Squash & Gourds
1180 recipes found

Giant Limas With Winter Squash
I love the fact that beans, lentils and greens symbolize prosperity in the New Year in places as disparate as the American South and the South of France. I wonder if it’s really because lentils and beans are round like coins and swell when they cook, or if it’s because that’s about all anybody can afford to eat after the excesses of the holiday season. The notion of thrift wouldn’t apply to some of the other foods that symbolize good luck or prosperity in certain cultures – fish, for instance, or saffron. I’ve taken traditions from different places this week and thrown some of them together, focusing mainly on lentils, beans, greens and fish. These are simple dishes that I hope will help you to begin 2012 on a happy, healthy note. Look for more New Year’s dishes in the Recipes for Health index. Baking in a slow oven is the best way to cook large lima beans, which can fall apart easily if boiled too hard. This dish is luxuriously creamy (though there’s no cream in it) and comforting.

Sautéed Bluefish With Spicy Salad and Ginger Rice

Autumn Mashed Potatoes

Winter Vegetable Stew

Soupe au Pistou (Provençal Vegetable Soup)

Roasted Squash With Pancetta and Sage

Spaghetti Squash Topped With Smoked Oyster and Watercress Ragout

Spaghetti Squash with Meat Sauce

Spaghetti Squash With Eggplant and Sesame Seeds

Butternut Squash Soup With Goat Cheese and Squash Crostini

Spaghetti Squash Chili

Rum-and-Spice Squash Bread

Spaghetti Squash Gratin With Basil
Recently on the Recipes for Health page on Facebook, I asked readers what they were finding in their weekly delivered produce boxes. Requests for spaghetti squash recipes came pouring in. I was working on basil dishes already, so I decided to combine the two ingredients in this gratin.

Spaghetti Squash With Garlic, Parsley and Breadcrumbs
Spaghetti squash gets its name from the fact that once it is cooked, the flesh breaks down into long spaghettilike strands. I find spaghetti squash a bit dull on its own, as it does not have the sweetness and depth of many other winter squash. But it is hard to resist substituting spaghetti squash for pasta every once in a while, and the squash will pick up other robust flavors in the dish. Most spaghetti squash are pretty large; you will need only half of a 3 to 3 1/2-pound squash for this recipe. You can toss the leftovers with tomato sauce the next day.

Squash Filling With Rye Crumb Topping

Corn, Avocado and Cucumber Salad
This straight-from-the-garden vegetable salad is the essence of summer on a plate. It’s very easy to make, but you’ll need to buy sweet young corn, tender enough to eat raw, as well as perfectly ripe avocados and the freshest cucumbers. Feel free to add cherry tomatoes and radishes, and sprigs of crunchy purslane, if you can find it.

Melon, Cucumber and Tomato Salad
Melon and cucumber are a marvelous combination, never more so than when ripe tomatoes provide a bridge between the two. Parsley, mint and the refreshing bite of Champagne vinegar take the flavors even higher, making this salad both a perfect lunch or a fine start to a summer dinner.

Spicy Squash-Apple Chowder

Butternut-Squash-and-Ancho-Chili Puree

Fluke in Lemon Brodetto With Scallops and Squash
“The Babbo Cookbook,” by Mario Batali, was published in 2002. Within two years I had made every recipe in it at least once, and by 2005 or so I was adapting the dishes to the ingredients I found at the market, instead of the other way around. Take the restaurant’s black bass served in a lemony capon stock with Hubbard squash and delicate shell-on bay scallops from Taylor Shellfish Farms, in Washington State. There is no need to make the dish with black bass, Hubbard squash or Taylor bay scallops, much less capon broth. I use use fluke but any firm-fleshed white fish will do. Hubbard squash is a dream, but butternut squash works beautifully in its stead. As does chicken stock instead of the capon. And swapping out the farmed bay scallops for the deeper salinity of wild ones, or for small ocean scallops, is no crime. The most important thing is to locate thin-skinned lemons for the brodetto, since the thick ones impart a bitterness to the sauce that is not magical. If all you have is thick-skinned lemons, take a moment to cut out the white pith beneath the skin, which is the bitter culprit.

Middle Eastern Grilled Vegetable Sandwiches

Lamb Steak With Lebanese Spices
The Lebanese seven-spice mixture baharat (the Arabic word for spices) usually has a base of black pepper and allspice, along with coriander, cumin, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, but that's not set in stone. Sometimes powdered ginger, cardamom and hot paprika are part of the mix. There are often more than seven spices, and sometimes fewer. It is an all-purpose spice blend, good for adding depth to stews, and as a rub for meat. London broil is what butchers call a boneless piece of meat from nearly any cut that is broiled or grilled and then sliced before serving, almost like a little roast. A butterflied leg of lamb has four such pieces, and grilling each separately is easier than cooking the whole boneless leg. You can buy chops instead, but they usually cost more.

Squash With Oyster Sauce
