Butternut squash in tomato sauce with orzo
And what to do with leftovers from conspiracy theorists you had to dinner
My local farmer’s market has the most adorable baby butternut squash right now. These squashes are sweeter and have even more flavor than the full sized ones in the supermarket. While I love squash, I don’t love to cook it, mainly because I am a lazy bish who hates peeling their thick skins. My preferred method is to cut them in half and scoop out the seeds and then roast the two halves, preferably stuffed with something equally delicious, but if you go to the trouble of peeling it, roasted cubes of squash can also be heaven.
Years ago I loved an Afghan restaurant on St Mark’s Place in the East Village. The restaurant served delectable raviolis called aushak and stewed pumpkin in a spiced onion and tomato sauce. Recently I came across a recipe for this dish, which is called borani kadoo. I highly recommend seeking out the authentic dish. What I make is a twist on that dish, incorporating the flavors in the sauce, which is not peppery hot, but redolent of all the fragrant spices of the cuisine of the Indian subcontinent. What better way to prepare these cute little squashes?
I added a sauce that evokes the delicious white sauce of the halal food trucks in Manhattan. I guess you could say it is homage to the food truck I used to go to for lunch when working in Midtown, which was manned by an Afghani who always greeted everyone with a big smile and added his white sauce from a squeeze bottle with a dramatic flourish. He was a hardworking guy who loved to feed people.
I also tried my conventional lazy squash cooking method, and stuffed the little butternut bottoms with the orzo and sauce. This was also a hit.
You can add meat to this dish if you want, but the recipe below is vegetarian. A recipe for dessert follows!
Ingredients
3 cups of peeled butternut squash, cut into 1 1/2” chunks
sunflower oil (can use vegetable oil as well)
salt and pepper to taste
Tomato sauce:
1 medium red onion, finely diced
garlic cloves, crushed
1 inch of ginger, peeled and finely chopped
½ tsp of red pepper flakes or, 1 green jalapeño chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
1 tsp of cumin seeds
1 tsp of coriander seeds
¼ tsp of ground turmeric
1 28 oz can of tomatoes, crushed (can also use 1 can of tomato puree)
1 cup of dry orzo
½ tsp of sugar
1/2 cup of hot water
dried mint, to serve
Yoghurt sauce:
1/2 cup of yoghurt
1 large garlic close, finely minced
salt and white pepper
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Peel and slice butternut squash, then toss in a bowl with sunflower oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Place the pumpkin or squash in a large baking tray. Transfer to the oven and roast for about 25 minutes, until the pieces start to turn brown and carmelize.
Top and tail about a cup of green beans, toss with oil and salt and pepper, and add to the sheet tray about ten minutes into cooking. Beans are done when thoroughly cooked and starting to brown, about 15 minutes.
Next, heat the sunflower oil in a large pan and add the onion. Salt the onions with 1/2 tsp of salt. Fry over a medium heat for 15 minutes until it is soft.
Add the garlic, ginger and pepper flakes (or chili) and cook for a further 5 minutes.
Toast the cumin and coriander seeds in a dry frying pan over a medium heat for a minute, then grind them up in a mortar and pestle and add to the pan with the turmeric and few grindings of black pepper.
After the spices have cooked for a few minutes, add the tomatoes and sugar. Add water and orzo.
Bring to a simmer, then cover and cook for 15 minutes. (Check after a few minutes to make sure the orzo does not stick to the bottom of the pan while cooking.)
Next, make the white sauce. Put a half cup of yoghurt in a small bowl and stir in a finely minced clove of garlic, and some salt and white pepper to taste.
When the beans and squash are done roasting, add to the pan. Spoon into bowls and drizzle white sauce on top to serve.
Alternatively, you can dust the top of the stew with dried mint. That is also an absolutely delicious accompaniment.
***
Last weekend we made a terrible error in judgment and invited over an older couple that we had met a number of times at local events. They seemed normal enough, but no sooner had they arrived in our house they began sharing their vaccine skepticism. I suppressed my eye rolling and tried to move off the topic, but from there the monologue blossomed into full blown theories of how our freedom was under threat from globalist puppet masters, who were in league with Communists and Catholic charities to let migrants overwhelm our country.
We tried other topics, but the thing about conspiracy theorists that they aren’t really interested in other topics. They keep going. And they seem to be growing in numbers. Soon I won’t be able to have anyone over for dinner.
To add insult to injury, they showed up with a dried out supermarket chocolate cake.
I decided to make chocolate crumbs and freeze them, but then got inspired to make chocolate croutons. Chocolate croutons need a good dessert sauce to dunk them in, and so the result is gâteau perdu à la crême anglaise.
This week I learned that when lunatics come to your house with bad cake, you make custard. I resolved to vet my dinner guests more throughly in future.
Gâteau perdu à la crême anglaise
Cube left over chocolate cake into 1 inch cubes. Spread out on a cookie sheet and bake in the oven at 300 degrees until you can smell them start to toast.
The sauce is a classic vanilla custard sauce:
1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 vanilla bean, split
6 egg yolks
6 tablespoons sugar
Combine milk and cream in heavy medium saucepan. Scrape in seeds from vanilla bean; add bean. Bring milk mixture to simmer. Remove from heat.
Whisk egg yolks and sugar in medium bowl to blend. Gradually whisk hot milk mixture into yolk mixture. Return custard to saucepan. Stir over low heat until custard thickens and l coats the back of spoon, about 5 minutes. Strain sauce into bowl. Cover and chill.
Spoon a little custard into a dessert dish or cup and add chocolate croutons.