Squash Week

Last week was squash week in around here.

At the beginning of the week, cooking with squash.

I came across a recipe somehwere, maybe in Slate (which I swear I don’t read very often; don’t judge me), for butternut squash roasted in rendered sausage fat. This sounded delicious and had only five ingredients (including salt and pepper), so I tried it. Here’s what I did. (I could just find the link and send you there, but you’d rather follow my directions, right?)

You go to the store and get a pound of Italian sausage or maybe some other kind of sausage if you want. Also, a butternut or other winter squash. The recipe said 1 1/2 pounds, but that looked too small so I got one that was about 3 or 4 pounds, I think.

You also need one or two large-ish frying pans that can go into the oven. I ended up needing two because I had a lot of squash; the cast-iron one seemed to roast the squash faster than the stainless-steel one, for reasons probably known to science.

Prick the sausages all over with a fork and cook them with just a bit of olive oil in the pans on the stovetop, medium-low heat — you want them to cook fairly slowly and render their fat. Turn them once when they’re cooked halfway through.

Meanwhile, cut open the squash. I was amazed at how amazing it smelled — not exactly like something you’d want to eat raw, but still sweet, light, and rich. Scoop out the seeds and cut the squash into 1 1/2-inch chunks. (After you cook it, you’ll want not to eat the skin, probably, but it’s not worth peeling it beforehand.)

When the sausages are basically done, take them out of the pans and set them aside. There should be an eighth of an inch or so of fat in the bottom of the pan. Salt and pepper the squash chunks and arrange them in a single layer, keeping the pans on the stove. Cook them for a couple of minutes, then turn them over and cook a few minutes more. Make sure by the end of this stage that the pieces are all coated all over with fat.

Oh, meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. You all preheat, right? Preheat. Put the sausages back in the pans among the squash, and put it all in the oven for 20 minutes. Then take it out and remove the sausages from the pans and put the squash back in for 15 or 20 minutes or until the squash doesn’t give any resistance to a fork or knife.

This made about four servings, and I absolutely loved the way the sausage fat penetrated into the squash and gave a complex savory character to the sweetness. (Of course, you also have the sausages to eat alongside the squash.)

At the end of the week, playing squash.

Squash is that funny game that’s like racquetball but with a much less bouncy ball — so you have to run a lot more. I used to play it back in grad school and had fun without ever being very good. But I hadn’t played in probably eight years.

It seemed like the thing to do here at VPU, though, and I remembered it being ridiculously fun. And my roommate used to play and wanted to start again, too. So we booked a court for last Friday, bought some eye protection, and I borrowed a racket from the gym.

Turns out, squash is even more fun than I remembered. Or maybe I just haven’t done enough competitive sports lately, and the slightest bit of competition gives me crazy endorphin spikes. Or maybe the endorphin spikes come from the actual pain of running around chasing a very non-bouncy ball that never seems to want to come to meet your racquet.

We played for an hour; I wont the first game but lost every game after that. I blame it on sweat getting inside my goggles and distracting me. I was so sore the next day I could hardly walk, but we’ve got another court reserved for this Friday, and I’m stopping at the sporting-goods store this afternoon to get a headband to keep the sweat out of my goggles. I will be unstoppable.

Go forth, Mordecai, and find me a butternut squash.

8 responses to “Squash Week”

  1. Stella says:

    Goggles for squash? Is that an American thing?

  2. Dave says:

    I almost took a friend’s eye out in grad school with a badly aimed shot. That ball goes really fast.

  3. Dave says:

    I mean, just because we don’t have socialized healthcare that goes around handing out free spare eyes. The Eye Dole is one of the sacred cows of the British political system, as we all know. Not even Cameron has yet dared to cut eye-replacement funding.

    But we don’t have that here.

  4. LP says:

    Thumbs up for the goggles! Better safe than chasing an eyeball around the floor.

    And yum, sausage-fat squash. It makes my cholesterol rise just thinking about it.

  5. Rachel says:

    While you’re buying the headband, go for the matching wristbands. You won’t regret it.

  6. Tim says:

    Mmm, (butternut) squash! Yay, (ball-and-racquet) squash!

    I’m jealous that you’re playing squash. I miss it something terrible. There are barely any courts in LA, and now what with my bum Achilles’ I’m not sure I’ll ever play again.

  7. Stella says:

    The eye dole? I think we just move out of the way.