Spaghetti Squash with Special Sauce!

Squash has been dated as far back as 7,000 B.C. in parts of Mexico and South America. According to The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, explorers from Europe originally thought squash were melons and were delighted to find them everywhere they went in the new world.

Squash is one of many examples of a modern food staple discovered in the Americas. I'm starting to think that the diet of most Europeans before they began exploring consisted of grass, tree bark and the flesh of what ever animal they weren't currently using as transportation.

Today, squash is divided into two primary families, summer squash, most abundant in late summer, and winter squash, which thrives in the fall. Summer squash, such as cucumber and zucchini, have edible skin, soft seeds and require little cooking. Winter squash, like pumpkin and acorn, have tough skin, hard seeds and require an ample amount of cooking time.

Here I used spaghetti squash, a winter variety, as a substitute for — you guessed it — spaghetti. It's so much lighter than pasta and has a delicate flavor. In fact, I prefer spaghetti squash over actual spaghetti.

The sauce is a traditional store bought sauce with some amplifiers. Kind of like a factory car turned into a hot rod. Fresh sausage, onion and green pepper give it a flavor boast that is sure to please.

Eat well, cook often ...

SPAGHETTI SAUCE WITH SPECIAL SAUCE
Serves 4, 45 minutes
1  Spaghetti squash (3 to 4 lbs.)
1 Tbsp Olive oil
1 lb Italian sausage
1 C  Red pepper, diced
1 C  Green pepper, diced
1 C Red onion, diced
3 C Traditional  pasta sauce

FOR THE SQUASH
Cut squash in half length-wise. Scrape seeds from middle. Drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper. Place on a baking sheet and cook in apreheated oven at 375° for 40 minutes. Let cool slightly and scrape flesh into a bowl with a fork.

FOR THE SAUCE
Over medium heat, cook sausage in a large pot until browned and cooked through. Remove to a paper towel-lined bowl. Sauté onion and peppers in sausage drippings until soft, 5 to 6 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Return sausage to pot and add pasta sauce, cover and bring to a simmer

Spoon sauce onto a portion of squash then shower with fresh grated parmesan cheese (otional),
serve immediately.

Sausage Stuffed Acorn Squash

Printable version

I have never been a fan of squash. For the longest time I thought the only good use for squash was hollowing out pumpkins to make scary jack-o'-lanterns at Halloween or chucking rotten ones at passing hay rides in the fall.

A couple of years ago, I tried spaghetti squash for the first time and I actually liked the dish. It was one of the first squash recipes I had eaten that wasn’t purposely made sweet, and it allowed for its natural savory flavor to come out which is why I like it so much. Since then, I have made several spaghetti squash recipes, two of which, spaghetti squash and meatballs and lemon spinach spaghetti squash have been published here.

Recently my Mom made a simple acorn squash with just salt and pepper that I was reluctant to try. To my surprise, I liked the taste. I thought it was time to go out on a limb and decided to try it stuffed with one of my favorite pizzas combinations: sausage, mushroom, green pepper and onion. I knew that if I didn’t like the flavor of the squash I would for sure love the filling. Basically, it’s a pizza that replaced the crust with acorn squash.

In the end, I was pleased with the results. It was a lighter way of enjoying one of my favorite pies. The success of this recipe has me thinking about acorn squash a little more. Could it be that squash is growing on me in general? Maybe, but I’m still a long way from craving pumpkin pie.

BEHIND THIS BITE

Sausage Stuffed Acorn Squash

I overcooked the squash when I documented this recipe. I should have pulled them a few minutes before I did but the time got away from me as I was making the filling. It all turned out well in the end, but the squash was so soft it was tough shaping them up for the pictures. Al dente is definitely the way to go, at least for the sake of making the stuffing part a little easier. The flavor wasn’t effected, just the texture, that is why I decided to soldier on and complete the dish, photos and all.

I had funny moment later on that evening when I took these to Mom and Dad for them to have with their dinner. Mom was excited to try them but Dad wouldn’t touch ‘em. All those topping were still not enough to get him to experiment, he just doesn’t like squash.

