Monday Night Dinner

After a rocky start – I was not emotionally prepared for the snow in early October – Massachusetts is gracing us with a lovely Fall. The trees are crimson and gold. The weather is crisp, but not freezing. The skies are clear blue and cloudless. The markets are filled with autumn vegetables – piles of chard and beets, baskets full of every kind of apple you can imagine, and small mountains of pumpkin and squash.

I’m having a hard time remembering that it’s probably not okay to serve squash with every single meal. By which I mean I’m failing to remember this at all. I have never met a winter squash I didn’t like. In the last month I’ve put squash on top of pizza, I’ve roasted it, turned it into soup, hollowed it out and filled it with cream and cheese, served it over pasta and am now contemplating finding ways to make it for breakfast and lunch too.

Pizza – Roasted Acorn Squash & Gorgonzola Pizza
I actually thought this was a little bland the first time I made it. I think the acorn squash has too delicate a flavor to stand up to the pizza dough and the cheese. I was going to try it again tonight with butternut squash and caramelized onions and ricotta – which okay, is not the same recipe at all – but I think my roommate might actually revolt if I did. I will however, try it at some point. I will also possibly experiment with sautéed apples or pears, and possibly some dried cherries, but not tonight.

Roasted
Roasting the squash with maple syrup and olive oil (from recipe above) is inspired, and it may be my new default method of cooking for squash.

Although, it’s also tasty with grapes and sage, particularly if you don’t burn it.

Soup
There are so many ways you can turn squash into soup. You can roast it with some onions, unpeeled garlic and apples and then puree it with chicken stock (peeling the roasted garlic before you puree it). You can sauté onions and apples with some curry powder and then add squash and simmer until tender and puree. This will work for butternut squash, acorn squash, pumpkin, etc (well maybe not acorn squash – I think the acorn squash might get buried by the curry, but with a little cinnamon and cardamom it’d be tasty).

You can do what I did on Tuesday night and turn it into a meal in a bowl – Sweet Potato & Sausage Soup. I usually use kielbasa or a smoked sausage instead of chorizo because chorizo isn’t always easy to find. The chorizo gives the soup some kick, but the kielbasa is nice and smoky; it’s tasty either way. Yes, I know sweet potatoes aren’t a squash, but they’re orange and cooked and could be replaced with butternut squash or pumpkin in this recipe with no discernable difference in finished product except that sweet potatoes are easier to peel.

Fondu – Roasted Pumpkin with Cheese ‘Fondu’
You can be decadent in the extreme and hollow out a pumpkin, fill it with cheese and heavy cream and then bake it until it’s burnished and molten.

I am unclear as to why epicurious feels the need to put the fondu in quotes. I’m also unclear as to how anyone could eat this as a main course and not keel over from a heart attack at the end of dinner. I took it to a Halloween party where it was served as a finger food with apple slices and bread. I was going to try for some self-righteous justification and point out that I used whole wheat bread instead of white, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t do much to balance the scales against the 1 ½ cups of heavy cream and 5 cups of cheese.

Pasta – Pasta with Pumpkin Sauce
This was this week’s Dinner.

Recipe previously given: Season of Mists & Mellow Fruitfulness

Breakfast/Lunch – Pumpkin Spice Oatmeal
Next week I plan to turn pumpkin into lunch. I’m looking forward to this so much that I’m actively anticipating next Monday just because my lunch will be so exciting.

Chili – Butternut Squash and Turkey Chili
Unless next week ends up being a Birthday Dinner week (we’ve been trying to have a Birthday dinner for someone for a while now but we keep being stymied by scheduling issues), we’ll be eating butternut squash in chili for Dinner next week. Well, assuming that I can successfully track down hominy. It’s possible that if next week is a Birthday Dinner it will involve Pumpkin Bread Pudding . Although the Pumpkin Gingerbread Trifle recipe is also kind of tempting.

Things by which I am tempted
Butternut Squash and Cheddar Bread Pudding
It sounds a little bit like starch overkill – butternut squash and bread – but on the other hand, is that really a bad thing?

Sausage Stuffed Acorn Squash with Molasses Glaze
Hmmm, this is a possibility for a dinner next week. I wonder how easy it is to transfer from baking sheet to plate.

Pumpkin Coconut Bisque
This combines two of my favorite things – coconut milk and pumpkin. I haven’t made yet because it sounds like it would be incredibly rich and would be a better starter soup than a main course, and there really just isn’t much call in my life for starter soups.

Pumpkin Tiramisu
I don’t usually love tiramisu, but I might be willing to make an exception for this. Although, it’ll still have soggy lady fingers as the base, so maybe not.

What I’m really looking for is a way to use pumpkin and the 14 egg yolks that are sitting in my fridge. Any suggestions? Actually, any suggestions for what to do with 14 egg yolks period? And don’t say make ice cream. I’d have to clean my freezer to be able to freeze the ice cream maker core and that’s more work than I feel like going to.