During the half term break, we went to visit my friend and work colleague who retired at the end of the last school year. I took her a big bag of books and she gave me a box of lovely home-grown fruit and veg from her allotment - some potatoes, fantastically sweet grapes and a butternut squash - as well as some gifts from her Moroccan husband's family - some sweet almonds and tiny dried figs from her mother-in-law's garden, as well as some tiny home-baked aniseed cakes.
This week, I decided to make butternut soup but when I sliced it open, I discovered that it was full of stringy fibres - aha, spaghetti squash. I've heard of it and seen pictures online but had never eaten it before, let alone cooked it. Google to the rescue !
I'm still not entirely sure it was a spaghetti squash because all the recipes said that it is really hard to cut and you need to bake or microwave the whole thing so that you can pierce the skin. My one was actually quite soft and I managed to cut it into quarters and scrape out the inside without pre-cooking it.
It looked more like grated carrot than spaghetti so I'm not sure - maybe it was another type of squash altogether. It tasted lovely though, whatever it was !
Here's the recipe I threw together, using up odds and ends from the fridge.
Spaghetti Squash with Cherry Tomatoes, Chorizo & Parmesan
ingredients :
1 spaghetti squash
drizzle of olive oil
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
1 mild chorizo, diced
a big handful of cherry tomatoes
a good handful of parmesan
a dozen or so fresh basil leaves
salt, pepper
Heat the olive oil and gently fry the onions and garlic.
When they start to soften, add the diced chorizo and cook until it starts to change colour and release some lovely fragrant, red oil.
Add the strands of spaghetti squash and give it all a good stir. Cook for 2-3 minutes.
Toss in the halved cherry tomatoes, the chopped basil leaves and the parmesan. Season with salt and pepper and give it all good stir to combine.
Serve with more parmesan on top and a couple of extra basil leaves for a splash of colour.
This was surprisingly tasty, despite my initial reservations. I thought spaghetti squash would be stringy and horrible but it's actually really nice and I'll be keeping my eyes open for more at the local farmers' market.
Adding to this month's #KitchenClearout linky as it used up lots of random things from the fridge.
Hmm, not sure if it's a spaghetti squash or not. When I was carving our pumpkin recently, the texture I scraped out was quite similar, stringy and not too difficult to get out. Whatever it is, sounds like a winning combination of flavours.
ReplyDeleteI think that sounds delicious
ReplyDelete