We're a little embarrassed. We've never cooked butternut squash. Or any winter squash except the glamorous pumpkin. So when we saw organic butternut & acorn squash on sale, we bought some. It's stares & mocks from a large platter in the kitchen. It knows we're scared. It knows we've inexplicably lost our best paring knife & peeler. (Into the garbage? Is this possible? Nowadays, anything is...we are in an Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole drama.) We have cooked things so much scarier than squash, so the fear is grounded in icky-gooey gourd dishes to which we were subjected as a child (not by our mum, though). We have nightmares about marshmallows & treacle-y potions poured onto root veggies & squash in autumns & holidays past.
A butternut squash soup recipe from Nigella Lawson's site reader's recipe link--one of five top-rated recipes. Here's another tasty looking soup recipe from the Whole Foods site.
Also, while out & about last week no less than five free publications were worth bringing home & reading; they range from Edible Chesapeake to a Cook's Illustrated give-away to The Whole Deal at Whole Foods. In a previous The Whole Deal, here's a roasted butternut squash with sage & cranberry recipe. We have all three items on hand--what are the odds? (The other pubs were literary & we'll get to them later.) So off we go. It's so cold & windy here that turning on the oven will be a relief.
Today, GG has alternated sleeping in a huge red felt Italian cape & playing with a ball of yarn . But of course.
Cheers. GG's cook
Public Domain Images . Courges butternut (Cucurbita moschata)
Photo JH Mora, septembre 2005
Public Domain Images