I just realized, 3 days shy of our 3rd blogiversary, that this post from 2012 hadn't yet seen the light of day. Oops! Let's travel back a few months, to the Thanksgiving holidays...
I was convinced that I had never seen nor tasted a persimmon prior to two years ago, when Cheryl Lee of Black Girl Chef's Whites made cookies with them and we noshed on them at Mudtown Farms. But my mother swears we had a persimmon tree in our backyard growing up.
And that she hates them.
How could I have blocked that out of my memory? I remember the two lemon trees (we always tied our birthday piñatas to them), the pomegranate bush (and the many clothes I stained trying to eat the seeds), the water feature smack in the middle of the yard, and my tetherball setup. But no persimmons.
Despite not being as foreign as I thought they were, they suddenly started showing up in our weekly fruit delivery at work. Lots and lots of persimmons. They're great in cookies, but 'tis the season for LOTS of cookies, so what else can be done with them?
Make a chutney, take it to Thanksgiving dinner along with the roasted squash puree, and watch it become the first dish to completely disappear. Everyone assumed it was a sweet potato dish. They were wrong, and still devoured it.
Guess what they're all getting for Christmas? Even mom, who actually loved this dish. Yay, we converted her!
The original recipe comes from Epicurious. The only change was to use a few tablespoons of the menjurje tea combination of honey and lemons instead of sugar. It worked really well.
Do you ever get tired of mashed potatoes? No, because mashed potatoes are a delicious combination of the best type of carbs (potatoes) + fat (butter) around, and don't let anyone tell you differently (though pizza would be a close second). I know some people opt for sweet potatoes, considering them a healthier starch. Sure, okay.
What about other vegetables? Aside from those sweet yams with marshmallows, which isn't something we eat at our house, but to each their own. (We do eat whiskey marshmallows, though. And green bean casserole, of course. We're not monsters!)
This Thanksgiving, you can invite other squash varieties to your dinner with this jazzed up version of a pumpkin puree. The original is great and all, but pumpkins are so much more fun when they're carved in October or in pie in November. Plus, pumpkin puree is usually sweet. This ain't.
We're going to use green pumpkins! With edible skins! That's right, kabocha squash looks just like a pumpkin, but it's green and you don't need to take the skin off. Then there's the ultra cool spaghetti squash. Roast both of these with a couple heads of garlic, and you're halfway through this process. You can even make it a week ahead, and in an effort not to devour it all, freeze!
You'll want to sauté some onion, then add a bunch of spices, maybe add some liquid, throw in the squash. Then blend the whole thing together with a magic stick blender, or food processor, or if you like your veggies a bit lumpier, just mash away. I like my smooth, so I used a stick blender. It's magic. Also, my favorite kitchen gadget.
The trick here is the spices and the secret finishing ingredient:
Yup, limes! Or, more precisely, lime juice. Sounds weird, right? In this case, weird = good. It's deliciously weird! I mean, we're already onboard the off-beat train with two otherwise unlikely squash cousins.
You could totally turn this into a soup instead. Are you a soup eater? Try more liquid. Make it heavy cream and add more delicious calories! 'TIS THE SEASON!!
I like my mashy green-flecked puree. Enjoy.
print recipe
Roasted Squash Puree
by Paulette Fontanez on November-21-2012
A savory alternative to mashed potatoes or other typical seasonal puree.
Ingredients
1 spaghetti squash
1 kabocha squash
6 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons Adobo salt mixture
2 heads garlic
1 onion
1 cup low sodium chicken broth (or just plain water)
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 tablespoon turmeric
Juice of 1 lime
Salt & pepper to taste
Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Slice each squash in half and scoop out the innards (save the seeds if you like them, you can roast them at the same time). Cut the kabocha into 1-inch chunks.2. Line two baking sheets with foil. Spread the kabocha pieces on one, place the spaghetti squash halves on the other. Drizzle olive oil over all the pieces (about 2 tablespoons each), followed by a sprinkling of Adobo (about 1 tablespoon for each sheet).3. Cut the tops off both heads of garlic, remove the outer papery skin (leaving the heads intact), drizzle a bit of olive oil over the heads (about 1 teaspoon each). Wrap each head in foil.4. Place the wrapped garlic on a baking dish with the squash, roast in oven for 30-45 minutes, until the squash flesh takes on a golden brown char. Remove from oven and allow to cool. Then scrape the inside of the spaghetti squash to make "spaghetti."(These 4 steps can be done ahead of time and the vegetables kept in the fridge.) 5. While the squash is cooling, heat the remaining tablespoon of olive oil in a sauté pan over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and sauté until translucent. 6. Add the spices and mix to ensure the onions are fully coated. Add the broth, roasted squash, and squeeze the garlic cloves into the pan. Bring to a boil, then simmer for about 10-20 minutes, until the squash is soft and easy to mash. Add salt and pepper to taste.7. Blend in batches, add additional liquid as needed until desired consistency is reached.8. Squeeze in lime juice and mix to incorporate. Serve warm.
Details
Prep time: Cook time: Total time: Yield: 6-8 servings
Have you gotten over your turkey hangover yet? What about the mountains of leftovers? American Thanksgiving being last week, the annual gluttonous tradition usually leads to lots and lots of Meleagris gallopavo but little patience for dried out turkey in the days that follow. How many turkey sandwiches can you really stomach?
My parents always host our Thanksgiving dinner, yet this year they took care of what would have been uneaten leftovers by not having any. 30 people at their house + a 17 pound turkey = a mere 3 cups of shredded turkey when all was said and done. Thankfully, because gratitude is the real point of the holiday, there was plenty of mom's jalapeno cranberry sauce afterwards.
She is, of course, Mexican, after all. And that stuff is good on everything.
I'd seen a segment on the local news that week about what to do with leftovers, and was looking forward to making the turkey and cranberry sauce wontons they featured.
Turns out I didn't follow the directions very well and it took forever to make little purses. It you just leave these as triangles, it probably cuts the time in half. But then you don't have cute little purses! After putting the turkey and gravy through the food processor, my mom and I spent about 20 minutes making 50 of the little packages. Imagine if I was making them alone! (Spoiler alert: I later made 20 of them by myself. It took half an hour...maybe I'm just really slow?)
First you shred the bird into bite-size pieces and add about a cup to the food processor with some gravy (and mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, etc). Depending on how thick your gravy is, you may need more than a half-cup to make a creamy consistency. Then run a bit of water to two sides of a wonton wrapper and add about a teaspoon of the turkey mix to it.
Top with a dab of cranberry sauce,
then fold the wrapper into a triangle.
Pinch the sides closed making sure you let any air out of the pocket. Bring the corners to the top of the triangle and twist.
Now you have little purses! The kind you don't need on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
Then you have choices about what to do with the turkey purses: fry, bake, boil or steam. They'll cook up quickest in boiling water, but they'll taste best when deep fried. Baking gives them a nice crust without all the calories from frying.
You can also switch up the ingredients. If the traditional turkey/gravy/cranberry sauce is too boring, eschew the gravy and sauce for harissa and sour cream for a tangy alternative. Or add cilantro and yogurt. Do whatever your tastebuds tell you to do.
Note: 1 cup of the blended concoction yields about 20-30 purses.
