Archives for October 2016

I’m a lover of pasta. I like the taste, the texture and the fact that I can make it from scratch or buy it in a box. It’s one of those foods that I’ve eaten since the day of my birth and that I’ll be eating until the day I die – hopefully. The thing is, there are quite a few people in this world who have given up on this wonderful food. For whatever reason, there are fewer and fewer folks who choose to eat pasta. It’s totally understandable. Flour isn’t the first choice for many anymore.

That’s fine. It isn’t for everyone and for all those who used to enjoy lasagna but don’t want it anymore because of the large amount of pasta used, I’ve got the perfect surprise – a lasagna made from butternut squash instead of lasagna noodles. How cool is that? Talk about getting your vitamin A. Take a look at this:

One cup of butternut squash provides a whopping 437% percent of your vitamin A needs for the day, as well as 52% of vitamin C and 10% or more of vitamin E, thiamin, niacin, vitamin B-6, folate, pantothenic acid, magnesium and manganese. Source: MedicalNewsToday.

Recently, Laura has been surprising me with some pretty awesome recipes. She’s been scouring the web and a few cookbooks and has come up with what I think are magical foods. This recipe is the first of many to come. Just wait until you see the next two. They’re just as good.

Laura found this recipe on PureWow. If you aren’t aware, this is a really great website for all sorts of things. They talk about food, fashion, lifestyle and a bunch of other topics. Regarding this recipe, they decided to call it Squash Your Cravings: A Gluten-Free Lasagna That Turns Veggies into Pasta. That’s a good name because it’s very descriptive.

The Recipe

This isn’t a tough dish to put together. The only area that may take some time is the prepping of the squash. You need to first peel it and then slice it thinly into planks. Beyond that (which isn’t even that hard), you’ll need to make the cheese mixture and the onion and spinach mixture. It’s a three part dish that comes together as an extremely filling and satisfying dinner. Trust me, we ate this last night and we were stuffed. Good thing I doubled up on everything, because we now have dinner for the week. That’s the way I roll.

Ingredients

Serves: 4

1 Large Butternut Squash, Peeled, Halved and Seeded
Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
Regular Olive Oil
1 Large Sweet Onion, Chopped
3 Teaspoons Garlic, Minced
2 Packages Frozen Chopped Spinach, Thawed
1 32-Ounce Container Ricotta Cheese
1 Teaspoon Dried Sage
1/2 Teaspoon Nutmeg
Regular Table Salt
Ground Black Pepper
1 Cup Mozzarella Cheese, Shredded

Step-by-Step Instructions

According to the recipe, you may add additional ingredients if you wish. Toasted crushed walnuts are one of these ingredients and sauteed mushrooms are another. When I prepare this dish again, I’m going to get creative with things like this. If interested, you’d add these ingredients to the ricotta cheese layer.

Pre-Heat the Oven

Move one of the oven racks to the center position and then pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Also, grease a casserole dish with oil or butter.

Prep the Squash

The squash is probably the most important part of this entire recipe, so, with that in mind, you need to take special care of it. The first thing you’ll need to do is to trim both ends off of it. Then, completely peel it. After that, cut it in half length-wise and remove all the seeds.

When you’re finished with that, go ahead and cut the squash in half width-wise and then take the solid part and cut it into plants of about 1/8 inch thick. With the bottom hollow part, you can cut width-wise the same thickness. You’ll use all of the squash in this recipe. Place everything in a large bowl when finished. Basically, you’re making the lasagna noodles that you’ll use as layers in the casserole.

Cook the Squash

You aren’t actually “cooking” the squash in this step. You’re just softening it to give it a head start.

Fill a large pot with 4 quarts of water and bring to a boil. Add 1 tablespoon of salt to the water as well. When boiling, add a batch of sliced squash and cook for about 5 minutes. When finished, remove the squash from the water with a slotted spoon and place in a colander. Keep doing this until all the squash has been softened.

Prepare the Onion & Spinach Mix

Warm a large skillet over medium heat. Then, add 1 tablespoon of regular olive oil to the pan. When it’s to temperature, add the chopped onion and let cook for about 5 minutes until it’s soft. Stir during this time. When the onion is soft, add the minced garlic and the thawed and squeezed (to remove the liquid) spinach to the skillet as well. Stir and cook for another 5 minutes. When done, turn the heat off.

Make the Ricotta Mixture

In a large bowl, add the ricotta, sage and nutmeg. Also add in 1 teaspoon of salt and one half teaspoon of black pepper. Mix well.

Assemble Lasagna

In your casserole dish, add a bottom layer of squash. Try to use a third of the squash because there will be three layers total. On top of the squash, add one third of the ricotta mixture and on top of that, add half of the onion and spinach mixture. This is what things should look like at this point:

Continue on with a duplicate of what you just put down. Finally, finish the top with the remaining squash and then the remaining ricotta cheese on top of that. Lastly, sprinkle the shredded mozzarella over everything and drizzle some extra-virgin olive oil over that.

This is one serious vegetarian lasagna. So serious, I made two of them. Check this out.

Cook the Lasagna

Place the casserole into the oven and let cook for about 30 minutes. You’ll know it’s finished when you see everything bubbling and the cheese turning golden brown.

When it’s done, remove the casserole from the oven and let cool for 20 minutes before cutting into it.

