Lasagna-stuffed spaghetti squash: a fun alternative

If you're looking for a way to take something totally unhealthy and turn it into something only mildly unhealthy, then look no further! This recipe converts the standard lasagna into one that uses spaghetti squash, a fun winter squash that pulls apart into threads (not unlike spaghetti) once sufficiently cooked. It may leave you wanting a bit, given the lower calorie count, but at least you won't hate yourself as much later that night. Plus, it's incredibly fun to eat.

Baby Kale Salad with Roasted Squash

This recipe is from the delicious New York City restaurant, Northern Spy.  I ate there a few years ago, and happened to notice that this random kale salad recipe pilfered from the internet was one of theirs. The salad did not disappoint, and made me miss spending time sampling the dishes of the excellent farm-to-table chefs in New York.  Crispy, crunchy, with a healthy dose of nuttiness from the roasted squash and toasted almonds, and tangy from the aged cheeses, this complex, filling salad was a huge hit at the dinner table, and could have held its own against the best made caesars or any of the roasted beet with goat cheese permutations.

I recommend you seek out baby kale for this salad, but if you can't find that try for one of the nicer kales mentioned in the recipe.  In a pinch, use regular kale, but blanch it for 60 seconds and then shock it in ice water to make it more palatable and bright.

Thai Pumpkin in Red Curry (Kaeng Phet Fak Thong)

This is a great dish to make in the fall, which is actually when I made this, despite taking forever to post it.  I had always wanted to try making a pumpkin curry after I tried one at the very excellent Thai X-ing, an off the beaten path restaurant literally in someone's living room in Washington, D.C.  The pumpkin curry dish surprised me with how much flavor it packed in - the standard pungency of a curry sauce, but with the smoothness and slightly sweet and nutty overtones from the stewed pumpkin (in that case, acorn squash).  So the first fall that came around, when fresh squash reared their heads, I made it a point to try this out.

I highly recommend kabocha squash to make this dish instead of other squash or pumpkins.  It holds up well, is fairly easy to work with, and seems to be the traditional gourd preferred by many Thais, in addition to being one of the mystery orange vegetables in an order of Japanese tempura.

Don't be misled by the name, this dish is non-vegetarian given the addition of some boneless pork to round out the protein content of the dish.  After all, squash and pork chops seem to go together, so why not pork with squash curry?

Sausage and Rice Stuffed Peppers

It's been 100 recipes, and I'm still alive.  And hopefully, you are too, and maybe even better off for checking in here from time to time.  So for this one, I'm not going to present anything too extreme, just something delicious, healthy, and fairly easy to make.  And for a change of pace, I didn't even use a recipe for this one - just threw some things together from memory in a way that I thought would work out well, and it turned out that it did.

Today we contemplate the stuffed pepper.  Who would ever think to take a large, cavernous vegetable, hollow it out, cram it full of goodness, and then roast it and treat it like an edible bowl?  Well, I don't know, but let's hope that he was given a thousand virgins and quite a few goats for his discovery.  You could do this with tomatoes, peppers, or eggplant or squash if you really knew what you were doing.  But as an easy start, let's focus on the most forgiving of all of these from a cooking and structural integrity standpoint - the pepper.  If you don't like bell peppers, then I have nothing for you.  But consider that you may only dislike green bell peppers, which are slightly less sweet, and consider giving this a try.

Bell Peppers Stuffed with Sausage and Rice
by me

• 2 large red bell peppers
• 1/2 lb Italian sweet or hot sausage, removed from casings if present
• 1 small zucchini, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1 rib celery, diced
• 1 green onion, sliced thinly
• 1/2 c coarse breadcrumbs
• 2 oz firm aged cheese, such as Parmesan or Asiago, grated
• 1.5 c cooked brown (or white) rice
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• Salt and pepper
• tomato sauce or aged balsamic vinegar, for plating
• 1 tbsp parsley, minced, for plating

The peppers loaf about lazily on the countertop, unaware of their fate.

Preheat your oven to 400 deg F.

