[TND] 10.30 Acorn Squash Pasta

A couple weeks ago, Dave gave me a couple of acorn squash that his mother had found mysteriously growing in her garden. I supplemented them with a few organic, locally grown squash from the supermarket. I found a pretty simple recipe for making squash into a sauce of sorts, and modified it pretty heavily to get the end product.

I peeled (skinned?) the squash (I used five 2 lb squash), chopped them into 1" pieces or so, and roasted them much as one would potatoes, with olive oil, salt and pepper. Parchment paper on the bottom of the pans is amazing and I wish someone had told me about it sooner. I also roasted some garlic in the usual way (3 heads, we likes the garlic). Garlic goes into a pan with a bit of (optional) butter, and half a bottle of white wine, Barefoot Chardonnay in this case. Heated it to a simmer, let it do that for a while, then added about half of the squash, since there was no room in the pan for more. Stir that, let it integrate and come back to heat, started the pasta (3 lbs) cooking. Once the pasta was done, reserved about 2 cups of the cooking water, drained, and put the squash-garlic mixture into the pasta pot with the rest of the squash, put it back on the heat, then added pasta water until the texture was nice and smooth. Added about half a cup to a cup of shredded parmesan cheese, stirred and heated until I couldn't see the parmesan anymore, tweaked it with more pasta water. I added a dollop of sour cream, half and half or milk would work nicely too, though you could just as easily skip it and the parmesan if you wanted it vegan. Then add the pasta, I used rotini so the squash would get into the ridges, and mix thoroughly.

While this was going on, I fried some sage leaves, which in the future, I will do ahead of time, since they really need to be watched. I used a mixture of olive oil and butter, the latter being the traditional, the former making it easier not to end up with a lot of burnt stuff.

Serve the pasta with toasted walnuts, more shredded parmesan, and crumble some of the fried sage leaves on top. I served it with some mixed greens with a balsamic dressing, which was a really nice pairing, to the point of potentially using balsamic vinegar on the pasta next time.

[TND] 10.16 Mac'n'cheese

Pure and simple, mac and cheese. I use the white parts of some scallions in the roux, sweet paprika, and white pepper. There was a bunch of edam on sale at the grocery store, so I used that and some sharp cheddar, so it's going to have a lot of sharp flavor, as I usually cut the cheddar with monterey jack instead. Since I didn't add anything like ham or veggies, the sharpness doesn't have anything to compete with.

[TND] 10.2 Flank steak, roasted potatoes, green beans

A simple birthday dinner designed to make good use of the last of the grilling weather. I definitely need a bigger grill, the two little ones are nice for some purposes, but just lack the surface area that I need for my typical grilling ventures. I did the flank steak with lime juice, ancho chile powder, salt and pepper, something I did a couple times this summer. I got the steaks from a different place, and there was definitely a noticeable difference. The more I use the all natural, grain fed beef from Highland Park, the less I want to eat the stuff from the regular grocery store. I think I'd rather have steak of higher quality, less often, then the lower quality steak. Green beans were just steamed, probably some of the last of the summer. I did some of the potatoes with cumin, some without, both were quite delicious. I did have to roast them a lot longer than I would have thought, which is something to bear in mind for future roasting endeavors. I also recently saw a recommendation to try parchment paper on the bottom of the roasting dish to prevent sticking, I'll have to try that next time.

[TND] 9.25 Shepherd's Pie

A while ago, I had an idea for a less traditional shepherd's pie, using sweet potatoes instead of the traditional russet. It's a pretty intuitive idea, so you can probably find some recipes out there for it. I couldn't find one I liked, so I just made mashed sweet potatoes like I would have to serve separately, with a bit of brown sugar and a hint of ancho chile powder. At the suggestion of my mom, I used frozen corn, heated 3/4 of the cooking time (I got the organic stuff 'cause it was on sale). I wanted to mix ground beef and lamb, but the grocery store had one small package of lamb, so it was basically just ground beef. Typical seasonings, but I also added a good bit of chipotle chile powder. A while ago I made some twice baked sweet potatoes with chipotle, and the combination is quite good. It worked very well here, I'll definitely be doing this recipe again.