le sauce

squash everything

Another little piece the I wrote for iVillage's food channel that I thought I'd share with you, with added links to some of my favourite winter squash recipes.

If I get enthusiastic (obsessive?) about tomatoes and kale in the summer, I get equally excited for the cold-weather squashes that fall and winter bring. I like zucchini and marrows, sure, but winter squash is dense and sweet and even more versatile—you can cook it using almost any method you’d like (as long as you cook it—the one thing zucch’s have over these is that they can be eaten raw) and them take in many delicious directions. 

A squash soup can be as simple as mashing the steamed flesh and adding liquid to it, or as complex as caramelizing your flavour base and the squash, stewing everything for hours and adding herbs, spices and cream, since the flavour of, say, pumpkin, can still shine through all of those layers. You can roasted or steam cubed squash and toss them with pasta, mash them to fill pies or stew them in curries. It seems I have a favourite way with each one—I hope these ideas inspire you to try as many varieties as you can in the coming months.

Whenever I see spaghetti squash in the market, I think…pesto! The squash is aptly named, since after cooking, you can rake a fork down the length of a halved spaghetti squash and it will separate into noodle-like strands. I halve it, rub the exposed flesh with oil, salt and pepper before baking it until fork-tender. After raking the cooked flesh, remove it from the shell and serve it with sauce as you would pasta. I highly recommend tossing it with pesto and as much chili oil as you can handle—you will thank me!

You can roast butternut squash the same way, or after halving it, chop it into large pieces and for even and quick cooking. I would tell you to add the pieces to your pasta but mine no longer make it that far. I tend to devour them, straight from the baking sheet. If yours survive longer, do add them to pasta, couscous or to anything else you’re eating.

I’ve grown up eating pumpkin in West-Indian style soups and in my mother’s stewed-till-soft curry. Pumpkin loves spice, which you know if love pumpkin-spiced cakes and hot drinks. I add woody herbs (like thyme), warm spices (like cinnamon) and lots of fresh chilies to soups and curries and let peeled and chopped pumpkin simmer until very tender. A delicious winter staple of mine.

You may not have cooked with kabocha squash yet but you’ve probably had some battered and fried the last time your ordered vegetable tempura. It’s that sweet, dark orange, half-moon slice with a distinct flavour and I love swapping it into any of the recipes I mentioned above. 

The skin of all of these squashes are very different. You can peel butternut squash with a vegetable peeler, but you need a very sharp knife to cut into and/or peel others like tough-skinned kabocha. Baking or steaming squash in the skin is one way to make the job easier, and in the case of my mom’s pumpkin curry, she leaves the peel of young, thinner-skinned pumpkin right on and after cooking for hours, what’s left is edible! When I roast delicata squash, the skin is my favourite part. Weird? Oh well.

the ingredient: cauliflower

(This is a little something I wrote for my friends at iVIllage, but I thought I could share it with you too. If you're like me, you neglect cauliflower badly. No more!)

I go on and on about some of the vegetables I reach for on a regular basis, that I think are sorely underused in other kitchens. For instance, I like making leeks, okra and herbs the centerpiece of a meal sometimes, not merely supporting players. But I have to admit that I haven’t cooked cauliflower nearly enough in the past—that’s definitely about to change. I’ve realized that it’s absolutely as versatile as anything else in the kitchen and can be served in so many delicious ways. Here are some that are perfect for right now:

When I think of cauliflower, I think of aloo gobi, the dish that everyone I ever go to Indian restaurants with wants to order. Chop your cauliflower into small florets and a russet potato into similarly-sized pieces. Add them to a blend of browned aromatics and toasted spices: minced onion, serrano chili(es), garlic, ginger, ground coriander and turmeric, cumin and mustard seeds. Add some water, salt and simmer until the vegetables are cooked, then serve over rice.

Making a cauliflower soup is as simple as simmering it in broth and pureeing it when it’s done, but roasting it, along with leeks or onions and garlic first will make your soup more complex and delicious. You can also sweeten your soup by adding roasted pears or apples, and thicken it by adding potatoes if you wish.

Simply hold back the liquid if you want to your soup to be a flavourful cauliflower puree instead. It could be a side, sure, or treat it like a pesto and use it to coat pasta, as a healthy dip for other vegetables or fritters, or a hardy spread for pitas and sandwiches.

Depending on your recipe, you can par-cook cauliflower, by steaming, boiling or roasting it, to get it to a certain doneness and speed up your active cooking time. But don’t forget about frying it as a once-in-a-while indulgence. It’s one of those vegetables with lower water content, so you could shallow or deep-fry florets to transform them into your new, favourite, crispy, totally-dip-able snack.

the ingredient: umeboshi paste

Ripe Japanese ume plums, salted and stewed down with shisho leaves. That's all this is but I can't really imagine a substitute and despite eating it semi-regularly, I still struggle to describe it. It's pickled, so its flavour is concentrated, briney and sweet--and overwhelming in large amounts, in my opinion. But it seems not everyone thinks so, since I've read that in they're often eaten for breakfast in their whole, pickled form. Wow. That would definitely wake me up. The whole umeboshi are also sometimes added to the bottom of a glass of shōchū, which is more up my alley.

I've found the perfect place for umeboshi in a new recipe that I'll share with you in a few days. But in the meantime, I highly recommend spreading a little of the paste onto toasted nori, topping it with shaved beets, carrots, sliced avocado, crunchy sprouts and a drop or two of balsamic vinegar. Talk about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

the ingredient: fresh rampe (pandan/screw pine leaves)

My family cooks with rampe (also known as screw pine or pandan leaves) constantly, but this is the first time I have seen fresh leaves. I'm used to a very dark leaf which has been frozen fresh or dried, pre-cut into 3-inch pieces. Rampe is a key ingredient in Sri Lankan and other South Asian cuisines, and it's in almost every one of the Sri Lankan recipes on this site.

I would have expected the fresh leaves to be as strongly perfumed as the dry ones, but these were not as fragrant as what I'm used to. Then again, my mother cooked with the ones you see here and she was not impressed with their flavour or aroma, so perhaps these leaves are not as fresh or as good as they look. Anyone else have experience with fresh rampe? Is dried or frozen usually better in North America?

the ingredient: a little chocolate

Do you remember the ice cream sandwich cookies I had at a restaurant recently? My friend Steph was the one with the good sense to order it and we were so impressed that the cookie used was the brown sheet cake cookie--as it should be. When she celebrated her birthday this past weekend, we made a chocolate cake and also dug up this recipe so that we could make our own ice cream sandwiches too. 100% worth the effort. But I was more impressed with this slab of chocolate that Steph brought from the market for us to work with than the desserts themselves.

It seemed so important and more beautiful than the finished treats. And being dark and bitter, I appreciated it more than when it got all gooey and made friends with tons of sugar. I lost some of you right there, didn't I, friends?