Butternut Squash, Chicken, and Rice

At some point back in those distant, glorious early fall days, the farmer's market was just rolling in butternut squash. A surplus of product, you may remember from your Economics 101 days, usually drives prices down. Penny-pincher that I am, I stocked up.

Right about that time, however, a combination of crazy new work schedules, lack of foresight, and general stupidity meant that most of those butternut squash are . . . still sitting in the garage, looking a little moldy 'round the edges.

Having established that I am something of a penny-pincher, moldy edges failed to deter me from cooking up this tasty dish. Admittedly, this was a month or two or three ago, and I still have more squash sitting out in the garage (discounting the pumpkins scattered throughout the house, which I suppose also ought to be cooked eventually), but I just found a new butternut squash soup recipe I need to try--and really, a slip of mold or squash rot here or there never hurt anyone, right?

To reassure those of you (such as my mother) who are genuinely worried for my (or perhaps the Darling Devoted Husband's) gastrointestinal health, obviously I chopped off the moldy edges. Any squash flesh which has turned brown or otherwise looks inedible is discarded. I promise, next year I shall figure out a better way to preserve the harvest's bounty than sticking it in the garage.

To begin, peel and chop into roughly one-inch pieces a butternut squash:

 

Chop two or three boneless, skinless chicken breasts into one-inch pieces. Then, gather your other ingredients. Rice, pine nuts, chicken bouillon cubes, and water:

 

  

Cinnamon, turmeric, ground ginger, cumin, and paprika:

  

Brown onion and garlic in a pan:

  

Add some pine nuts to toast:

  

Add the butternut squash, chicken, chicken broth, and spices:

  

Cover and let simmer until squash is tender and chicken is cooked through. Meanwhile, cook rice in water or broth in another pot. 

When the chicken is cooked and squash is tender, remove lid and allow mixture to cook down a little while you toast the remainder of the pine nuts:

  

 And add them to the rice (here, creamy arborio rice):

  

Serve the chicken and squash mixture over the rice.

  

The squash seems like it would be out of place with these bold spices, but it fit in surprisingly well. Even the DDH liked it, and he's really not a squash fan (another reason they're still languishing in the garage). In fact, now that I look at the pictures, I think I may go make it again.

 

Butternut Squash Soup

It's that time of year now where I start making a lot of soups, many of them featuring various winter squash. My squash experiments, most of which tend to be vegetarian, are bravely tolerated by the Darling Devoted Husband, a bona fide "I'll take some bacon with my pork chop, hold the green beans" carnivore. He professes to like this soup, however, though like most pureed soups it's not very substantial-feeling and does best accompanied by or as an accompaniment to something you can chew.

The recipe is from Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything.

Heat three tablespoons butter in a deep saucepan on medium. When it melts, add 1 pound butternut (or other winter) squash, cut into 1-2 inch cubes; 1 pound crisp tart apples (such as Granny Smith), peeled, cored, and roughly chopped; and 1 large onion, roughly chopped:

Cook, stirring, until the onion softens, 5-10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, I cooked up 4 cups of stock (because bouillon and broth base are cheaper than canned stock, I have one of those on hand in chicken and one in beef. The problem of course is that I have to remember to boil up the appropriate amount of water instead of just tossing in a can of liquid. Worth it, though):

I think I used chicken, but you can use beef or vegetable; use the latter and the soup's vegetarian.

Once the onion was softened and the broth was ready, I added the stock, 1/2 cup dry white wine (I may have tossed in cooking wine, in which case I didn't season with salt earlier, or sherry; I don't remember), and 1/4 teaspoon dried tarragon (or 1 tsp. fresh):

Turn the meat to medium-high and bring to a boil:

 

Turn the heat down to low, partially cover:

 

and cook for about 30 minutes or until squash is very soft. Cool slightly, then puree. I used my handy dandy immersion blender, but you could also pour it into a blender or use a food mill (honestly this looks very tedious. I suppose there is a point to food mills and maybe some time when you would want them and not anything else (a power outage, perhaps?), but I am just saying that I love my immersion blender. Maybe the food mill rices things. That would be handy, I guess). Once it's nice and smooth:

 

you can either refrigerate, covered, for up to 2 days (reheat before proceeding) or cook gently over medium-low heat until heated through; do not boil. Stir in 1 cup heavy or light cream:

 

until well blended and cook, stirring, until hot, about 1 minute. Ta-da! Butternut squash soup:

 

It really makes a lot, so unless you're having a party, I suggest freezing some of it before you add the cream and just keeping what you're likely to eat within a week out--adjust the amount of cream used as necessary.

On this occasion, I also cooked up some chicken breasts in a pan with the extra diced apple and some more onion:

 It made a very tasty dinner, and the soup served as a good lunch for several days, accompanied by salad and/or chips or whatever I could rustle up for crunch. The soup's a great fall standby: not too difficult or time-consuming but warming and full of fall flavor: apples, squash, and cream. Yum!

Butternut Squash Pasta

The plethora of butternut squashes I have lying around drove me to try out this recipe, which for once I followed pretty much exactly (crazy, right? I mean, who does that?). It's from Cook's Illustrated January/February 2009 issue. And it is delicious!

Surprisingly, it only took me about an hour and a half, including prepping the squash and cleaning up afterward, even though I forgot to start the pasta early enough and spent about ten minutes on the phone with my mother-in-law in the middle of that. So time is reasonable, but the real test will be to see if the Darling Devoted Husband approves. He doesn't care for squash much, but there is also bacon!

