Spaghetti the Squash
Of all the winter squashes, my favorite is the spaghetti squash, because it is a weird mutant that makes no sense. What possible reason could it have to produce a fruit that transforms from rock hard when raw to silky strands when soft? What is the point? Some mysteries are unsolvable. Or, like, maybe this one has been solved and I just can’t be bothered to look up the answer.
In any case, spaghetti squash is a wonderful fruit. It take weeks to go bad, so just look for one that feels heavy — this means a higher sugar content — and doesn’t have any soft spots. It’s hard to mess up buying a spaghetti squash. It is also fantastically healthful; it has few calories, but high levels of fiber, vitamin A and C, and potassium, and it’s extremely high in beta carotene, which is probably good for your skin and eyeballs.
Typically the spaghetti squash is treated as if it were spaghetti, topped with tomato sauce and that kind of thing. This is an okay way to eat it, but because spaghetti squash lacks the starch of pasta, the squash will never really absorb sauce or be coated with sauce in the same way, which can lead to watery dishes. Spaghetti squash is in a category of its own, a crisp-tender mildly sweet filler. According to my cursory searches of Pinterest and food blogs, though, spaghetti squash is often cooked incorrectly. Here is a popular way it is cooked and also a way in which you should never, ever cook it.
Jesus Christ. Think about your food for a second, food bloggers. Here are some of the many, many problems with halving the squash, scooping out the seeds and guts, and filling the crater with what I am sure is a terribly amateurish sauce before roasting the whole thing. 1) This method assumes that your spaghetti squash and your filling will cook at the exact same temperature for the exact same time. There is almost no way this will happen. 2) Assuming you care enough to put salt and pepper and oil on the squash, you will only manage to season the very top layer of the squash, the part exposed to the air; the whole rest of the squash will be bland. 3) The sauce will not be able to penetrate and properly flavor the squash because you haven’t shredded it first. 4) Even assuming you’ve roasted and shredded the squash first and placed it back into the skin like a monstrous twice-baked potato, squashes are round and will flop around all rolly-polly if you try to use them as a bowl. Also, if you’ve roasted it properly, the squash will be basically falling apart. 5) Are those huge god damn sprigs of raw rosemary in that picture?
The proper first step of cooking spaghetti squash is thus: Slice it in half lengthwise, through the root. Scoop out the guts and seeds, reserving the seeds, throwing away the guts. Wash the seeds thoroughly and leave them on a dish towel to dry; you can roast them later as you would any other winter squash, they are delicious. Rub a bit of olive oil and sprinkle some salt and pepper on the squash and place them, cut side down, on a baking tray. Roast at 350 degrees until soft (maybe 40 minutes) and allow to cool. Then take a fork and kind of scraped the squash out, getting right down to the skin. It’ll come out, shockingly, in separated strands. Be gentle with this step; you don’t want to break them up any more than you have to. Place these strands in a large bowl and season more with salt, pepper, and oil.
Frankly, you can stop right there and have a very nice simple meal. But spaghetti squash can go further. So much further.
Spaghetti Squash Aglio e Olio
Shopping list: Cooked spaghetti squash as per above, olive oil, garlic, dried chile flakes, parmesan (or pecorino or really any hard salty Italian cheese like that), parsley, lemon
Slice about five or six cloves of garlic thinly (do not mince it). Set a pan on the stove over medium-low heat and pour in a bunch of olive oil. Throw in the garlic and the chile flakes and cook it until the garlic is golden brown. Toss in like a bowl’s worth of spaghetti squash and stir to combine. Add more oil if it looks like it’s sticking. When combined, serve on a plate with a lot of grated parmesan, chopped parsley, and a squeeze of lemon, and a little drizzle of more olive oil over the top. (I know the lemon isn’t traditional. Neither is the squash, so, like, shut up, Italy.)
