Beet Soup in Roasted Acorn Squash Bowls

It felt like fall this weekend. Completely and thoroughly like fall. The air was crisp, the sky was bright, and the rustle of leaves that accompanied the wind was unmistakable. Yes, yes, fall has found us in Upstate NY. So while I was digging through the fridge and taking inventory of what our CSA share had brought us last week, I decided that a soup of some sort was in order. After taking stock of the available ingredients, I did a wee bit of consulting with my BFF (aka Google) and stumbled upon a recipe for beet soup in roasted acorn squash. What? I get to use up a whole bunch of yummy veggies and put little acorn squashes to work as adorable little bowls? Sign me up!

The recipe is pretty simple. You dice up a large red onion and get it to work in your pot. Once it’s soft, toss in an apple that has been peeled and cut into approximately 1″ chunks and a couple pound of beets that have been cut to roughly the same size. Dice up or grate in 2 – 3 cloves of garlic, let it all soften up some more, then add 4 cups of veggie stock, a few cups of water and let simmer for 40 minutes or until the beets are nice and soft. In the meantime, you’ll have cut the tops off your squash, hollowed them out, took a thin slice off the bottom so they sit stable, and lightly brushed them with olive oil. I made sure to sprinkle mine with fresh cracked black pepper and some sea salt for good measure. Roast the squash while you’re putting together the soup. Once the beats are soft, you’ll need to puree the entire beet mixture. I’m thinking you’d be best with a food processor or an immersion blender, but a standard blender will do the trick, too. Then the soup goes back in the pot to reheat and season to taste with a pinch of salt, a couple of tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and I opted to omit the brown sugar the recipe called for and add in a nice sized dash of cinnamon and a little sprinkle of ginger.

Once the soup was done, I served it up in the acorn squash bowls and put a little dollup of sour cream on top. It’s really hearty, yummy and the prettiest bright red violet color. I decided to let the soup be the star of the show and served it was a simple salad of fresh mozzarella, heirloom tomato from the local farmer’s market, fresh basil and a tiny drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar over mizuna. Delicious! Mike and I ate dinner at the coffee table, sitting cross-legged on the floor and it was the perfect first official foray into fall cooking. Better yet, the acorn squash, beets, garlic and mizuna were all from our CSA share this past week. Nothing says “yum” like organic veggies!

Grilled Patty Pan Squash with Parsley

Ok, after all the amazing ideas I got for how to cook patty pan squash both here and via twitter, I decided to take the easy route. Keeping in mind that any “recipe” I share is really never going to be a real recipe (unless we’re baking, folks, then I’ll indulge you with measurements), consider this a guideline for one super easy way to cook yourself up some patty pan squash. It does not take a rocket scientist to do this and it tastes delicious. Perfect, right?

So, chop up your patty pan squash and dump it in a bowl. I went with slightly larger than bite-sized chunks so they would cook down into nice little bite-sized pieces. Load up the bowl with lots of fresh minced garlic, a ton of chopped fresh parsley, a couple of chopped basil leaves, a good 3 – 4 tablespoons of olive oil, freshly cracked black pepper, a good dash of coarse sea salt and toss. Make yourself a little pocket out of aluminum foil, toss the contents of the bowl inside, seal up your pocket and place it right on the grill. It’ll take about 20 minutes or so to cook through, depending on what else you’ve got cooking on your grill and the heat of the flame. When it’s done, it’s a really mild and tasty squash loaded with fresh herb flavor. Using fresh organic squash and fresh herbs is key here. Don’t mess up a simple dish by using dried herbs – you’ll regret it, trust me. It’ll come out of the little aluminum foil pocket all steamy and delicious and perfect. And you won’t have to reinvent the wheel to get there. Even better.

CSA Ingredient of the Week – Patty Pan Squash

In the last couple of weeks we’d been getting a lot of lumpy white patty pan squash in our CSA share. Patty pan squash is one of those veggies that I just haven’t been exposed to that much before and I certainly had never cooked with it until recently. Isn’t that true of so many fun CSA-inspired ingredients? So far I’ve dabbled with this funny looking squash a little bit, but we have a big stockpile of it waiting to be cooked up. In all honesty, our CSA share is a bit much for just two people – I mean, really, how much kale, lettuce, collards, and cabbage can one couple eat? So I’m hoping to cook up some good things over the long holiday weekend to share with family to help lighten the load a little bit and to prevent anything from going to waste. One of the big things I need to devise is a fabulous recipe or two to help use up all this patty pan squash I have piled up in my house. Any suggestions? I’d love to know your favorite recipe or your favorite way to eat patty pan squash!

{Laughing Stock Farm}