Where there's smoke...

I really enjoyed our first cooking challenge. The challenge ingredient was picked by me this time and was "winter squash." I chose butternut squash and this recipe. I usually buy my butternut squash pre-cut and I was amazed how ORANGE it was when I cut it open. Here I am scooping out the innards

Martha suggests you bake them in the oven with some water in the bottom of the cookie sheet and covered in foil. Who am I to argue with Martha? My oven isn't actually all sideways like this

Here are my ingredients all lined up with the scooped out cooked goodness

Please note that smoked paprika is NOT the same as paprika

Please note that 1tsp is NOT the same as 1tbs and especially 2tbs is NOT the same as 2tsp

Yes. I used 2tbs of smoked paprika vs 2tsp of paprika. I just re-read the recipe right now and realized my measuring mistake

Here it is all cooked with non-browned bread crumbs on top

My review? I'm sure the original recipe was very good. My version was a disaster and you will have to imagine the next picture of it in the garbage. I was hesitant to add the paprika (it just seemed that there should be sweeter spices in it) but smoked paprika was a horrible, horrible HORRIBLE mistake. Thank god I didn't have the chives it also called for. Hopefully, everything will work out for the next challenge. PS I forgot to mention that there was NO WAY I was going to buy 9lbs of butternut squash so I bought one large one and cooked the mixture in a....container vs in the squash.

Becak's Winter Squashtacular

SO! Winter Squash was the challenge!

Let's start out with the original recipe link.

Moroccan Style Stuffed Acorn Squash

But it is more like a Ninja Moroccan Style Stuffed Acorn Squash (whew that is a lot to type) mostly because I did these things:

1) confused quinoa and couscous. THESE ARE DIFFERENT THINGS.
2) bought regular winter squash because acorn sqaush is sort of ugly. In comparison.
3) had half a bottle of wine before I started cooking.
4) Made other random substitutes before/during cooking.

SO! Here is my obligatory ingredients list picture. Except to make it more confusing, some of these items are not in the recipe and some won't be used at all, and I don't understand why I picked them up and put them on the brightly colored cutting board.
I'm looking at you, bag of wild rice.

Most of these things are not in the original recipe.

Sidenote!
 I started out here:

I ended here:

AND WE BEGIN!
By cutting the (not) Acorn Squash. Actually wait---
We begin at the farmer's market where I held an Acorn Squash and the Squash you see here, and decided I liked the colorful, pretty one better. I am shallow when it comes to fruit. I assumed the taste is the same but I'll never know.

So I split the squash in half, and took out all the little nasty seeds and inner cobwebs.
Notice I'm not all the way into the wine yet.

Seedy!

I then plopped those guys down face first onto a cookie sheet and threw them in the oven.
Luckily Pumpkin Chunkin was on in the other room and I realized it had been the required 30 minutes when the show came to a climatic end.
Also I should get bonus points because I was watching a Winter-Squash-Themed show during my recipe challenge.

Here they are baking away in forgetfulness.

Wow. My oven is gross. Is that blood? MOVING ON.

This is not blood. Pinky swear.

LOOK! They're done! By no fault of my own!
I added the brown sugar and butter like the recipe calls for. In the future I'm not sure I'd use that much, it made little swimming pools of butter and sugar in the bottom of the squash. I appreciated the sweetness but not the extra fat. Also I didn't have the paint brush the recipe calls for, because I don't spend money on useless kitchen gadgets (yes I do, bought a paintbrush on amazon this morning).

Glistening Pools Of Butter and Sugar.

So at this point I started gathering all my recipe ingredients together again and noticed...hey, don't I have cous-cous?
Who has cous-cous? I don't have cous-cous! (say these in cheerleader song)

I figured I'd use white rice as a substitute because buzzed as I was getting, one starch is as good as another, right?

And the recipe says it has to soak up the stock anyway so voila! Problem solved. I began prepping my vegetables.  I used rainbow carrots that I purchased at the same farmer's market.

I have 17 pictures of dinner being fried in a skillet and
one picture of the actual prep work. Go me!

I followed the instructions for cooking the vegetables, except I added mushrooms. Because I could have sworn this recipe called for mushrooms so I bought a bunch. I said screw it, I'm adding the mushrooms.

Also I added dates instead of raisins. Raisins are dead shriveled souls of former grapes, and I haven't gotten over that one time I bought 40 lbs of raisins at Costco. NEVER COSTCO HUNGRY, PEOPLE.

Notice the wine consumption?

At this point in the recipe I realized I had no white rice. All I had was the 40-minute crunchy brown rice. The rice fairy stole my rice, to make a point about how I should pay more attention to ..rice. Or something.

Also at this point I realized I was getting very hungry, my squashes (squashies? I like squashies) were getting cold, and I was almost out of wine. I was very irritated to discover that I had to wait another 40 minutes for my starch to finish de-crunchifying.

I banged around my pots and pans in irritation as I prepared the rice, enough to irritate me even further because WHO IS MAKING THAT NOISE? oh wait. It's me.

As the water starting boiling and I closed the lid on the rice for 30 minutes, I remembered I just bought a new rice cooker. It was sitting there, staring at me. Laughing at me. Stupid rice!
As the evil rice was cooking I messed around in the kitchen, mostly doing nothing. I pulled down my heirloom tomatoes (same farmer's market) and giggled at how cute they were. I wanted to eat the little lime looking one but then he'll be gone. So I didn't.


Last glass of wine.
Pretty tomatoes.
Sad? Happy?
Conflicted. So very conflicted.

I decided rather randomly that this dish needed cheese. Who doesn't love cheese? What isn't made better by adding (more) cheese?
So I pulled out some herbs de province goat cheese. The stall guy at the market said the cheese wouldn't melt, even fried. I decided to test my cheese's strength, and chopped it up and threw it in with the vegetables.

Cheese makes everything okay.

Finally after more Pumpkin Chunkin the forever-long rice was done. THANK GOD. I added it to the skillet and let it mellow in the juices of the beans and cheese. VOILA!
I shoved the mixture into the now cold (non)Acorn Squash. I was in such a hurry that the picture is blurred.



I styled it so it looked like the small one threw up. Yes, I am a child.

 SO! After missing half the ingredients, adding another half of ingredients that weren't in the recipe....

I give this 3 out of 4 pies.

This may be two pies and a cobbler but ignore my failed random internet picture finder skills

I think if I had followed the recipe all the way through it would have been good, but bland. Without the cheese, there was no savory to offset the sweet of the dates and the squash. And because I had 40 minutes to cook my vegetables (Not my fault. Fault of evil rice.) everything was very mushy and cooked, so again without the cheese the texture would have been similar to pudding.

I would probably make this again, but make the following changes:

A) Buy pre-made squash cuts. The presentation is nice but not necessary and scraping out squash guts is no one's idea of a good time.

B) Add a protein, like chicken or tofu. Two hours after eating this I was hungry again.

C) Use less sugar/butter on the squash itself, like I mentioned earlier.

D) Buy all of the real ingredients in the recipe before judging it without actually *trying* it. Except the raisins. Raisins are disgusting.

Testing!

Testing some space, y'all.