Parmesan Pasta with Butternut Squash and bacon

Recipe Hits:Decadence, hoo rah decadence. This dish is for days when you just need something which could be described as sumptuous and is remarkably simple. Reserving pasta water and using bacon drippings are key in making this into something flavorful, velvety smooth and so smooth people would think you used cream and butter, instead of cooked down squash, pasta water and a little bit parmesan to bring about the rich milkiness. .

Recipe Misses: Well there’s a bunch of salty ingredients in this dish and adding more parmesan adds flavor but raised the salt factor. In my house I am the only person who eats my food so I plough through whole batches of everything I cook, boldly going every meal where I have gone before …until it’s done. with this recipe, it was so rich, I had to take a break and eat some salad. It would be some kind of show stopper to bring to a potluck, when potlucks are a thing again, post pandemic.

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons of olive oil

• Pinch of red-pepper flakes

• Kosher salt and black pepper

• 1 medium red onion, cut into 1-inch dice

• 5 slices thick-cut bacon (about 5 ounces)

• 12 ounces short, twisty pasta, like campanelle or cavatappi

• ¾ cup finely grated Parmesan (about 1 1/2 ounces)

• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Plan of Attack

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Chop the butternut squash, toss in olive oil and season with salt, pepper and crushed red pepper flakes. Roast for 15 minutes.

Remove from the oven and move to the side of the pan. Chop the onions into medium pieces.

Toss onions in oliv eil , salt and pepper. Season with Rosemary and Sage. Lay the bacon strips to the far side of the pan.

Roast until Bacon is cooked through and the onions have started to caramelize, 25 - 30 minutes. While the bacon is cooking, make the pasta, cooking until a dente according to box directions. Reserve a cup of pasta water and return the pasta to the pot to keep warm.

Remove the bacon and chop into pieces. Add the bacon, bacon drippings from the pan, onions, butternut squash, the majority of the parmesan, and pasta water to the pasta. You want the squash to breakdown and coat the pasta. Serve hot, garnish with some reserved bacon crumbles and Parmesan cheese.

I made this during harvest time and this season is butternut squash season for sure…While beautiful squashes abounded this year in the grocery stores and farmers markets near my house, I find exotic squashes mystifying. Yes, they ‘re Gourd-geous but having not grown up eating many of them I’m a little perplexed about how to cook many of them. Butternut Squash is my squash comfort zone and this year I’ve branched out maybe not to many other squashes but in the ways I am comfortable cooking it. While I have made my standby healthy butternut squash soup (sans cream) I’ve also used it as a starch and in this pasta recipe as a sweet pasta compliment.

A while back I read about the efforts to grown heirloom versions of vegetables, especially gourds and squashes. While I fancy myself my own version of a gardener, I know very little about what I think is called plant husbandry….My interest is piqued, but it’s hard to get information about where to find seeds from plants grown in the “olden days” and not such olden days…and for me, arguably as hard to know how to cook them well. Fo me, this pandemic has been pretty disastrous in terms of well, a bunch of tangibles like finances and freedom, but it has made me see my food differently. What is stopping you from making timely recipes, when there’s no where to go and you’re committed to social distancing until it’s safe? If you’re like me, you’ve been thinking more about your food and your things, where they’re made, what’s in them and who benefits from how I spend my time and my money. I’ve also been collecting recipes to bring places, when there are places to go!

Often I say I’m an inconvenient woman, because I’m a mix of contradictions and my food is no exception. I’ll agonize over homemade breakfast bars and then when I wake up, decide the breakfast of champions, on this specific morning, is pepperoni pizza hot pockets. The key, I think, to living more mindfully is to try to be better and since I know my pepperoni pizza pockets were not harvested from a local pepperoni pizza pocket orchard by labor making living wage, I eat them in moderation. In the past 6 months I have been trying to cook food which speaks to my soul and to really take time to nourish myself, and I have been finding myself coming across articles articless, even instagram posts, written by people who seem to be cheering me on in my journey to truly think about my food as it relates to the economy, to history and even more than usual, the environment. Recently I read an article about the Rutgers University effort to reintroduce the tomato originally used to create the world’s most popular canned soup, and the author talked about the fact that since taste in an intangible, it is almost impossible to know if the tomatoes they are growing now taste even similar. My sweet tomato soup today might not be the sweet tomato soup of yesteryear, even though they might look the same and might even come from genetically similar tomatoes. The original version of the so called Rutgers tomato met an unfortunate end as this hard to transport variety was eclipse by versions which would travel better and keep for more time. As vegetables began to be grown and shipped, hardy varieties became more attractive than even the varieties which were preferred because of taste. Using seeds which had been stored in a temperature controlled vault (yes, it’s exactly like some kind of spy movie), scientists have been able to create a convincing tomato which tastes and acts very similarly to the original…or so they think.

This story about tomatoes from the Smithsonian Magazine reminded me that the squashes I pass over at the farmstead because they seem exotic probably met the fate of the Rutgers tomato at some point in recent history. Often I ask what something is only to be told it’s a local variety of something I eat every day which has fallen out of fashion…only to recently be brought back into fashion. As I read this article I internally applauded the farmers and activists who are trying to revive these varieties and enrich the tables of people who come to their stands and local groceries. With using squash I am comfortable cooking I am working myself up to cooking my way through the wonderful world of gourds, and I suspect several other squashes could be used in this recipe in lieu of Butternut Squash. If you try it with some sort of gourd I am intimidated to cook, let me know!