if you are marking off the corners of an equilateral triangle. Follow with three slices of squash, each placed to the left of a chevre circle. Finish with three slices of beet. Do them in this order to decrease the chance of beet juice mishaps.

Reserve two or three teaspoons of the dressing. Toss the greens with the remaining dressing and pile them in the center of each plate. Drizzle a bit of the reserved dressing over each slice of chevre.

Bon appétit!