Squash & Gourds
1180 recipes found
Pasta Salad
This pasta salad has everything you could want in the bowl: loads of ripe tomatoes, chunks of mozzarella, sliced olives, salami and plenty of fresh green herbs, all tossed in a garlicky, oregano-spiked red wine vinaigrette. Serve it the same day it’s made for the brightest flavor and best texture.
Chicken Thighs With Sour Cherries and Cucumber Yogurt
If you’re lucky enough to have more sour cherries than you need to make a pie, save them for this sweet and tangy chicken dish. The cherries are briefly simmered with sugar, vinegar and a bay leaf, then added to a sheet pan to roast alongside boneless, skinless chicken thighs and wedges of red onion. As they cook, the cherries absorb the chicken juices, becoming very savory and concentrated. Then, the whole thing is topped with dollops of cooling cucumber yogurt. Serve it with bread or rice to catch the juices at the bottom of the pan. If you can’t get sour cherries, you can substitute seedless red or green grapes.
Creamy Cucumber Salad
Use any mix of cucumbers you like for this tangy salad. If using slicing cucumbers — the slightly thicker ones you’ll find with seeds and sometimes waxier-seeming skins — you might want to peel them first and remove the seeds, which can dilute the dressing. To seed, simply halve the cucumbers lengthwise and use a teaspoon to gently scrape out the seeds. Feel free to play around with shapes, too. Slicing the cucumbers into rounds is easy enough, but half moons or other bite-size pieces are also welcome.
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Butternut Squash Purée
In this recipe, we purée the squash in a food processor or blender until incredibly smooth and velvety, but you could just as easily make the purée by hand for a more rustic mashed texture.
Spicy Cucumber Margaritas
Verdant and herbaceous, this margarita is slightly more work than the classic, but you can produce it hours in advance. Some cocktail recipes call for preparing simple syrup on the stovetop, then combining with other ingredients, but this one uses a blender to combine the cucumbers, cilantro, sugar, lime zest and juice as a shortcut. Using delicate, thin-skinned Persian cucumbers ensures a vibrant color, and cilantro adds grassy notes. Because the heat levels of jalapeños can fluctuate, allow guests to garnish with sliced jalapeño to taste.
Sheet-Pan Chicken With Zucchini and Basil
In this simple weeknight recipe, chicken thighs and drumsticks are seasoned with garlic, herbs and red-pepper flakes, and roasted alongside tender chunks of zucchini that caramelize in the oven’s heat. Torn basil leaves and a squeeze of lemon give the dish sharp and tangy notes just before serving, while the optional coriander seeds tossed into the pan lend depth. This recipe comfortably serves two to three, but if you're feeding more people, feel free to double the ingredients. Divide the ingredients between two sheet-pans, and bear in mind that you might need to add a few minutes to the cooking time. Add some crusty bread or rice to soak up the savory juices, and you’ve got a summery meal that’s fresh, full of flavor and an absolute snap to make.
Grilled Zucchini Ribbons
Zucchini is the summer vegetable grillers love to hate. We love it for its summery flavor and sheer abundance. We love it less for its unfortunate tendency to become soggy when grilled. Russ Faulk, chief designer at Kalamazoo Outdoor Gourmet and author of “Food + Fire,” has come up with an ingenious method of keeping zucchini crisp during grilling: He slices it thin on a mandolin, then accordions the strips on skewers to grill over a screaming hot fire. The edges char and crisp, giving you the vegetable equivalent of meaty ribs’ burnt ends. I’ve taken the burnt end idea one step further by seasoning the zucchini with a classic barbecue rub — use your favorite — and basting it with spiced butter.
Braised Lamb With Squash and Brandied Fruit
Lamb shanks, braised until tender, are coated in a rich sauce of tomatoes, caramelized shallots and brandied dried fruit. The squash roasts as the lamb cooks, which is a time-saving perk, and its sweet custardy flesh rounds out the meal. Bone-in lamb shanks are ideal, but a similar weight of boneless leg of lamb will work just as well. Potatoes, carrots and parsnips will do well in place of the squash. Serve over steamed rice or couscous or with thick slices of crusty bread to mop up the sauce.
