Squash Roasting

As fall wound down, Jeff and I got more and more squash from our CSA.  They sat on our dining table staring at me and drowning me in guilt.  I was in a bit of a cooking rut, lacking any creative direction.  As the saying goes, "You can't wait for inspiration to strike. You have to go after it with a club."  Never is this more pertinent than when faced with produce that will decay into a stinky puddle if you wait.  My club of choice for the squash was oven-roasting.

I turned the oven on to 350º, then sliced each of my squash in half--starting with the largest ones, removed their seeds for later snacking, and chucked them onto a foil-covered baking sheet with the cut faces down.  By taking care of the sugar pie pumpkin and acorn squash first I ensured that they had a bit more time in the oven than the smaller, faster-cooking delicata squash.  I left them in there for about an hour (watched The Office and 30 Rock) before smelling the delicious aroma of sweet, vegetal caramelization, a sure sign that they were done.

After an hour in the oven (45 minutes for the little guys), the squash flesh was almost as soft as hummous and smelled divine.  I scooped out the goods, separating the pumpkin for Thanksgiving's pie from the all-purpose squash blend.  I reserved the delicata skins. 

Apparently the skins of delicata squash are thin enough to be edible.  After languishing for a week in the very back of the fridge--the land where foods get inadvertently frozen--they got fried up like potato skins in a hot pan of butter, then dusted with a bit of salt.  When fried to a hearty medium brown, they had a delightful crunch like chips.  Like kale chips, the substance seems to evaporate from the skins and all that is left is an addictively tasty shell.  When just heated through, though, they tasted purely of fresh squash. The state in between--characterized by having less than 50% covered in brown spots--gave less thoroughly enjoyable results.  At that pubescant stage, the delicata skins were neither baby soft, nor hardened into crisps of squashly essence.  Rather, they had a strange fibrousness that Jeff and I found a bit offputting. Conveniently, you can just toss them back in the pan and coax the skins into crunchy chips.

The point of roasting the squash wasn't necessarily to make squash chips.  After I had roasted and processed all of the squash flesh, I immediately had dozens of ideas for dishes to make.  Most of them involved pasta.  So, I whipped up some fresh egg pasta which wassurprisingly easy, and made me want to make pasta all the time.

 I followed the guidelines provided by the amazing people at the Kitchn.

I made one third of a batch since we only had one egg left rather than three...

Flour and salt volcano with egg lava!

More incentive: pasta is much easier to knead than bread.

Why don't I own a rolling pin?

This question continues to baffle

The above preparation is quite nice: fresh egg pasta, roasted squash puree, cheese cloud

I considered making a version of this phenomenal lasagna with the squash puree, brown butter, and maybe some fresh ricotta.  However, the demands of getting a dinner on the table before 10 ruled that out this time.  Good thing I have more squash awaiting the oven!