The Final Lasagna

I tried to get a picture of the layers for you. The taste is sublime because the squash was cooked in salted water. That salt is infused into the vegetable. Also, with all the other flavors working together, this dish is a winner. Enjoy!

Many different types of squash are very good for you. I eat a lot of butternut squash because this type has a fairly robust amount of flesh and is easy to peel and cut up. I also really enjoy acorn squash, which caramelizes quickly and offers a sweet, rich flavor. Beyond the flavor of acorn squash is a fair amount of health benefits. Now, in this post, I’ll only be writing about acorn squash, but similar benefits apply to many different types.

Check this out:

Acorn squash contains vitamin A, niacin, folate, thiamine and vitamin B-6, but it is an especially good source of vitamin C. A 1/2-cup serving of cooked, cubed acorn squash provides approximately 20 percent of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin C for healthy adults following a 2,000-calorie diet.

Last night, I prepared two full squash that yielded four servings. The dinner was excellent and both Laura and I were stuffed to the gills. The recipe wasn’t terribly difficult to prepare and there were many healthy and flavorful ingredients included. I’m pretty excited about this dish.

The Recipe

I already talked about the squash used in this recipe. As far as the filling goes, it’s awesome. It takes advantage of barley, sweet onion, fennel, garlic, walnuts and herbs. The flavor is derived from the toasting of the walnuts, the herbs and Parmesan cheese, among other things. There’s a lot going on here and now that it’s getting chilly outside, I can tell you from personal experience that there’s nothing like curling up on the couch in front of the wood stove to enjoy a wonderful stuffed acorn squash dinner.

Ingredients

Serves: 4

Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
2 Medium Sized Acorn Squash
Regular Table Salt
Ground Black Pepper
3/4 Cup Dry Pearl Barley
1 Large Sweet Onion, Chopped
1 Fennel Bulb with Stalks, Cored, Trimmed and Chopped
6 Teaspoons Garlic, Minced
1/2 Teaspoon Dried Thyme
1 Teaspoon Ground Coriander
1 Cup Parmesan Cheese, Shredded
1/2 Cup Parsley, Chopped
1/4 Cups Walnuts, Crushed and Toasted
Balsamic Vinegar

Step-by-Step Instructions

I’d like to thank America’s Test Kitchen for this recipe. I pulled it from The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook. Their version is called Stuffed Acorn Squash with Barley, but I thought a more descriptive title was in order, so I expanded upon it for this post.

Pre-Heat Oven

Arrange the racks in the oven so one of them is in the center bottom position. Then, pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees.

Prep & Cook the Squash

The first thing you’ll need to do, food-wise, is to cut both of the acorn squash in half, from stem to stem. Then, clean the seeds out from each piece.

Next, line a baking sheet (or in my case, a cast iron pizza pan) with aluminum foil and brush the foil with olive oil. Then, brush the flesh of the squash with olive oil as well. After that, sprinkle the insides of the squash halves with some salt and pepper and place, face down, on the foil.

When the oven is to temperature, place the baking sheet on the bottom rack and let cook for about 45 minutes. You’ll know when they’re finished when you see the caramelization like you do in the photo below. Also, you’ll be able to slide a fork into the flesh easily.

When finished, remove the tray from the oven and flip the squash over. Keep the oven on.

Cook the Barley

Since the squash takes a while to cook, you can prepare the filling in the meantime. Bring 3 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot. When it is boiling, add the barley and 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

After the barley has been added, bring the water back to a boil and then reduce the heat to a simmer and let cook for about 20 minutes or until tender. Once finished, strain and place the cooked barley in a bowl for later use.

Prep Remaining Ingredients

I used the time the barley was cooking to prep the remaining ingredients. First, I chopped the fennel and sweet onion and placed it in a bowl.

Then, I chopped the parsley and placed it in a bowl as well.

And then, I drizzled a bit of olive oil over the crushed walnuts and browned them over medium heat in a small skillet.

Cook the Fennel & Onion

After the barley was finished cooking, I used the same pot to soften the fennel and onion. I warmed the pot over medium heat, added 1 tablespoon of olive oil and added the onion and fennel. I then cooked, while stirring, for about 10 minutes until the ingredients were softened.

Combine Ingredients

Once that was finished, I added the garlic, thyme and coriander to the fennel and onion mixture, stirred and cooked for another minute. After that, I turned off the stove top heat and added the cooked barley, parsley, walnuts, 3/4 cup of shredded Parmesan cheese and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Finally, I seasoned with salt and pepper to taste and mixed everything together thoroughly.

The final step necessary to create the filling is to scoop out some of the flesh from each piece of squash and then add it to the pot of other ingredients. I would say to remove half of the inside layer of flesh. Once you do that, simply add the squash flesh to the pot and stir well again.

Assemble the Stuffed Squash

Now that all the pieces have been prepared, you can assemble the stuffed squash. Fill each half of squash with filling until you have a nice mound in each one.

Then, sprinkle some Parmesan cheese over each mound of filling.

When this is done, place the assembled squash that are still on the baking tray back in the oven. Let them sit in there for about 10 minutes until the Parmesan cheese melts. Once it does, remove the tray and turn off the heat. At this point, you can drizzle some balsamic vinegar on top of the Parmesan, so it soaks into the filling. I’d say about 1 teaspoon of vinegar per piece.

The Final Stuffed Squash

As I said above, this is a great dish for a chilly autumn night. Get ready to be filled up with deliciousness because this is a good one. Enjoy!