Pumpkin Soup
This recipe turns canned pumpkin purée into a sublimely creamy, aromatic soup that makes for an elegant first course or a satisfying lunch on a cold day. While the combination of pumpkin and fall spices can easily veer in the direction of dessert, the addition of fresh rosemary, garlic, caramelized onions and curry powder plants this soup firmly in the savory camp. Finally, to make this recipe vegan, substitute olive oil for the butter, full-fat coconut milk for the heavy cream, and vegetable broth for the chicken broth. If time and availability allow, consider roasting your own sugar pumpkin for this recipe: The soup will have a deeper, more complex flavor (see Tip).
Pumpkin Roll With Coffee-Caramel Cream
A roulade is a classic dessert made by rolling a thin cake around a flavorful filling, which creates an inviting swirl once sliced. This roulade starts with a subtly spiced, moist pumpkin cake that is wrapped around a rich filling made with cream cheese, heavy cream, caramel and coffee. The filling is bittersweet and slightly savory, which works nicely with the earthy pumpkin sponge. Make sure to use very finely ground coffee, like what you would use to make a cup of pour-over.
Pumpkin Blondies With Chocolate and Pecans
Festive and earthy, these bars are made with canned pumpkin purée, which nudges them toward cake territory while maintaining that chewy, rich and irresistible blondie texture. For a swirly chocolate ribbon effect, work with butter that is still ever-so-slightly warm, so that the chocolate chunks have a chance to melt a bit as you fold them in.
Beets With Horseradish and Pumpkin Seeds
Sweet beets meet zingy horseradish and crunchy pumpkin seeds in this dish that will enchant beet lovers and skeptics alike. Roasting the beets concentrates their flavor and makes them easier to peel, while pairing red beets with their yellow counterparts makes for a striking visual contrast. Feel free to use all red beets, or all golden beets, if that’s what’s available to you, and to substitute plain yogurt for the sour cream. If you can’t find fresh, refrigerated prepared horseradish, horseradish cream also works beautifully. Make the most of the beet greens: Sauté them in olive oil and finish with a splash of balsamic vinegar for an excellent accompaniment to this dish.
Squash Casserole
“Why don’t you just cook something that tastes really good?” Julia Reed’s mother said that, chiding her daughter, a writer of uncommon style and wit who used to contribute food essays and recipes to The New York Times Magazine. Her mother thought Ms. Reed spent too much time thinking about complicated, over-the-top recipes at the expense of simple, honest American cooking that draws compliments not because it looks amazing, but because it’s delicious. Like, for example, this recipe, for what Julia called in a 2002 article, “the best squash casserole on the planet Earth.” The ingredients are by no means fancy — summer squash, jalapeño, white bread, Ritz crackers, eggs and Cheddar — but they combine in mysterious and marvelous ways to deliver a perfect accompaniment to grilled chicken or a weekend roast.
Toasted Millet Salad With Cucumber, Avocado and Lemon
Cooked millet has a taste and aroma that’s subtly reminiscent of raw hazelnuts, and as with hazelnuts, toasting millet first really deepens its flavor. If you want to work ahead, toast and cook the millet, set aside and toss in the other ingredients when ready. Sharp mint leaves, creamy avocado, crisp cucumbers and bright lemon really round out this dish, which makes a lovely side dish, an afternoon snack or the base of a protein-focused grain bowl. Millet is marvelous, but a wide variety of grains will work just as well.
