Gourd-geous!

As some of you may know, Chef just came out with a new cookbook, NOPI, and he and his co-author were interviewed Friday on NPR. I loved hearing the interview because Chef was asked about creating a restaurant cookbook for the home chef! Questions came up such as: how difficult some of the recipes are for home cooking and how hard to find and uncommon some of the ingredients are. The interview, of course, reminded me of my project and I wanted so badly to call-in and tell them I am trying to answer those exact questions with “Plenty!” But Morning Edition is not a call-in show, so I will continue to voice my trials and triumphs on this blog 🙂

Tonight, continuing with the fall theme, I prepared Roasted Butternut Squash with Sweet Spices, Lime, and Green Chile (pg. 65). It was a fairly simple recipe, but took a little longer then anticipated. I began it early because I was hungry, but it ended up taking me a little over an hour, start-to-finish.

The ingredients were few and I was able to find cardamom seeds, so I didn’t have to get the seeds out of the pods, as Chef said. However, crushing the seeds down to a fine powder took awhile! I don’t have a mortar and pestle, so I usually use a small bowl and  the handle of my ice cream scoop. It works great, but these little seeds were hard to crack and my hand was hurting at the end.

I was able to easily skin the limes. Having practice de-membraning oranges, this was a breeze! My tahnini was brand new, so I spent a good 10-15 minutes stirring it. This also made my hand hurt…

The squash was roasting, the limes were cut and seasoned, the tahini sauce was made. Then all I had to do was prep the chiles and the cilantro for garnish. Once the squash crescents were out of the oven, I chose to take the skins off (Chef said the choice was up to you). Then I put the dish together to enjoy…and WOW! Spicy! I knew with the green Thai chiles it would be spicy, and I like spice, but not a lot, so I purposefully did not put that many on. But still…phew! My mouth is still tingling! But overall, the dish has some very interesting and new flavors for me. The combination of the nutty tahini, the sweet squash, and the citrus from the limes was very different, but good! I really loved it. I give it 4 stars just because it was a little too spicy for me. Next time maybe I won’t add the chile…

Mine (L) and Chef’s (R, pg. 67).