Baked Spaghetti Squash With Vaguely “Greek” Flavors, Since I’ve Never Been To Greece
Shopping list: Cooked spaghetti squash as per above, can of tomatoes, spinach or chard, chevre, feta cheese, kalamata olives, fresh oregano, dried thyme, olive oil, garlic, leeks, red wine vinegar
Make some tomato sauce! Get a can of good-quality whole plum tomatoes, stick a food processor right in the can and blend the hell out of it. In a pan over medium heat, pour in just a touch of olive oil and then add in a few chopped cloves of garlic and the leek, which you have chopped. Cook until soft, then pour in the can of blitzed tomatoes. Add a splash of red wine vinegar (or, hell, red wine) and some good hard sprinkles of thyme and cook until it no longer tastes like raw tomatoes — maybe twenty-five minutes. Wash and chop your greens and peel about two stems’ worth of oregano leaves off and throw it all in the sauce. Slice your olives however you like them and throw them in, too.
In a Pyrex baking tray, like the kind you’d make a meatloaf in, lay down a very very thin layer of sauce, just the liquid part. Then put down a layer of spaghetti squash maybe half an inch thick. Then crumble your various cheeses and sprinkle them on top. Then do more sauce, then more squash, then more cheese. Continue until you’re out of room or out of food, making sure you end with a layer of cheese (you can throw down mozzarella if you want; fresh is best but if you want that classic American lasagna taste you can use the low-moisture stuff). Bake at 400 degrees until bubbly and slightly browned on top, maybe forty-five minutes. VERY IMPORTANT: allow to cool for ten to fifteen minutes before cutting into it, otherwise everything will turn watery and splash together. It’ll still taste great, it’ll just be harder to eat and be less impressive visually.
Spaghetti Squash Shakshuka
Shopping list: Cooked spaghetti squash as per above, sweet red peppers of some sort, can of tomatoes, tomato paste, garlic, onion, eggs, cumin, paprika, serrano chile, parsley
De-stem and de-seed the sweet red peppers. Pour some olive oil on them and roast them on a baking tray at 400 degrees until soft, about twenty minutes. (You could also do this by holding the peppers with tongs right over the gas burner to blister the skin, then peel the skin off. I don’t care about pepper skin since it’s going to be a puree but do what you want.) In the meantime chop the serrano; if you want it to be spicier, keep the seeds (I usually don’t), as well as the onion and garlic. When the sweet peppers are done throw them in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth.
In a cast-iron pan over medium-low heat, add some olive oil and then the garlic/onion/serrano. Cook until the onion is translucent, then sprinkle in some cumin and paprika, stir until fragrant and toasted. Prepare the can of tomatoes to your liking. Some people like chunks; I don’t, so I blend with an immersion blender. Pour in about half the can, and about a teaspoon of tomato paste. Stir and cook for about fifteen minutes until it tastes good, then add in the sweet pepper puree. Stir, season to taste (it’ll need salt) and cook another five minutes.
Add in the spaghetti squash and stir well to combine with the sauce. Cook for another five minutes to warm up the squash, taste and season again if needed. Heat your oven to 500 degrees. Make a few little hollows in the squash mixture and crack in some eggs — one normal-sized cast iron pan can hold maybe four at most — and immediately put in the oven. Check once per minute until whites are barely set and yolks are still runny, maybe four minutes. Sprinkle chopped parsley over the top and serve.
Spaghetti squash isn’t nearly as heavy and sweet and rich as its brothers, like the butternut, acorn, and pumpkin — which is exactly why I like it. Sure, it’s fun to play around with the fact that it sort of looks like pasta, and indeed it takes very well to Mediterranean flavors. But the best part about spaghetti squash is that it doesn’t taste like the season from which it comes (fall, technically, though it stores so well that we can eat it right through until spring). It’s light and mild and fresh, and lets you experiment with the more delicate flavors that would be completely overwhelmed by something as strong as a butternut squash. Just don’t ever fill the hole with sauce and roast it.