Smacked Cucumber ‘Quick Kimchi’
This is not a traditional kimchi, but it approximates the flavor profile, bypassing a lengthier fermentation and instead relying on vinegar. Considered a muchim in Korean — which can refer to any number of “seasoned” or “dressed” salads or other preparations — this dish is best eaten right away, or at least within 24 hours, while cucumber’s characteristic crunch is still intact. The smacking step creates craggy edges that help better absorb the spicy, funky dressing, so don’t skip it. If you can, place a bowl under the colander in Step 1 to catch the cucumber brine; it tastes fabulous in a martini. Enjoy this as a side salad alongside any grilled main dish, especially steak, or any type of barbecue. For a vegetarian option, you can swap out the fish sauce for soy sauce.
Kaddu (Sweet and Sour Butternut Squash)
This cozy vegetable main is an ode to earthy, maple-y fenugreek, a staple spice of Indian cooking that is a perfect match for the mild sweetness of butternut squash. Normally roasted, butternut squash is gently stewed here with ginger, onion, turmeric, tomatoes and brown sugar, bringing out a unique and addictive sweet-and-sour flavor. Kaddu is traditionally paired with puri, a type of fried bread, but roti, tortillas and even toast work well with this bright and hearty one-pot dish.
No-Bake Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars
This recipe's pumpkin cheesecake bars happen to be no-bake. They have a salty graham cracker crust and their pumpkin flavor is thanks to a secret ingredient.
Pistachio Butter
Pistachios contain less fat than other nuts, but they are still packed with protein and flavor, making them a fantastic choice for nut butter. Some brands contain sugar or hydrogenated oil, but you can make your own with just nuts — and maybe 1/4 cup pumpkin or sunflower seeds. For deeper flavor, roast the raw pistachios before blending. The seeds add a satisfying crunch and a more intense nut flavor, while a pinch of ground cardamom takes pistachio butter in a new direction. Swirl the finished product into your breakfast oatmeal or smoothie.
Spiced Pumpkin Pie
Most pumpkin pies rely entirely on ground spices for their heady flavor. In this one, whole spices (star anise, clove, cinnamon and black peppercorns) are infused into cream, which gives it a more interesting, nuanced character, while a hit of ground ginger added at the end makes it particularly intense. You can make the filling and par-bake the crust the day before, but this pie is best assembled and baked on the day you plan to serve it. If you can, use a high-fat, European-style butter for the crust. It really makes a difference.
No-Churn Pumpkin Ice Cream
This pumpkin ice cream is no-cook and no-churn. It's also no–pumpkin spice. By ditching the usual suspects (looking at you, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg), you can appreciate pumpkin's squashy flavor even more. Serve with an assortment of toppings, like whipped cream, crumbled nut brittle, and maple syrup. I wouldn't turn down a shot of espresso either.
Stuffed Zucchini Simmered in Tomato Sauce (Zucchine Ripiene alla Romana)
One of my favorite dinner party recipes is this zucchine ripiene alla Romana, which is Stuffed Zucchini filled with a mixture of meat In Tomato Sauce. Yummy!
Pasta with Pecorino, Guanciale & Black Pepper (Mezze Maniche alla Gricia)
This classic Roman pasta sauce recipe always features Pecorino Romano, guanciale, and plenty of black pepper. It pairs well with mezze maniche.
Scarlett’s Tuna Salad
For when it’s too hot to cook, there's the chef Scarlett Lindeman’s tuna salad — the same one she serves at her Mexico City restaurant, Cicatriz. Made with high-quality, oil-packed tuna, the salad is fresh, juicy, bright and summery, composed with cucumbers, avocado, pickled onion and lots of herbs. Don’t be afraid to season the cucumbers generously with salt at the start, and to season more as you build the layers of the salad. The dish is so simple that seasoning it well is key.
Classic Zucchini Bread
A quintessential quick bread, zucchini bread blurs the line between breakfast and cake, making it acceptable for both. This version is on the sweeter side, the vegetal flavors mellowed by brown sugar, cinnamon and a bit of browned butter. While not always necessary, squeezing excess water from the zucchini will prevent the batter from being too wet while keeping the end result moist. Since this recipe makes two loaves (if you’re going to grate all that zucchini, might as well make it count), know that one will freeze excellently for at least a month. The recipe can also be halved with great success.