Maple-Roasted Butternut Squash
- By Katie Roche
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- 08 Aug, 2019
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Have you wondered where I've been? Have you been waiting with bated breath for the next installment of pretentious cooking adventures and subsequent snarky summaries? If, by chance, you have been, I apologize for the delay. Travels through Alaska + primitive technology have left me a week behind. But I'm back! And I'm officially in side-dish land now! That means, unfortunately/fortunately, less dramatic ItemQuests and probably more off-topic tangents. Oh well. So I made this one at my mom's house in Alaska! My mom has a pantry that is stocked to last her through multiple natural disasters of apocalyptic proportions, so I did not need olive oil (she has, I'm not kidding, like five Costco-sized bottles) or maple syrup - as you can see in the photo, she buys that at Costco as well and I'm willing to bet there are backup bottles.
A yearly Costco shopping trip for non-perishable items has been happening in the Kelley household for as long as I can remember. Every October, when Alaskans get the PFD (I don't want to get into explaining how or why, but it's a somewhat large chunk of money, Google it if you want the ins and outs), my parents would pile us in the 1986 Suburban and take us all shopping. We would have more than one of those flat carts you can use at bulk stores, and my mom would have this giant list, and they would get an entire year's worth of things like flour, sugar, chocolate chips, spices, tomato sauce, etc. I remember I liked riding on that cart with my brother pushing it, and I would get so bummed when the amount of stuff accumulated to the point that I had to get off of it and walk. Anyway, even though we're all adults now and only two people live in my parents' house, my mom still bulk shops like this. Once I moved out of the house and had to do my own grocery shopping, I was struck with the hard realization that pantry items don't stock themselves. I know this hits every kid at some point when they don't have, like, cumin for their Taco Tuesday or whatever, but it struck me HARD because I was used to an entire room full of things that most people DON'T buy in bulk and all the sudden I had to buy olive oil and tomato paste and stuff like that. It didn't just APPEAR. Shoutout to the moms who are making stuff appear. All of us young adults now know you're the real magic in this world.
I've stretched this tangent farther than melted cheese stretches off of hot pizza. So what I DID have to ItemQuest for was pancetta and butternut squash. It was comforting to know that some things never change when I went to the Fred Meyer deli and asked for pancetta and the deli kid was like, "Is that a cheese or a meat?" I feel like, yeah, that's a fair question...but not if you WORK IN A DELI. Unless it's literally your first day, this CANNOT be the first time you've ever been asked for pancetta. But then! As per usual, the deli kid was completely unable to figure out the weight measurement I gave him. I tried it in different words. A quarter pound. Four ounces. I think I ended up with like 3 ounces? Because he couldn't figure out how to translate the words I was saying into the way his scale measures. And I just...shouldn't this be a hiring prerequisite of working in a deli? After about a 10 minute ordeal of trying to acquire that, I went and selected a butternut squash, which rang up to be like $9. Groceries are out-of-control expensive in Alaska.
A yearly Costco shopping trip for non-perishable items has been happening in the Kelley household for as long as I can remember. Every October, when Alaskans get the PFD (I don't want to get into explaining how or why, but it's a somewhat large chunk of money, Google it if you want the ins and outs), my parents would pile us in the 1986 Suburban and take us all shopping. We would have more than one of those flat carts you can use at bulk stores, and my mom would have this giant list, and they would get an entire year's worth of things like flour, sugar, chocolate chips, spices, tomato sauce, etc. I remember I liked riding on that cart with my brother pushing it, and I would get so bummed when the amount of stuff accumulated to the point that I had to get off of it and walk. Anyway, even though we're all adults now and only two people live in my parents' house, my mom still bulk shops like this. Once I moved out of the house and had to do my own grocery shopping, I was struck with the hard realization that pantry items don't stock themselves. I know this hits every kid at some point when they don't have, like, cumin for their Taco Tuesday or whatever, but it struck me HARD because I was used to an entire room full of things that most people DON'T buy in bulk and all the sudden I had to buy olive oil and tomato paste and stuff like that. It didn't just APPEAR. Shoutout to the moms who are making stuff appear. All of us young adults now know you're the real magic in this world.
I've stretched this tangent farther than melted cheese stretches off of hot pizza. So what I DID have to ItemQuest for was pancetta and butternut squash. It was comforting to know that some things never change when I went to the Fred Meyer deli and asked for pancetta and the deli kid was like, "Is that a cheese or a meat?" I feel like, yeah, that's a fair question...but not if you WORK IN A DELI. Unless it's literally your first day, this CANNOT be the first time you've ever been asked for pancetta. But then! As per usual, the deli kid was completely unable to figure out the weight measurement I gave him. I tried it in different words. A quarter pound. Four ounces. I think I ended up with like 3 ounces? Because he couldn't figure out how to translate the words I was saying into the way his scale measures. And I just...shouldn't this be a hiring prerequisite of working in a deli? After about a 10 minute ordeal of trying to acquire that, I went and selected a butternut squash, which rang up to be like $9. Groceries are out-of-control expensive in Alaska.