Begin by halving the peppers lengthwise, removing the core and seeds, and cutting away as much of the white membrance as you can (this is bitter, and also takes up space).  Now, in a large saute pan over high heat, brown the sausage in 1 tbsp olive oil, breaking up with your spoon into small pieces.  When browned, remove from pan and drain on a paper towel, and saute zucchini, garlic, onion, celery, and green onion in the next 1 tbsp of olive oil.  Remove to a large bowl.

In the meantime, take a small frying pan and heat the last 1 tbsp of olive oil.  Toast the breadcrumbs if they're not already toasty, and set aside.

Now, the rest is fairly straightforward.  Take everything you've got except the peppers themselves and the breadcrumbs, and stir them together in a big bowl.  Taste, and season as needed with salt and pepper.  Try not to just stop here and eat the whole thing, because you will probably want to.  But we must forge ahead - now stuff this into the pepper halves, packing in the filling somewhat densely and mounding up slightly.  Don't get so crazy that it's spilling out, because next you have to sprinkle on the toasted breadcrumbs.

The filling, resting before an epic journey in a hollowed out pepper through the fires of Mt. Ofen.

The peppers, packed and ready to go.

In a reasonably sized glass baking dish, brush a few drops of olive oil onto the bottom and situate the pepper halves.  Toss in the oven for about 30 minutes, until peppers are soft and starting to brown at the edges, and bread crumbs are brown on top.

To serve, either place on a bed of homemade marinara sauce, or drizzle with balsamic vinegar, as I have done.  I tried this both ways and preferred the tomato sauce version, but both are going to impress people.  Sprinkle with minced parsley, and serve.

Exhausted from their journey, the peppers lie unsuspectingly before hungry predators.

At last, the stuffed pepper has come to its final resting place

Fettuccine with Pesto and Summer Squash

Okay all, here's a quick and easy recipe I think I came up with a while back, trying to find a use for some zucchini.  If you're like me, every summer you end up with too much of the stuff, and you're desperately trying to find a way to use it.  And you can only grill so much of it before you want to gag, so you start looking for new and creative ways to give it different flavors.  This one uses a pesto and ricotta cheese to give it both a sweet creamy texture as well as that pungent herb taste, and it comes together incredibly fast.  If you got really crazy you could make your own pasta or pesto, but for this one I'm using store bought ingredients (although they were both fresh, not dried or canned).  This dish is arguably similar to this one which I posted last year, but with a lot more flavor going on, and a few more ingredients.  It is also distinctly non-vegan, for those of you who live by that code, whereas the other one might have been.

Always on the lookout for good uses of squash - this one hit the mark

Fettuccine with Pesto and Summer Squash

• 1 pint (2 cups) fresh zucchini or other summer squash
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 small onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/4 pound fettuccine, dried, one 1/2 pound container of fresh fettuccine from the refrigerated section, or equivalent volume homemade pasta
• 4 ounces pesto
• 1/4 cup ricotta cheese
• salt and pepper to taste

Peel your tomatoes by blanching in a large pot of hot water (check here for detailed instructions).  Reserve the hot water for boiling your pasta - you can use that water again, making this more time efficient.  After shocking in ice water, coarsely chop tomatoes and set aside.  Chop the zucchini into bite-sized pieces, no larger than 3/4" to a side.  If using dried pasta, begin to boil now and follow package instructions to cook until just shy of al dente - maybe 30 seconds short of done.  If using fresh, read on.

Prep your ingredients - I used local mini squash, which have less bitter seeds

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add the zucchini and cook until starting to brown, then shake / flip and cook other side.  When you flip the zucchini, add the onion, and stir around to saute lightly.  Saute the garlic for just a few seconds.  If using fresh pasta, add to pot of boiling water now, and cook for the 60-90 seconds recommended by the package, or whatever you feel comfortable with for homemade.  

Back in the skillet, lower heat to medium low, add the tomatoes with any juice that may have accumulated, and cook for 30 seconds.  Add the pesto and stir to combine, and keep warm.  Drain cooked pasta, reserving up to 1/4 cup of the cooking water, and add pasta to the sauce.  Stir to combine, adding water a little at a time as needed to reach the consistency you like.  The starchy water will help partially thicken the dish while creating more of a sauce, as well as help finish the pasta (which you cooked to NOT QUITE al dente, right?) by cooking it in this sauce.

