Squash | My Kids Really Eat This

Made a new recipe for our cooking club yesterday. It was the first time I’d been in a couple of months and I needed some time for just me. I’ve been so incredibly busy with helping my husband open his restaurant (it opened one week ago today) —doing whatever I could to get it off the ground running in the right direction (helped with menu, made some desserts, created some cocktails). I paid a sitter for several nights to go in and pick up the slack wherever it was needed (running food, bartending, waiting or bussing tables) to work for free. Not that I can afford to, but I want to dedicate my experience for our long-term success. Most restaurants are disorganized and discombobulated in the beginning and ours was packed from the moment it opened.

So… a friend gave me a gorgeously designed book as a restaurant opening gift (I think she designed the book) about decorating/gardening/entertaining for a particular season. It has recipes interspersed and one caught my eye. It was for curried pumpkin ravioli with an apple onion sauce. Our cooking club theme this month was pumpkins and apples. How perfect, I thought.

Well, I took it and modified it a bit. First off, I used Butternut squash instead of pumpkin and I roasted mine whole (it keeps all the sweetness from running out) instead of canned pumpkin and I added some different spices, and substituted pecans for walnuts. You will need time for this recipe but it pays off! I made a similar dish another fall.

Curried Butternut Squash Ravioli
(adapted from a Pumpkin Ravioli recipe by Carolyne Roehm)

½ stick butter (divided)
1 lg shallot, finely chopped
2 tsp fresh ginger, finely grated
2 lg cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp curry powder
¼ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp cumin
⅛ tsp cayenne
½ tsp salt
pinch black pepper
1-2 butternut squash, cooked whole, peeled, seeded & pureed
12 oz ricotta cheese (whole milk)
1 pack of wonton wrappers

Sauce:
1 med onion, finely chopped
2 Macintosh apples, peeled, cored & cubed
¼ cup white wine
¼ cup pecans, chopped
1 cup chicken stock
¼ cup heavy cream

First cook the butternut squash on a cookie sheet in the oven at 350˚F for an hour or more (depends on size/thickness). You can tell when it’s done when you stick a skewer through the densest part (near base of neck). Not a clear photo, but hopefully you get the gist.

(Didn’t use cloves in the end)

Next melt a couple of tablespoons of butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Add shallots and sauté until soft. Turn heat to medium and add ginger, garlic, spices and some salt. Sauté another few minutes then add 3 cups of butternut squash. Mix well and continue to cook for a few minutes. Remove and cool. Add the ricotta cheese and cool for at least half an hour.

Before adding ricotta

Using parchment paper on a cookie sheet lay out some wonton wrappers. Take a teaspoon and drop a dollop of filling in center. Wet edges of wrapper with water and your finger. Place another wonton wrapper on top and press around the edges to seal. Pick up the ravioli with an open seam at top then carefully burp the air out (so that it won’t open when brought up to temp). Press sealed edges with a fork if you wish. Repeat. Once the first set of ravioli has filled the sheet, place another piece of parchment on top and continue until you’ve run out of wrappers or filling. Cover with a slightly damp piece of paper towel.

Start the sauce by cooking onions in a sauté pan with a couple of tablespoons of melted butter (and I use a touch of grapeseed or sunflower seed oil) until translucent then add apples and wine. Simmer for a couple of minutes then add the chicken stock and pecans. Cook until apples are soft then set aside while you cook the ravioli.

Bring large pot of water to rolling boil. Carefully place a few ravioli in at a time. While a batch is cooking bring sauce back up to heat (medium-high) add cream and simmer for a minute. Ravioli take about 3 minutes to cook (translucent and floating). Scoop ravioli out with slotted spoon or mesh spyder, draining well.

Top with sauce and serve immediately.

It was so delicious and worth the effort. But unfortunately only one of my children will eat it! Maybe you’ll have better luck… actually today I’m going to try with a different sauce with some leftover uncooked ones.

What says summer more than grilled foods, fresh corn and local tomatoes? My husband cooked the other night- another swelteringly hot and muggy day. He grilled a ribeye steak that was simply prepared with salt and pepper. He chooses to grill over hardwood charcoal not gas because he likes the added smokiness of the wood. We used to get the charcoal from Trader Joe’s but they only sell the briquettes now, which have been treated with something that imparts an unsavory smell. He grilled some blanched garlic scapes too to go with the meat. My youngest eats them cut up like little green beans.

Served with that was Bread and Butter corn and tomatoes both fresh from the farm that day. Since my 6 year old has another couple of loose teeth, we did our corn per usual then sliced the kernels off the cob. Reheated with butter, salt and pepper. A little of all three can go a long way, and just enough to enhance the corn’s flavors by adding the other taste dimensions. (As previously mentioned I usually only use sea salt now. We always grind fresh peppercorns because the pre-ground pepper from tins have lost its punch and flavor by the time it reaches the food).

Red tomato, basil (fresh from our garden), and goat cheese salad is another summer staple. Though last year it seemed as it was just my husband and I eating it, this year, we can hardly get a bite in before my oldest two are hogging it all for themselves. My middle son was even dipping his meat and potatoes into the left over dressing after the tomatoes were all gone.

Arrange sliced tomatoes on a plate, chop basil in small ribbons (chiffonade), top with chunks of goat cheese (we get TJ’s own brand log), sparinglydrizzle with balsamic vinegar (we use a 50 year old one), a good quality olive oil, and ground pepper to top. We usually use French Grey sea salt or Hawaiian Red sea salt, but we’re out. We used a Himalayan pink (obviously not sea salt) and. But use whatever good quality sea, or mined salt in this case, you have.

All Blue potatoes we received from our CSA bin. They look like Peruvian purple potatoes, but I guess since there are thousands of different kinds of potatoes, these are from elsewhere. Unlike the “magic” purple beans, these are purplish-blue inside and out even after being cooked. We simply boiled them and served as is. They were firm and had a lovely sweet and earthy taste. The kids loved the color. I believe one way to get kids to try foods that might otherwise be seen as healthy (and undesirable) is to add the colorful veggies and not just green ones. It’s also good for them to get the different colors because they have different nutrients.

Lastly we served green zucchini (courgettes) and yellow summer squash. Again my middle son wouldn’t touch them last year, but this year he gobbles them up gladly.

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My sons have favorite colors. When my eldest was 2-3 his favorite was red, then a couple of years later it was green, then turquoise, then “rainbow”, now he’s got several. My middle son loved “lello” when he was 2-3 then blue, then green, then turquoise and now back to blue. And my youngest’s favorite was orange and white, then green, now blue. In such a short period of time their favorite colors have changed. Well, so have their favorite foods. They still love certain things but they keep adding foods to their repertoire and all of a sudden (Now kohlrabi is my middle son’s favorite food. My youngest asked for salmon or “snapping” for dinner two nights ago. My eldest still loves spaghetti, but sushi and tacos have taken top spot.) I believe if you understand that kids change their favorites, their tastes, their interests as they grow you will find that given the opportunity they may actually like that food they had no interest in eating previously. Give them a chance to try it, eventually they may like it… or even love it!

“Here try it” , “ok” — before he asked for more and more…

My Kids Really Eat This

getting kids to eat well in the real world

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