I'm used to buying pre-cut butternut squash (yes, I know I'm lazy - don't worry, I draw the line at pre-peeled oranges) and I have some seriously weak wrists, so I cut up about a quarter of this thing before asking my trusty sous chef to finish the job for me. Halfway through he had to switch to the tiny cutting board because my dad needed the big one to prepare the salmon we were having for dinner! (Yes, odd side dish pairing, I am aware.)
This is the pancetta, which we all had to squint at because it looks a lot like prosciutto when it's sliced this thinly and not small-diced like I'm used to seeing it. I also couldn't put it past clueless deli kid to not give me prosciutto so when my suspicions reached their height, I actually fished the bag out of the trash and checked the label. I'm still honestly not 100% sure - he very well could have given me prosciutto and still printed a pancetta label. I guess we will never know. And neither will he.
Ina actually says to leave the garlic unpeeled. Dan got to be triumphant about this, since I left him in charge of making a different recipe the other day, and he did not peel the shallots before roasting them, and I told him he was dumb. Oops. Guess that's a real thing.
Here it is, all done, after about 40 minutes of roasting. That's not random leaves on top - that's sage, which my mom said was producing a POWERFUL aroma from the oven. I think she found it off-putting because my mom doesn't like herbs except for cilantro. I think I've mentioned this before, but I grew up believing that herbs in recipes were 100% optional and I suppose that technically everything is optional but I now have a legitimate love affair with parsley. She just omitted it in everything for the sake of cost/convenience (in all fairness, any and all produce is ridiculously expensive in Alaska, as I've discussed) but fresh herbs enhance flavor SO MUCH!!! I am fully on board now!
So because this is the side dish chapter, I do feel that I should include information about what the dish is actually "on the side" of; in this case, we had just returned from the Kenai River on our annual dipnetting expedition and, as is customary, we were celebrating our success by eating some of the salmon we had caught. So strangely enough, this was served alongside blackened salmon that my parents make with their own blend of Cajun seasoning. It's SO GOOD but also when they cook it in the house, the smoke alarm goes off and you literally have to cover your mouth with your shirt or whatever to keep from inhaling because you will just cough up a lung. My dad opted for cooking it outside, and then we got the first rain we'd had in several weeks. Go figure.
This dinner was a lovely pandemonium - dad was outside cooking salmon, Dan was in and out of the house helping everybody, Katia came by to eat with us since she fished with us, and we invited our new friend Alec who said he was going to be at a softball game...which got cancelled due to rain and then I told him he could come anyway so we left everything out and kind of ate in shifts. When he showed up he was wearing a jersey covered in stuff about being an air traffic controller and we were making fun of it all night. Anyway, the squash took way longer than everything else so we all sampled it while Alec was eating dinner. My thoughts: it's a really great side dish option. Perfect texture. Great flavors. I highly recommend it. Its main pitfall, like a lot of side dishes, is that it requires extensive oven time and is meant to be served hot, thus commanding oven space when you might want that for something else. I'm not a big fan of that, and the inconvenience of more than one dish needing oven time was an unforeseen challenge of menu planning for me when I first started cooking.
So because this is the side dish chapter, I do feel that I should include information about what the dish is actually "on the side" of; in this case, we had just returned from the Kenai River on our annual dipnetting expedition and, as is customary, we were celebrating our success by eating some of the salmon we had caught. So strangely enough, this was served alongside blackened salmon that my parents make with their own blend of Cajun seasoning. It's SO GOOD but also when they cook it in the house, the smoke alarm goes off and you literally have to cover your mouth with your shirt or whatever to keep from inhaling because you will just cough up a lung. My dad opted for cooking it outside, and then we got the first rain we'd had in several weeks. Go figure.
This dinner was a lovely pandemonium - dad was outside cooking salmon, Dan was in and out of the house helping everybody, Katia came by to eat with us since she fished with us, and we invited our new friend Alec who said he was going to be at a softball game...which got cancelled due to rain and then I told him he could come anyway so we left everything out and kind of ate in shifts. When he showed up he was wearing a jersey covered in stuff about being an air traffic controller and we were making fun of it all night. Anyway, the squash took way longer than everything else so we all sampled it while Alec was eating dinner. My thoughts: it's a really great side dish option. Perfect texture. Great flavors. I highly recommend it. Its main pitfall, like a lot of side dishes, is that it requires extensive oven time and is meant to be served hot, thus commanding oven space when you might want that for something else. I'm not a big fan of that, and the inconvenience of more than one dish needing oven time was an unforeseen challenge of menu planning for me when I first started cooking.