Eat well, cook often ...

THE RECIPE

Sausage Stuffed Acorn Squash

Serves 4 to 6; 1 hour
2 to 4 Acorn squash halved (for 2 cut ingredients by half)
2 C Button mushrooms, sliced
1 lb Italian sausage
1/2 C Red onion, diced
1/2 C Green pepper, diced
1/2 C Pizza sauce
1 C Mozzarella cheese, shredded

Prepare and cook squash
Preheat oven to 350°. Cut squash in half, scoop out seeds. Rub with a little olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Place cut-side down on a prepared baking sheet. Roast until cook through but still firm 30 to 40 minutes.

Make filling
In a saute pan over medium heat cook mushrooms until liquid is rendered, stirring occasionally, 6 to 8 minutes. Season at end of cooking. Remove from pan, set aside. Add sausage and cook through, stirring occasionally and breaking up chunks, 8 to 10 minutes. Move to one side of pan. Cook vegetables in empty half until soft, 3 to 4 minutes, season to taste. Return mushrooms to pan and stir everything together. Remove from heat.

Stuff squash, heat through
Increase oven temp to 425°. In cavity of cooked squash, coat with pizza sauce, stuff full with sausage mixture and top with cheese. Repeat until all squash are filled. Place stuffed squash on baking sheet, place in oven and cook until heated through and cheese is melted, 6 to 8 minutes. Then serve.

Italian Style Spaghetti Squash

Squash has been dated as far back as 7,000 B.C. in parts of Mexico and South America. According to The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, explorers from Europe originally thought squash were melons and were delighted to find them everywhere they went in the new world. Another example of a modern food staple of the western world that was discovered in the Americas. I'm starting to think that the diet of most Europeans before they began exploring consisted of grass, tree bark and the flesh of what ever animal they weren't currently using as transportation.

Printable version

Today, squash is divided into two primary families, summer squash, most abundant in late summer, and winter squash, which thrives in the fall. Summer squash, such as cucumber and zucchini, have edible skin, soft seeds and require little cooking. Winter squash, like pumpkin and acorn, have tough skin, hard seeds and require an ample amount of cooking time.

For this recipe, I use spaghetti squash, a winter variety, which resembles its namesake pasta when cooked and removed from its skin. The first recipe features a hearty mixture composed of sausage, onion, fresh peppers and store-bought traditional pasta sauce that tops the squash – which works well as a delicate and tasty substitute for spaghetti pasta. The dish can easily serve as the center piece of a meal. The second recipe features spaghetti squash tossed with basil pesto, this dish works best as a side.

BEHIND THIS BITE
I have been waiting all summer to cook home-grown spaghetti squash and substitute it for none other than - spaghetti! My Dad had planted it in the garden, and I knew that there would be copious amounts by the fall.

There always is.

Gardeners all over northern Indiana have little stands out near the road to display and sell their leftover bounty from the garden. It starts with tomatoes, cucumber and zucchini in late summer, then slowly, as fall sets in – the pumpkin, acorn and spaghetti squash slowly take their place.

What amazes me about these stands is that they are unattended. There is only a list of prices, like four cucmber for $1, and a jar or container to put the money in. You could take as much as you wanted and not leave a dime or even steal the money in the jar – but that rarely happens. It's a karma thing. I bought three tomatoes at one of these stands recently and written on top of the money jar was "My God is Watching."

A fresh vegetable stand in Northern Indiana.

I almost left double the amount.

These stands are a great representation of the openess and optimism of the rural Midwesterner. People in other parts of the country might call it naive, but I believe that comes from the somewhat-synical world view that most urban dwellers must develop to survive in places dominated by grift and the grifter.

In more than a decade living in New York City, I saw nothing that I could compare to these goodwill vegetable stands. Don't get me wrong, there are many awesome things created purely from goodwill in the Big Apple. You just don't find the buying and selling of goods at a road-side stand based on an honors system. They were a site to see last summer, my first in the Midwest since the late 1990s, and a great source of fresh vegetables at a price grocery stores or farmers markets couldn't compete with.

Eat well, cook often ...