Kabocha Squash Discovery

Our CSA box included a kabocha (ka-BOO-tchah) squash. It's also known as a Japanese pumpkin. Although the outside is mostly green, the flesh inside is orange like a butternut squash. It was a new one for me but it's quite tasty. Having grown and eaten a lot of butternut squash, I can say that this squash has a great flavor. It's less sweet and more nutty. It interacts well with spice making it a great warming dish in the winter. It can be a small enough squash to use as a serving bowl where you scrape the fleshy sides to mix with your vegetable filling.

This is what I did with the squash in the CSA box.

This recipe is pretty flexible. Use whatever vegetables you have on hand. Tailor it to the number of servings you wish to have. The more squash you are preparing, the longer the cook time. The sauce and the spices make the recipe!


Ingredients:

• 1 small kabocha squash per person
• 2 Tbsp. olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 1/2 onion (per squash)
• Sliced or chopped seasonal vegetables. A mix of root (carrots, parsnips, potatoes) and greens (brussel sprouts, bell pepper, green beans) is good.
• 2 Tbsp. butter (per squash)
  
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 tsp. ground cumin (per squash)
  
• 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper (per squash)
  

Sauce (per squash):

• 2 Tbsp. soy sauce
• 2. Tbsp. sherry
• 1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees
2. Rinse squash and pat dry. Cut around the stem to make lid. Make the lid wider than one does for a jack-o-lantern for the front porch.
3. Remove seeds and stringy flesh (use a tablespoon and put some time into this step).
4. Massage inside of each squash with 1 Tbsp. olive oil.
   
5. Add salt and pepper.
6. Put lid back on squash and cook in a baking dish for 10 minutes.
7. Make the sauce recipe above.
8. Chop the vegetables that will be in the stuffing.
9. Put sliced onions in a bowl and add 1 Tbsp. olive oil (per squash). Add salt and pepper and mix together.
10. Melt butter in a skillet and add garlic.
11. Add cumin and cayenne.
12. Add vegetables and saute until slightly done (time will depend on the vegetable).
13. Stir in the sauce and bring the mixture back to hot.
14. Pour the mixture back into the squash, add the lid, and return to the oven.
15. Bake for 40 minutes (longer time as more squash are included).
16. Transfer cooked squash to serving plates. Cut it down about 1/3 of the way into quarters (or more) for a flower-like presentation.

Cranberry Port Relish

Most of the ingredients were in the CSA box this week, so I made this suggested recipe.

10 oz. fresh cranberries, rinsed
2 tablespoons grated mandarin orange zest (or regular orange)
3/4 cup mandarin orange juice (or regular orange)
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup Port (I used a Cab port that I had in the cupboard)

In a 3 or 4 quart pan over medium-high heat, stir together cranberries, orange zest, orange juice, and sugar. Bring to a boil and lower heat to maintain a simmer. Cook for 12 minutes, stirring frequently. The berries will begin to break apart and release their juices. Add port and continue to cook for 2 more minutes. Let cool completely.

As the heat starts to hit the cranberries, they pop like popcorn.

Goodbye Tomatoes

I pulled up the tomatoes. A few weeks ago it was the end of the road for the zucchini. There's a fresh batch of chard growing and four basil plants. The bell pepper plant continues to produce.

Notes for next year's tomato crop:

• Plant in the back bed
• Try Roma tomatoes if you're thinking of making sauce
• Staking the plant to a piece of rebar in the ground is a good approach
• Also use the square cage
• Keep the plant trimmed if it starts to get wild

Homemade Grape Juice

After receiving several pounds of grapes (muscat, I'm told) and getting a bag of grapes (Crimson) in our CSA box I decided to see if I could turn all this into grape juice instead of letting it go to waste. Since I don't have (yet!) one of the juicer steamer contraptions I decided to search the Internet and see what I could find. I put together the following steps:

Wash and de-stem the grapes. This was the most time-consuming task. It took about an hour to get all the grapes off their stem and into the colander.

Mash the grapes. The recipe I was following said to use a potato masher which I didn't have. So I just used my hand blender and pulsed it on the grapes in the pot.

Cook the grapes. I let the smashed grapes simmer over medium heat for around 15 minutes. As the grapes softened I continued to use the hand blender to mash the grapes more.

Prepare cheesecloth sieve. I lined the colander with two sheets of cheesecloth. I used a rubber band to keep it in place and set the lined colander over another pot.

Strain grape mixture. I ladled the grape mixture into the lined colander. I let it sit for a few hours and then threw it in the refrigerator overnight.

Finishing. I removed the grape mixture and cheesecloth and threw it in the compost pile. What was left was the juice. It was naturally quite sweet and didn't need anything else. The web sites talked about sending the juice through another strain to remove more sediment. I tried a gold coffee filter but the juice was actually too thick. I moved on to a paper coffee filter which worked better since I was able to squeeze the juice through (not unlike a frosting bag).

The juice was quite good on its own but was also improved with the addition of a local vodka.

Labor Day

Labor Day = homemade apple pie. I was given a bag of Granny Smith apples so I made apple pie.

Staged photos

Once our remodel was finished our designer hired a professional photographer to take some shots for her portfolio. We recently got copies of the photos. These are just a few of the shots they took. She and the photographer spent the day here staging and shooting our place. They arrived early in the morning and that evening when we came home and everything seemed to be in its original place. In addition, we got to keep the staged food that they brought in (lemons, limes, flowers, assorted vegetables, the canteloupe "brunch meal" that you see). While everything was back in its place when we came home, we can see that they were quite busy moving furniture around.

Recent Harvest

We went out back this last week and harvested lots of peaches, green beans, tomatoes, bell peppers, a yellow onion, and a zucchini.