Squash Spaghetti

This all started a few weeks ago when I was on my way into the local Rainbow Foods. As is the case at many grocery stores this time of year they had a display of locally grown winter squash near the entrance. I like squash, I am familiar with at least a couple summer squashes and I have often in the past prepared acorn squash, which is a winter squash. I was looking at the acorn squash when my eye was caught by the label on the big yellow squash, clearly a squash with which I had zero familiarity and which I had never ever prepared.

You might be able to read the label if you magnify the photo but here is what it says:

Spaghetti Squash: Cut squash in half, remove seeds, then bake at 350 (degrees) for 45 minutes. Remove strands with a fork. Toss lightly with butter, salt and pepper. Season to taste with parmesan or Italian seasonings."

I was intrigued by "remove strands(?) with a fork" and "Italian seasonings". I bought one. I baked it up one night while we were having, if I recall correctly, meat loaf. Sure enough, strands. We flavored it with butter and parmesan cheese and we both decided we liked it.

I went ahead and got another one and we took the hint given in the name of the squash and in the recipe directions and prepared a simple mostly canned spaghetti sauce. Again we both decided we liked it.

Today was a rainy and wet day, too cold to do much of anything, including the raking that we intended to do today. Instead we rounded up the ingredients again and set out to make Squash Spaghetti.

I have found that 45 minutes while the squash is baking is plenty of time to do the sauce. Therefore squash preparation comes first.

Here is a preparation tip which I found some place other than on the label, probably on the intertubes. You don't want to just lay the squash down and saw your way through. The texture of the squash makes that a difficult and possibly dangerous approach. Puncture the thing with a long sharp knife and then work your way around.

Again, that's more or less the way you approach the first cut on a pumpkin.

Look familiar?

Clean that all up and deposit the two halves on the center rack of the oven. No baking sheet or any thing of that sort required.

I learned most of the things I know about cooking long, long ago while I was a single man. I learned that if you can cook the whole deal in a single pan there will only be one pan to clean up after you are done. TOPWLH now does most of the clean up (hey, I do the cooking) and I bet she agrees that fewer pans is better than lots of pans.

So, one big pan, a medium large yellow onion cut into pieces, not diced, not chopped, I like onion, I want to able to taste a piece when I bite into it. But onion takes the longest to cook of the things going into the single pan, it comes first.

Next comes a large green pepper, cut into medium size pieces. See above for the reasons for choosing medium size pieces.

I just throw them right on top of the onions. The onions are moving along towards the state that I want them in for this sauce, the green pepper will take a little less time but my life cooking experience tells me that these two will both be cooked the way I want them to be cooked by the time I am done.

But, they are not cooked enough yet to just be allowed to be in the pan while I am browning the hamburger. It is a large pan so I sequester the onions and peppers and start cooking hamburger in the other half of the pan.

As soon as the hamburger is moving along pretty close to "browning" I add the most delicate ingredient, the one that is going to take the least amount of time to cook to the level that I want.

I know that all of the cooking guides say "saute the mushrooms". That works really well. This also works, at least it works for me. After a bit the parts start getting smooshed together and it starts to look like this.

The only thing missing from that sequence is when the meat looks sufficiently browned and all of the other pieces look sufficiently reduced I add the jar of sauce.

How do I define "sufficiently" as in "sufficiently browned" and "sufficiently reduced"? Cooking is an art, not a science.

OK, then, here comes the fun part. The squash comes out of the oven looking for all the world like, what? squash?

But, when you go after it with a fork it comes out in STRANDS!

It was a pretty large squash, we ended up with a couple of bowls of strands.

To which we added the simple spaghetti sauce giving us a meal of Squash Spaghetti.

We both love pasta, this will never completely replace pasta. But, it is good and it offers some dietary advantages over pasta. Very low carbs.

It smells good, it looks good, it is good.

Camembert tartelette

One of the highlights of our trip to Normandy was the food. And one of our favorites in Normandy was the Camembert tartelette which we had (twice) in Bayeux. After returning home we tried to recreate the experience on our trip to Michigan. We scoured the internet for a recipe for Camembert tartelette, obtained locally available products and hatched up a meal. It wasn't right.

I requested from TOPWHL and TCWUTH that my most recent birthday provide me with a surprise gift of tartelette pans. Be careful about putting TCWUTH on any such mission unless you are prepared to be the owner of the absolutely finest tartelette pans available anywhere in the world.

Thanks sweeties.

 I had identified what I thought were two problems in the Michigan effort. First, although plenty of good brie seems to be available out there, the camembert we eventually used was not of the highest quality. Second, the recipe we used seemed more to me to be a recipe for a cheese quiche. Too much egg. What I had in mind was a cheese tart, not a quiche.