I'm including one last picture to demonstrate the versatility of this - I was not expecting this, but I actually enjoyed the butternut squash leftovers even more as an accompaniment to my breakfast the next day! It honestly tasted great cold, but I did reheat it after a few bites. I think I would sing the praises of this MORE as a sort of make-ahead base for a breakfast hash. Some chicken sausage or diced potatoes would be a great later addition, perhaps with a fried egg on top.
I believe, of all the opinions I've ever received regarding a recipe, my mom captured the spirit of Back to Basics the best: "Well...you've actually made butternut squash be edible." Thanks mom.
I believe, of all the opinions I've ever received regarding a recipe, my mom captured the spirit of Back to Basics the best: "Well...you've actually made butternut squash be edible." Thanks mom.
For this post, I wanted to combine two summertime flavors into the crisp recipe one of my oldest Alaskan friends passed on to me years ago. Rhubarb, if you're unfamiliar, is a reddish stalk that kind of resembles really big celery. It's very tart and is most commonly paired with strawberry. I've rarely seen it star in its own show dessert-wise, but my friend Kylee has been making rhubarb crisp for years and it's the best crisp I know of. Blueberries are usually in season in late summer; I have not been home for a blueberry season since Dan's last deployment in 2018 so in order to make this recipe I actually used blueberries from a friend's parents' farm in upstate SC! They're a little sweeter than the blueberries I'd have picked at home, but they worked well. I'm going to pretend like I was actually picking blueberries at home in Alaska for the purpose of showing you what that would look like.
I was getting all ready to write this post, going through my process with photos starting in my kitchen when I realized that a lot of my friends probably don't know what fireweed is or where it comes from and this recipe actually starts far, far away from my kitchen. This will be the first of a few posts highlighting iconic Alaskan ingredients. I've wanted to do this for a while because my home inspires me in so many ways, writing and cooking particular among them. Fireweed is a wildflower that is rather ubiquitous in southcentral Alaska and is often considered a gauge for how long summer will last. It is said that when the blooms reach the top of the plant, winter is six weeks away. Whether or not that's accurate, fireweed is found all over in late summer in Alaska. Here is some I spotted in mid-July by Eklutna Lake:
If you know Dan and me very well, you probably know by now that if our life were a sitcom, he'd low-key be the funniest character. Because that is true, I thought I'd include his bottom ten with accompanying remarks before giving the actual bottom ten. His are hilarious, but aren't as legitimate as mine because he actually tried way fewer of these than one might think. I realized as he was flipping through the book that my old coworker Cam probably ate more of these foods than anyone else did. The overarching theme of Dan's song of Ina Garten hatred is not the actual taste of the finished product but more how asinine he finds that particular recipe to be. So here you are, Dan's bottom ten.
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
You guys asked for my top ten from the blog, so here we go! And I'm thinking that what you *really* want is actually the bottom ten, so I'll go ahead and give you those next week. That post will probably be A LOT funnier. While preparing to write this post, I had Dan flip through the cookbook to give me HIS top ten and he was all disgruntled as he did so and only came up with eight that he even liked at all. "I'm not a picky eater!" he insists. Yeah ok. Although to be fair, I've seen some cookbooks I would only make, like, one thing out of and plenty I'd make nothing out of, though sometimes that's because I find the chef so annoying. @ the Pioneer Woman. I just don't trust someone who puts sour cream in spaghetti and then bakes it. Plus all her recipe intros are about, like, Ladd or Tadd or whatever the heck her husband's name is "coming in from the fields starving for dinner". If I came in from working in a field and you tried to give me sour cream spaghetti, I'd be like, "How about a hot pocket instead? Thx." Anyway, this is not Dan's blog so these are not his top ten. You can ask him which ones he liked, but you'll end up in a long convo about how much he hates Ina Garten. Anyway, these are not ranked or anything, they're just in order from the cookbook.
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
It was Sunday afternoon and I thought to myself, "What a perfect time to make jam!" I mean, how positively quaint: just sitting in my home in suburbia, finished with weekend chores, relaxing with some knitting...why not? Why not make some jam? I mean, obviously my afternoon-kitchen-activity was directed toward jam-making because it was next up in the book BUT whatever, I was kind of excited! Also, this is the last recipe in this book!!! I'm still in the process of deciding what I'll do now, so if there's something you'd like me to make and tell you about in my own fashion - you know, with lots of tangents and jokes - please do let me know! I'll likely continue to tackle Ina content, but may start including some recipe faves and/or foods people text me about a lot! I get a lot of cake questions, a LOT of frosting questions (because meringue buttercream is bae and I've got everyone in my social circles who eats my food on board), and a lot of fish questions. So look for more food to come, even though this is the last recipe in Back to Basics.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
I was glad Ina gave me something easy for this week, because I was packing for Alaska and just *did not have the time* to mess with hunting lobsters or weird cheeses from the internet or whatever. ItemQuest was fairly straightforward, just took Dan a trip to the liquor store next to the Publix for some limoncello. I grabbed this particular lemon curd in the British aisle of Publix; I think last time an Ina recipe called for lemon curd I bought it from Trader Joe's and it was DISGUSTING. I mean, truly awful. I would like to recommend making your own lemon curd if you have the time and the inclination. Ina's lemon curd recipe is phenomenal and it is one thing for which I can say she is truly correct: homemade is BETTER and store-bought is not at all as good. The most beloved cupcakes I have ever made were filled with Ina's lemon curd, and had the lemon curd mixed into the meringue buttercream frosting. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!! Anyway, the rest of this was fruit that I had on hand, mint, and Greek yogurt which we did have to buy because I don't, as a rule, eat Greek yogurt of my own free will. It's chalky and disgusting.
