We’re trying something new where we archive the weekly recipes we curate with our grocery bags.
This week’s recipes:
Honeynut squash is our new seasonal favorite squash (not to displace our ALWAYS fave, kabocha pumpkin). Look at this: The Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture, a nonprofit farm and education center in Pocantico Hills, New York, hosted a group of Cornell plant breeders in 2009. There, farm director Jack Algier asked Dan Barber, chef and owner of Stone Barns' restaurant Blue Hill to cook the plant breeders' products for the group. After dinner, Barber took Michael Mazourek for a tour of the kitchen. At one point in the tour, Barber grabbed a butternut squash and asked Mazourek "If you're such a good breeder, why don't you make this thing taste good? Why don't you shrink the thing?!" We enjoy the natural sweetness of this squash and recommend halving it lengthwise, rubbing with a neutral oil and roasting cut side down at high heat (425 for 25 minutes is always a good start for me).
Make some baba ganoush eggplant dip! If you're roasting the squash, take advantage of a hot oven and throw in your eggplant too. This recipe is vegan and can flex from snack time with bread or crudités, to a breakfast toast spread, to a lunch bowl topping. If you don't have tahini, I have ideas for you: try toasting a few fistfuls of sesame seeds and food-processing with the teeniest tiniest bit of oil for homemade tahini... or replace with peanut butter!
This leek & kale lasagna sounds like a great idea. Execute as written, or if you're like me and feel overwhelmed by the thought of assembling a lasagna🥵you can turn it into a creamy pasta bake with breadcrumb topping. And braise your leek tops! Please don't throw them out :-(
If you have a bunch of red onions, pickle some! Keeping a quart of pickled onions in your fridge is handy for jazzing up salads, sandwiches & more.
Feel like baking? Try pear & rosemary sugar galettes. If you have a favorite pie crust recipe, freestyle these up by cutting your crust into 9" rounds, piling up fruit in the middle and folding the edges inward to end up with a hexagon. Make rosemary sugar by dropping your herbs into a bowl of sugar and letting it sit for a few days. Sprinkle that stuff heavily on your galettes before baking, and you'll get a nice & sweet crunch coming out of the oven.
Yes, you can make your own fresh tomato sauce for pasta night and it doesn't even take too long! Fresh tomatoes like sugar, salt and acid, and I like to keep that in mind whenever I make something tomatoey and saucy. Balsamic vinegar is a really rich way to get there, or you can try a squeeze of lemon and a heavy pinch of white sugar to keep the fresh flavor in the forefront.