I was at the supermarket recently anticipating what I would do when the surprise gift of tartelette pans actually appeared in my kitchen. I have some notoriety for having introduced the crescent roll crust pizza into the family menu, I was thinking that perhaps a crescent roll crust might be just the ticket for the tart I wanted to make.

And, voila, I found a recipe for a cheese tartelette on the label of the crescent roll container. The recipe was for a swiss cheese tartelette making 12 from a single container. I went ahead and tried to adapt. Here's what the adaptation looked like just out of the oven.

AND, it was tres tasty. We are both very happy with the result. We used camembert, upon reflection it is a cheese tart, there is absolutely no reason why the same recipe would not produce an excellent brie tartelette. We have been successful on numerous occasions at obtaining an excellent brie in Michigan.

Here we go then:

1 8 ounce can Pillsbury crescent rolls (either the dinner rolls or the seamless dough would work, I used the seamless dough)

8 ounces of Camembert or other smooshy cheese, the higher the quality cheese the better the dish. It is important that the cheese be pretty soft already as the melting of the cheese is integral to preparation of the dish.

Bacon. I used four strips of microwave bacon. Prepare this plenty in advance (a half hour or so) as you are going to want to be able to handle the bacon to break it into small bits.

A smallish amount of chopped green onion. I got one bunch (2 for a dollar) from Cub and it was about right (about 7 pieces).

1 egg

3 tablespoons whipping cream. Mine cost $2, maybe TOPWLH can use the rest in her morning coffee.

I also added some bottled sliced mushrooms

Here's what all of that looked like just before the next step. Everyone please note the spectacularly wonderful Le Creuset tartelette pans.

Heat oven to 375F.

Unroll dough, press into whatever pan you are using. I cut my dough into fourths and had to trim and adjust to make the four square pieces fit into my four round pans. The crescent roll dough is sufficiently flexible to allow this. The original recipe anticipates using a cupcake pan with a yield of 12. A larger tart pan might require use of the whole roll for a single tart.

Half of the cheese on the bottom. Then the bacon, the mushrooms and the onions.  Then the rest of the cheese.

In a small bowl beat the cream and the egg until blended and then divide the mixture evenly among the four tartelettes. This is what it looked like just after going into the oven.

Perhaps of further interest is a Pillsbury Kitchens recommendation I found on the internet version of the back of the can Crescent roll recipe:  Keep refrigerated dough in the fridge until you're ready to use it, cold dough is much easier to work with.  Have all the other ingredients ready to use.

And this is what it looked like coming out.

Bake 15 or 20 minutes until the edges are golden brown and the filling is set. Cool 5 minutes.

Improvements for next time. The cheese rind does not diminish from the taste but it does slightly mar the appearance. It would be easy enough to make sure that no piece of rind is at the top to the tart.

Cooling for more than 5 minutes is not an issue. We had ours with a large tossed salad, you don't need HOT with a tossed salad. A little bit cooler will allow the filling to set up a little bit more and should not affect your enjoyment of a Norman treat, the camembert tartelette.

Did I mention that we both liked ours a lot.

Chicken Tenders

We ate chicken tonight -- I like the chicken tenders at the Cracker Barrel restaurants, so I Googled up a recipe for it. There are many out there, and they are all remarkably similar. I had 1.25 pounds of chicken tenders, so I used 1/3 cup of Italian dressing, a tablespoon of good lime juice (I only get the good stuff, just in case the occasion arises to make Key Lime Pie. Better to be prepared.) The recipes all called for a little bit of honey, though I suspect any sweetener would work, or even none at all. I don't keep it on hand here, but I had a single serving size from a dinner we had somewhere last week where JB had biscuits. Stir those three ingredients together in a small bowl.
Dump the chicken tenders in a zip lock bag and add the marinade. Squish it around some, then put it in the bottom drawer of your refrigerator for 2 to 24 hours. I put this together at lunch, so it was about 5 or 6 hours. Longer wouldn't have hurt, I'm pretty sure.
These take next to no time to cook. I put a little olive oil on my grill pan, and turned the heat to about medium high, just a little bit lower, until the oil got good and hot.
I set my stove timer for 3 minutes per side, and they were done. I cut a couple of the bigger ones in half, just to be sure -- raw chicken is icky. Overcooked chicken is tough. These were very moist but thoroughly cooked. I used a light honey dijon mustard salad dressing as a dipping sauce at the table.
I love my grill pan -- I use it a lot for quick suppers. Turkey burgers, for example. We have plenty of tenders left over, probably enough for at least two lunches of chicken sandwiches. (Chicken tenders are overpriced -- you can buy chicken breasts and cut them up with your kitchen shears for the same result. I wanted the convenience, so paid the extra this time. I also suspect that boneless chicken thighs would work with this, for those of you who like dark meat. They might take a little bit longer to cook.)