Dates are something I honestly never even thought about until I did Whole 30. I have mentioned my Whole 30 experience several times over the course of this journey through Back to Basics, but if you're new to reading the blog, this is what happened: I did Whole 30 one time, just to prove that I could, because salvation-by-diet apologists were obsessed with it as the newest fad in righteous eating practices. It was a terrible experience; on top of hating every minute of it for myself and finding exactly zero wellness benefits, I also hated it for Dan who was not allowed to eat popcorn for 30 days. Dan is in love with popcorn; his addiction to it is almost at the level of my addiction to coffee. He gets rage-y without it. But anyway, Whole 30 recipes are big into dates as sweeteners and some of the things you can eat, like Lara Bars, are made with dates. Dates are impossibly chewy. I ate more of them in that 30 days than I ever wanted to, and now when I see them in recipes I can't help but think of that Whole 30. Fortunately for me, I got to begin this recipe by chopping TWO CUPS' worth of dates. Oh, they also kind of look like cockroach bodies, so there's that. The only thing I actually had to get at the store for this was oranges! I had everything else on hand, even Cointreau, thanks to many previous Ina recipes.
Alright so, I'm not the Muffin Man. I don't really make a whole lot of muffins, for a lot of reasons, one of the main ones being that on the rankings of breakfast foods they definitely do not crack the top five, maybe not even the top ten. If I have an option for a bagel or a waffle, I'll pick one of them over a muffin every single time. I also prefer cereal, cinnamon rolls, or *cue eye roll* avocado toast. I've just never risen from my slumber and been like, "You know what would really hit the spot right now? A MUFFIN." But!!! In recent months, since my friend Logan came into my life, I've been making muffins a lot more frequently because he really loves them. So the last blueberry muffins I made were from a 99cent Betty Crocker mix packet which he brought into my house and asked me sweetly to make, because they're what he grew up with and along with many preservatives, they are full of nostalgia for him. Here is Logan and me, preparing to mix the muffin batter. Out of respect (and to make up for the disrespect of rolling up with muffin mix), he wore one of my aprons. I will treasure this picture forever.
You guys...Ina has "a thing" about commercial granola bars. Her beef with them, apparently, is that they say they contain real fruit and nuts but that all she sees when she looks at the labels are like, ten different kinds of corn syrup. I'm going to go ahead and guess, just based on this, that none of the lunches her mom packed for her growing up contained any Fruit By the Foot. And surely if we introduced her to Gushers, she would die. This is a real shame. I also feel like this disdain for corn syrup is maybe just a tad self-righteous, coming from the woman whose frosting recipe calls for literally six entire sticks of butter. At that point, what's a little corn syrup to you really? People's nutritional hills-to-die-on really fascinate me (and also kind of annoy me sometimes) and the ones about sugar might get me the most. I feel like, at some point, sugar is sugar and whether you're baking with honey, white sugar, brown sugar, molasses, maple syrup, etc you're still probably making something that's not amazing for you so, in terms of sugar, why not just be in for a penny in for a pound, amirite? So while I'm on this topic, before I even get to the actual point (please, I know you're here for the tangents), I would like to just let anyone and everyone know that I'm absolutely not interested in your "healthy substitutes" for things that taste good in their original form. I do not WANT a chocolate chip pancake made out of bananas and grains you harvested in your field this morning. If I want a banana I will eat one, and if I want a chocolate chip pancake I will eat one, and that's that. And DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT come @ me with "cashew cheese". Just don't. I don't even think I should honor that concept with an explanation of why it's so wrong. If that's not self-evident, I can't help you.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
At first I saw the pictures of this and thought, "YAY!!! Cinnamon rolls!" And then a couple of weeks ago, I actually tried making cinnamon rolls for the first time and realized that my inability to roll/shape/slice yeast doughs is still a thing. AND THEN I read this entire recipe and realized these get filled with raisins. So here we go!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!