Monday, January 17, 2011

Spiced kabocha squash with apples

Kabocha squashes are amazing. They're low moisture so they're perfect for making gnocchi. They also play nicely with other fruits and vegetables--like right here in this spiced bake. Kabocha squash is a lot like pumpkin as far as density goes. Get a cleaver and whack yours open.Scoop out the seeds, peel and cube it as best you can. I'm not showing any pictures of that process because it was hard to do and a total bloodbath for the squash halves. Here's the fairly attractive aftermath though--nice little chunks of kabocha squash.Toss with salt, pepper, 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1/4 cup chicken stock. Set it to bake at 400 for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.Here's what it looks like afterwards--the cubes should be soft but not too mushy.Meanwhile, get 1/4 cup of golden raisins...
And some apples. I had 3 quite small ones that had large cores, so I suspect after peeling and trimming that they might be the equivalent of one very large apple.
See? This is all that came from those 3 apples--it's about 1 cup peeled apple cubes.
Add them to the squash mixture along with the raisins, 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon fresh crumbled rosemary, 1 teaspoon vindaloo powder, 1 teaspoon chile powder, 1/4 cup more chicken stock and a tablespoon brown sugar.
Return it to the oven to bake for another 10 - 15 minutes, stirring after 5 minutes. The apples should be soft and everything should be bubbling nicely.
Perfect alongside pork or anything that could use a chutney-like side dish.

3 comments:

j.bird said...

non-gnocchi uses for kabocha are VERBOTEN!!!!! ACHTUNG!!!

Karen said...

Yummy Carla. I'm just wondering. You tend to cook unique foods. Are these family recipes? Are you following a cook book or just making it up as you go along? Karen

http://www.breakfastatkarens.com

carla said...

karen, i'm a big "make it up" kinda girl! sometimes it's a recipe i grew up watching my mom make but most often it's just playing around with ingredients and seeing what come out of it!