squash

It's been a while, I know... been busy, tired.

The other day I cooked two squash that we picked up in a back-alley farmer's market in our local town. I had no idea what they were or what they tasted like, so it was a pretty fun experiment. I think one was a kabocha squash and the other was like an all-green carnival squash. Now I don't love butternut squash - cooked badly it tastes like sick, so I approached these tentatively. I halved and roasted them with olive oil and a bit of seasoning for about half an hour. Whilst that was going on, I sauteed onions, garlic and celery until soft, added bacon, mushrooms, thyme, black pepper, a tiny bit of dried chilli, then stirred in some long-grain rice and covered it all with water to cook the rice for about 20 minutes. Then I scooped out most of the squash flesh, keeping the two squashes separate so we could taste the difference, mixed it into the rice and stuffed it back into the squash shells. Then it went back in the oven for about 10 minutes just so the rice was starting to catch on top. Was it good? Oh yes. Especially the Kabocha type squash which was like a nutty, sweet pease-pudding textured thing - gorgeous. The saltiness of the bacon balanced the sweetness nicely. No photos I'm afraid. I was too busy stuffing my face.