Recipes

[Queen of shop]

I like to make acorn squash cut in half and packed with Italian sweet sausage out of the casing. Brush the flesh with olive oil. It's really tasty when the sausage pentrates the squash.

[Tinkrbl44]

 By the way ........  a website that has a lot of healthy dishes, and a lot of squash recipes is The Roasted Root dot com.   I did a one dish meal with butternut squash and ground beef and it was great.

[novamc1]

How to cut a hard acorn squash......some folks here  have mentioned this can be hard or dangerous.

In an earlier post, I mentioned  using the carving knife and rubber mallet method, which I have used for years and twice in the past week.

This technique was recommended years ago as the best way to cut an acorn squash by one of those major cooking magazines........maybe it was Cooks Illustrated or Taste of Home.

Very safe if you set the squash on the floor with newspaper or clean towel underneath.  Position the knife in one of the acorn's grooves, give the knife a big solid whack with the mallet and the squash will separate very neatly into halves.

[KBEANS]

My grandmother used to prepare this delicious dish

Spaghetti with Cucuzza. It is a very long squash.

 Boil water for spaghetti. I use fideo (cut spaghetti)

Reserve about a cup of this water.

Sauté a small onion and some garlic in a pan in EVO. Reserve this until needed.

In another pot, add cubed squash and mix it with some cut San Marzano tomatoes and it's juices. Simmer, making a light sauce.

Now add some of the reserve spaghetti water ( 1 cup) or chicken broth to the mix.

Add a few basil leaves, oregano, salt and pepper to taste. 

Cook this mixture on low in a pot until the squash is softened. Then add the reserve sautéd onions and garlic to this. Continue simmering this until hot and bubbly.

Pour mixture over the fideo and add pecorino Romano cheese.

It is delicious. 

PS...Back in the day we would break the long spaghetti into small pieces by hand. Fideo is so convenient now!

[Queen of shop]

@KBEANS  YES! I grew up with this dish. So good. My grandma grew those squash. The vines would get wrapped in the trees and they looked like long green baseball  bats. We called them "goo goots" squash. Great memory. I can smell and taste it now.

[PA Mom-mom]

@KBEANS  My neighbor's dad used to cook "Gagootz." He took fresh tomatoes and cooked them down, then made a bowl with the marinara, cooked ditalini, diced potatoes and gagootz (cucuzza). It took me a while to figure out what to look for in the hardware store, but I finally was able to buy the seeds and grow the cucuzza. Very prolific plants! We trained them on a 6 foot trellis made of PVC pipe and netting.