Toss the sauteed vegetables with the pesto and partially cooked tomatoes.  Don't keep the heat on too high at this point or you'll lose some of the subtlety

To serve, plate pasta into 2-3 servings, and garnish each with 2 tbsp of ricotta cheese.  If you want to get crazy, add a chiffonade of basil threads (see Wikipedia for a nice picture of this).  Eat it, love it, feel good about yourself for eating healthy.

Pumpkin Shrimp Bisque

From The Herbfarm Cookbook, by Jerry Traunfeld

Now that it's cold out, it's time to be excited about soup again.  And in honor of Halloween, I decided to buy and eviscerate a pumpkin.  I've been sitting on this recipe for a pumpkin shrimp bisque for probably 4 years, and finally got a chance to try it out.  Does it sound like a strange combination?  Maybe, but I believed in this recipe, and was not disappointed.  The finished product is almost more like a bouillabaisse with a mild pumpkin flavor, based on how the stock was made.  And fortune smiled on me to omit most of the sage because I couldn't find it fresh, which would have overpowered this strangely delicate soup.  But at the very least, invest in some saffron threads and make sure to include them.  Without that, the soup won't have the floral, earthy flavors you'd associate with a seafood soup, and you'll just get something bland.

It's optional to roast a pumpkin over buying the canned stuff, but I highly recommend fresh pumpkin in this soup.  You end up keeping much more of the pumpkin flavor, since it's minimally processed (you only cook the pumpkin for a few minutes in the soup after it's roasted).  If you're going to roast your own pumpkin, make sure to get the right kind.  You want what's called a "pie pumpkin", not just any old pumpkin that you carved up.   The bigger ones aren't as sweet, and will have a much higher starch-to-sugar ratio, making them more bland and stringy.  They also won't roast as well, since the sugars won't caramelize as fast.

Look for pie pumpkins.  They're about 8" or less in diameter, and are full of sugar.  Don't just roast any old pumpkin you happen to have.

I break this recipe into 3 stages, the first two of which you can do in parallel - roasting the pumpkin, making the shrimp stock, and finishing the soup.  The whole thing took about 2 hours, but could have been cut down to 75 minutes now that I understand this order.

Shrimp Stock

• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 3/4 cup dry white wine
• 3 cups homemade or canned low-sodium chicken stock
• Pinch saffron threads (about 24)
• 2 ribs celery, coarsely chopped
• 1 medium onion (about 8 ounces), coarsely chopped
• 4 fresh bay laurel leaves, torn, or 2 dried
• 2 3-inch springs fresh sage

Soup

• 2 cups pumpkin purée, fresh (see first step) or canned
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• About 3/4 teaspoon salt, less if using canned stock
• Scant 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh sage
• 1 pound large shrimp (16 to 20)  

1. Pumpkin purée: Cut a sugar pumpkin in half and scrape out the seeds.  Place it cut side down in a baking dish and pour in about 1/4 inch of hot water (I didn't remember this, just put it on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and it still worked out fine).  Bake it in a 400°F oven until the flesh is tender, 40 to 50 minutes.  Turn the pumpkin halves cut side up to cool.  Scoop the pumpkin flesh from the skin and purée it in a food processor until smooth.  I don't have a food processor, so I broke out its historical cousin, the food mill.  The directions say to transfer the purée to a large sieve lined with a double layer of cheesecloth and let it drain for 2-3 hours until it is firm enough to hold its shape on a spoon; however, I just ran the pumpkin through the mill right into the soup.  You can substitute winter squash purée, such as butternut or acorn, for the pumpkin.

The roasted pie pumpkin (about 4 pounds total)

You can't just scoop this out and throw it in the soup - it's too stringy.  Use a processor, or...

...this awesome thing - a food mill.  Bet you don't have one!  In fact, I'm not sure why I have one either.

