Sunday, October 31, 2010

Something Wicked This Way Comes*

Happy Boo Day!
I've been meaning to make this dish for a while, and there couldn't be a better time than today.
Spaghetti with squash sauce. UGH! Frightening, eh?
No, I've seen it here and there on the Internet, and I'm game enough to try. Even Cranky was not paralyzed with fear.
Of course, it being Halloween, I had to use black pasta. Nice. In a scary way.
I was on my own for the sauce, not bothering to look up anybody else's recipe. Dangerous? Nah.
The ingredients were squash chunks, a couple of halved tomatoes, and a handful of unpeeled garlic cloves. Roast all with a bit of olive oil for an hour. Let cool, then scoop the squash off its skin. Ditto the tomatoes. Peel the garlic. All this goes into the food mill instead of a blender, so you still have some fiber and texture. Mill it directly into a small saucepan, and from there, you are free to add tons of butter (recommended), salt, a pinch of ground red chili, and a little or a lot of soy sauce. Monitor the saltiness here. Warm the sauce to your liking. Eerie.
Plate, top with parmesan shavings, and scatter parsley.
One wants to be modest, but hoo-ee, baby. This was a drop-dead success. Eek!
And it wasn't strange! Strange.
Why would squash on pasta be so comforting, so familiar? OH! Right. We've all eaten ravioli stuffed with pureed squash, drowned in brown butter and sprinkled with sage leaves. So this is really similar, but a little different with all that garlic.
A little garlic will do you good tonight.

*#movies in my pants

17 comments:

Kate said...

Where are the meatballs shaped like little skulls? Ah, nevermind me. I made only friendly, happy things today: some fried buttermilk biscuits topped with strawberry-ginger jam, potato-herb soup, and for dinner, eggplant, tofu, and tatsoi in a Thai curry. No scare factor at all. None.

Kailyn said...

Sounds wonderful. But now I'm hooked on the whole "in my pants" thing. I shouldn't have clicked through.

cookiecrumb said...

Kate: Hah. Your kitchen sounds like a vortex of all that is good today. Mine is evil, bwahaha.

Kailyn: It was pretty tasty. As for "in my pants," it was a huge meme-storm on Twitter yesterday. I chose not to play, but today I got this thing, this urge... :)

Denise | Chez Danisse said...

I know it is hard to believe, but I tried something similar this week. I used acorn squash and drab shell shaped pasta versus your fancy black pasta. Still, it was tasty.

Zoomie said...

Brilliant combos, brilliant plating, brilliant photo. You da man on Hallowe'en eating.

Chilebrown said...

Squid ink pasta?

cookiecrumb said...

Denise: Cool. It is pretty tasty. Our squash was some Parisian thing... Got an acorn squash on deck. (Ooh, sorry, just finished watching Giants.)

Zoomie: Aw, shucks. Thank you. I couldn't believe how I devoured this one.

Chilebrown: Yes indeed!

Kailyn said...

Ooo. Just realized that your meal was celebrating two things.

Ms Brown Mouse said...

BOO!
Next time try the sauce as a layer in a vegie lasagna, 'tis yummy too!

Juanita said...

So the Cullens weren't at YOUR door then, hey? :-) (although, truth be told, with the way fans have gone batty for Twilight, I don't know many who wouldn't let the bloodsuckers in regardless).

Awesome recipe! I adore using butternuts/pumpkins/squashes for a whole manner of things and will certainly be trying this sauce on some gf pasta!

Greg said...

Healthy spooky!

cookiecrumb said...

Kailyn: Let's sew that sucker up tonight, whaddya say?!!!

Mouse: That sounds crybaby delicious. I might start sucking my thumb.

Juanita: Nah, no Cullens. I'm rather bloodless, you see.
Hey, I adore gf pasta. I hope you have a tasty attempt. It is the squash time of year.

Greg: Now you went and ruined it! :)

Nancy Ewart said...

Of course, you also created that orange and black dish in honor of the Giants? Right?

cookiecrumb said...

Nancy: Absolutamente. I put a reference to it in my ever-changing subhead to the blog title yesterday. I don't blame you for not noticing.
And. GIANTS!

Ms Brown Mouse said...

Don't suck your thumb it does somethign or other that spoils your smile, or somesuch ;)

Monkey Wrangler said...

I love that pasta! I try to convince my kids to eat it. They don't like the ink idea so I told them "think of it as calamari pasta," which caused Z-girl to give me a question-mark face. "You know, squid honey, like with the tentacles," I told her. She shuddered, explaining "I thought the tentacles were the squid and THE REST was the calamari!" then shoved her plate away and announced she was done with the pasta.

I tried.

cookiecrumb said...

Monkey Wrangler: You tried, but you tried wrong! KIDS! What can a monkey wrangler do?
Where you been?