First I had to seed, peel, and chop up the butternut squash. I'm getting a little faster at this, but I still wish there were some magic speed method:

Next you cook 4 slices of bacon, halved lengthwise and cut into 1/4 inch pieces in a 12-inch skillet over medium heat until crisp, about 8 minutes:

We have a bunch of fancy delicious bacon we bought from a fundraiser and keep it in the freezer, so I did have to remember to take it off, hack off four pieces, and let them defrost first.

Once crispy:

add 8 whole sage leaves:

to the bacon and cook until fragrant, about one minute:

Strain mixture through fine-mesh strainer into small bowl, reserving bacon fat and bacon-sage mixture separately:

I had some silicone prep bowls I used for this step; I'm not sure what you would use otherwise. It's bacon grease, remember, so it will melt a plastic bowl that's not sufficiently heat-resistant, and you'll burn yourself handling a metal bowl. So be careful.

Return the skillet to high heat, add 2 Tbs. reserved bacon fat (I had more than enough, but if you used leaner bacon, Cook's advises you supplement with olive oil) and heat until shimmering. I'm not sure what that means exactly; the fat was already shiny. I'm sure it's something technical and I'm showing my ignorance, but whatever. I waited until it was not quite bubbling, and that seemed good enough.

Add 1 medium butternut squash (about 2 pounds), peeled, seeded, and cut into 1/2 inch dice, in an even layer and cook, without stirring, until beginning to caramelize, 4-5 minutes:

Continue cooking, stirring occasionally until spotty brown, 3-4 minutes longer. Add 1 Tbs. unsalted butter and allow to melt, about 30 seconds. Add 6 scallions, sliced thin (about 1 cup), 1/4 tsp. nutmeg (ok, here is where I departed from the recipe: my nutmeg was not freshly grated. The horror!), 1 tsp. sugar, 1/2 tsp. salt, 3/4 tsp. pepper (the salt and pepper I just shook in without measuring; eyeball it), and 1 Tbs. minced fresh sage leaves. Cook, stirring occasionally, until scallions are softened, about 3 minutes. Add 2 cups chicken broth (they advise low sodium; I used some made from bouillon, certainly you could use vegetable, though to make this vegetarian you'd have to eliminate the bacon and its fat and thus most of the flavor) and bring to a simmer; continue to cook until squash is tender, 1-3 minutes longer:

Meanwhile, bring water to boil in large Dutch oven (ok, I just used a medium soup pot so it would boil faster) over high heat. Add 1 Tbs. salt (again, just shake some in) and pasta. Cook until just al dente (which is how I like pasta, but I cooked it a little longer to suit the DDH's taste. Plus, it was whole wheat pasta, which remains a little firmer even when cooked longer):

then drain pasta, reserving 1/2 cup cooking water, and transfer back to Dutch oven. Add squash mixture to pasta (at this point, I dumped the squash into the soup pot and then everything back into the large skillet I had used to cook the squash, since there wasn't enough space in the soup pot); stir in 2 Tbs. Parmesan cheese, 4 tsp. lemon juice from one lemon, and reserved bacon-sage mixture, adjusting consistency with reserved pasta liquid (I didn't need any of this):

Serve with toasted sliced almonds and more Parmesan.

I forgot to bring almonds in when I ate it for lunch Wednesday, but man it was so good. I think Cook's Illustrated is correct when it advises, "Don't be tempted to use dried sage in this recipe." The balance of the squash, bacon, and sage was wonderful, and fresh sage adds a brighter flavor than its dried counterpart.

So there you go! A fancy, from scratch recipe that would be great to serve for company or a special occasion but which didn't take too much time and can be made ahead--I didn't eat any of it fresh but only reheated at lunch time. The DDH had a night class yesterday, so we're awaiting his verdict at lunch today. He hates rosemary, so I'm not sure how he'll feel about sage, and he's iffy on squash, but as I said, BACON.

This recipe is also a good illustration of one of my budget rules: Cook using food you have on hand. Unless it's for a special occasion, I try not to make meals for which I have to go out and buy more than two or three ingredients.

In this case, I had to go to the store yesterday for fresh sage and scallions--two highly perishable ingredients one tends to buy in small quantities (though fresh sage is freaking expensive, might I note, and I'm considering growing it myself next year). I have a bunch of butternut squash on hand because it's getting into butternut squash season and Bootstrap Farm has some excellent specimens; bacon and pasta are usually always around, and most of the rest are staples. Now, I think I used my last lemon, so the next recipe I make that calls for it, I'll need to buy lemon, but that's a staple around here. The Parmesan I don't usually have on hand but had bought it for another recipe a few weeks ago. If I hadn't had it, I probably would have omitted it or substituted another cheese, if possible.

This is part of why it was almost a shock that I followed the recipe pretty much exactly--I'm always substituting or leaving out ingredients that I don't have around. I plan meals around what I have on hand, and I plan what I buy around what's on sale or in season. Thus, this dish used butternut squash that's in season, my next planned dinner makes use of a bunch of beef stew meat I've got piled in the freezer that I bought on a good sale, and something soon will need to use a lot of tomatoes, because the plants have given one last crazy load before succumbing to the cooler weather. This prevents wasted money, wasted food, and wasted time spent constantly running to the grocery store. It's a pretty good system most of the time. ^_^