Squash mac and cheese

This is one that's worth making again! Mac and cheese is delicious, and now you can make it nutritious AND orange at the same time... that was your goal, right? right? Crap, I guess not. Well, regardless, this was good, and even got a good Ed-rating. You could skip the oven part, and just call this a pasta sauce. It works all ways.

Start with an onion. Everything starts with an onion. Chop it up, and fry in some oil until it's caramelized. At which point, add some garlic and a handful of fresh sage.

The squash: Peel and cube a butternut squash, saving the seeds because roasted butternut squash seeds are delish. Delicata seeds are the best, but butternut seeds are a close second. 

Add some butter to your pan, and fry up those squash cubes, leaving them in place long enough to get some browning. Browning = flavor. If you're a big fan of squash chunks, leave some aside to stir into the pasta as chunks instead of sauce.

Then food process everything in that pan until it makes a beautiful orange sauce. It might be chunky, but don't worry, you'll be adding the cheese sauce shortly, and that'll thin it out and help with the processing.

As the water boils for the pasta, start the sauce. 

Make a roux - ~2tbs butter, whisk in 2tbs flour, cook while whisking for 5 minutes, and add some milk. Probably about a cup? Keep adding and whisking until it's the thickness you like. Add some to the food processor to help puree the squash. Dump the pureed squash back into the pan with the roux, and taste and adjust seasoning. Salt, pepper, a hint of nutmeg. Dump in ~1-2 cups of grated cheese. Stir until that is melted. Set it aside.

Drain the pasta when it is still very al dente. Stir in the squash-cheese sauce, and load it into a casserole dish. Sprinkle a little more cheese on top, and bake another 15-20 minutes, until everything is bubbling and delicious. Or you can totally skip that step and just eat pasta with the cheesy squash sauce. It's all good!

Ingredients
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
a handful of fresh sage
1 butternut squash
1 lb pasta (small shapes, of any variety)
1-2C grated cheddar
2 tbs butter
2 tbs flour
1-2C milk
parmesan cheese, for serving



I like my pasta smothered in parmesan cheese.


We added green things.

Pizza

Pizza needs anchovies, right? Anchovies, bay scallops, pesto, sauteed leek, and cheddar (I think?). 

Delicious. But maybe a *few* too many anchovies. 

I use a basic bread recipe with maybe four glugs of olive oil into the dough while mixing to make a pizza dough. I only rise it for 15-20 minutes, then get on with rolling it out. It'll still taste delicious (if not quite as full a flavor), and we're hungry NOW. 

Pesto - 

Grind a hunk of parmesan with a clove of garlic in a food processor

Add as much basil as you can fit, a few shakes of almond meal, and a few pinches of salt

A glug or three of olive oil

Process until green and smooth

Add more oil if it won't grind

Taste, and adjust

Pumpkin cinnamon rolls

It's autumn, which means all things pumpkin. I usually don't go too crazy for this stuff, but a few weeks ago we had two guys staying with us, one our American friend living in Madrid, and one his Spanish friend. Greg has been missing all things American, like maple syrup, cheddar cheese, and all things pumpkin spice. Juanma had no idea what he was in for, when they went to the grocery store and came back with EVERYTHING pumpkin spice. To be fair, I think the pumpkin spice thing is overdone, but it is good in small doses, and I do love me my squashes.

So Greg and Juanma got me thinking about pumpkin spice, and I had a box of pearl sugar that I'd picked up in Sweden (the best souvenirs are the edible sort), and I don't really like the glaze part of cinnamon rolls anyway, so it was time to make pumpkin cinnamon rolls, with pearl sugar instead of a glaze. I found the pumpkin in the dough makes for a very flavorful and fluffy roll, not at all bready, and the pumpkin in the filling makes it even more moist. I highly recommend taking the five minutes to brown the butter rather than just melting in the microwave - deepens the flavor. I'm thinking that these rolls don't need to be an autumn-only sort of thing... I'll be making them all year!

Dough
2.5 tsp yeast
1/2C warm milk
3/4C pumpkin puree
1 egg
5 tbs butter, melted and divided
2 tbs sugar

3.5C flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger

Filling
1/4C pumpkin puree
The other half of the butter you melted earlier
2 tbs white sugar
1/4C brown sugar
1/4tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon

Topping
Pearl sugar

Assembly
Melt the butter in a saucepan. Take it a little beyond melted stage, and brown it. It'll sizzle and spit for a while, and then it'll stop sizzling and turn brown. This makes it taste so nutty and delicious, you don't want to skip this step.

Warm the milk, and stir in the yeast and proof it. Then add about half the melted butter, the pumpkin, the egg, and the sugar. Stir that around, and then in with the dry goods! Start with about a cup of flour and all the spices, and then keep adding flour until you get a dough you can knead. Turn it out to a floured surface and knead, maybe 8 minutes.

Return the dough to a greased bowl, and let it rise 1 hour, until just about doubled in bulk. It becomes this beautiful orange color; I love it.

Once the dough has risen, generously flour a surface, turn out the dough, flour the top, and roll it out. It'll be loose, soft and pillowy - I think because of the pumpkin. You want a sheet about 11x17".

Mix the pumpkin puree with the remaining melted butter, and brush that onto the dough. Sprinkle the sugar on top, and the cinnamon on top of that. Roll up the sheet of dough starting with the end nearest to you, until it makes a neat little log. Then cut the log into ~1" slices. If you use a serrated knife, you won't squish the spiral. Try to cut without applying any downward pressure.

Arrange the rolls flat-side-up in a greased pan (two 9" round pans, in my case), and let them rise another 45 minutes.

Once they've risen, sprinkle the tops with pearl sugar, and bake at 350F for 25 minutes. You could brush the top with melted butter before adding the sugar, but you can also skip that step.

Devour.