2. The shrimp stock.  Peel and devein the shrimp, reserving the shells.  Cover the shrimp and refrigerate.  Heat the olive oil in a medium (3-quart) heavy-bottomed saucepan over high heat.  Add the shrimp shells to the pan and cook, stirring constantly, until they turn deep orange and are just beginning to brown, 3 to 4 minutes.  This step - pan roasting the shells - gives the stock much of its flavor, so don't skip it.  The roasted shells should release a concentrated, toasty, shrimp aroma that will fill your kitchen.  Add the wine to the pan, first turning off gas flames to prevent the alcohol from igniting, then boil it over medium heat until all the liquid is evaporated.  Add the chicken stock, saffron, celery, onion, bay leaves, and sage.  Don't omit the saffron!  It makes all the difference in the world, and is probably the number one defining flavor in this soup.  Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to the lowest setting.  Partially cover the pan and simmer gently for 30 minutes.  Strain the stock through a fine sieve, pushing down on the solids with the back of a spoon to extract all the liquid.  Rinse out the saucepan and pour the stock back into it.

The prep station.  Note the course chop on the vegetables - you don't need to dice anything, just get it small enough to give off some love in the stockpot.

The shrimp, after shelling.  It looks like they molted - does this make you want to watch District 9?

Don't just throw the tails in the pot and pour in the liquid - brown them up a bit.  Roasting and developing flavors before boiling is what distinguishes a light broth from a hearty stock.  This was shortly before I added the wine.

This is saffron.  It is your friend.  It is also the most expensive spice on the planet.  A little goes a long way - this is all you need.

3. The soup.  This is the easy part!  Whisk the pumpkin, cream, salt (omit if using canned stock), and cayenne into the shrimp stock.  Bring the soup to a simmer, then cook very gently uncovered over low heat for 10 minutes.  Stir in the lemon juice, taste, and season with black pepper and more salt if needed. (The soup can be made up to this point up to 1 day ahead store covered in the refrigerator.  Keep the peeled shrimp in a resealable bag buried in a bowl of ice in the refrigerator.)

What you end up with after adding all the soup ingredients.  It's not bright orange or anything.

Finishing the soup: Pour the olive oil into a large sauté pan placed over medium heat.  When hot, add the reserved shrimp and sage (optional) and cook, tossing often, until the shrimp is just cooked through, pink, and no longer translucent, but not curled into a circle, 2 to 3 minutes.  They should still have a tender snap when you bite into them.  Arrange the shrimp in warmed serving bowls or a tureen.  Bring the soup back to a simmer and then ladle it over the shrimp.  Serve right away.

Sauté the shrimp in olive oil, with or without the sage.  I'm not sure what they meant by not letting them curl up, but I didn't overcook them.

The finished soup, with some shrimp sticking out.

Fettucine with Summer Squash

Tonight's dinner was an exercise in frugality - what can I make with 2 pattypan squash from my friend's farm, along with whatever is in the fridge? Well, how about a summer squash pasta with fresh fettuccine? Doesn't really require many special ingredients, and stood to be both healthy and colorful. So I spent about an hour fiddling with pasta dough, and 2 minutes dealing with everything else. The result was a fresh-tasting dish with discernible flavors from the squash, the sweet onion, and the homemade pasta.  What's more, I could point to every single ingredient in my food as I sat down, which always feels nice.

Pattypan squash

I liberated the recipe from Tyler Florence, but modified it heavily based on what was in the house. Here's my version:

Fettuccine with Summer Squash and Tomatoes

• Kosher salt
• 2 summer squash
• 1 large tomato
• 1/2 Vidalia onion, finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled and halved
• 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 pound fresh fettuccine (or 1 box, dried)
• Fresh Parmesan cheese to taste

Prepare fettucine through the drying step (I recommend this recipe). As this is wrapping up, preheat the oven to 400 F, and set a large pot of water on the boil.

Cut the squash in quarters and then into slices, and cut the tomato into 1" pieces. Toss the squash, tomato, garlic, and onion with salt, pepper, and the olive oil and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or foil. Place the sheet in the preheated oven and roast for 10-15 minutes, stirring once halfway through, until vegetables are caramelized and beginning to brown.

Remove the sheet from the oven and place vegetables in a bowl. If using fresh pasta, boil for 1-3 minutes until cooked, or as directed for dried pasta. Reserve 1/4 cup of the pasta cooking liquid, and drain the pasta into a large colander.

Add the pasta back into the cooking pot with the reserved cooking water, and gently toss in the roasted vegetables. Serve at once with grated Parmesan.

Remember this scene from my other post?



The finished dish (pre-Parmesan), which disappeared quickly.