Squash n' Cheese

My comfort food is typical American comfort foods; potatoes, cheese, bread, sausage...  where I may differ is my deep love for braised greens, such as kale or chard.  Macaroni and cheese is just about as "comfort food" as a food can get.

I made a simple bechamel sauce; 2 tablespoons butter, 1 tablespoon brown rice flour, 1 cup milk, a grate or two of nutmeg, and salt to taste.
For the macaroni I used squash sliced thin.
I mixed the squash and bechamel together, then poured it into a buttered baking dish.

Grated sharp cheddar on top and into the oven for 30 minutes at 350.
Let it rest for five or ten minutes before you dig in.  Pile some braised kale next to your squash n' cheese.  Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.

One End, One Beginning

A month or so before the official start of spring, after the trees have started blossoming, and all the daffodils have come up I start to crave peaches and peppers something fierce.  The end of February/ beginning March is a pretty bleak time for food.  Not as bleak in Northern California then most other places in the US, as we have a year around growing season, we always have plenty of greens, but I want squash!
We got lucky the other night and found the very last of the winter squash at our local farm stand.  We love butternut squash.  We eat them all winter.  As with anything delicious we don't need to do much to it, our favorite way to eat butternut squash is simply roasted, usually in a warm butternut squash salad.

Roasted Butternut Squash Salad
Peel, cut in half, and scoop out the seeds
Slice the squash and toss with a little olive oil and a little maple syrup (the maple syrup is optional, but the syrup really helps to bring out the sweet butternut flavor) just enough to lightly coat the squash
Spread out on a baking sheet or two and roast in the oven at 400 until tender, and browning on the edges (I usually check every 20 minutes or so)

When the squash is done we lay them over a bed of greens lightly dressed with some kind of mild vinaigrette, sometimes with a soft cheese, whatever we have and whatever sounds good.

Now for strawberries and fresh peas!

When You Do Feel Like Cooking

Now that we are rested, I wanted to cook. I was also craving ravioli. I have made ravioli from scratch before with various levels of success, but each time I seem to get better.
Making the pasta is easy enough, it is 2 cups flour, mixed with 2 eggs and 2 egg yolks.
For this pasta I added some finely chopped (pulverized) dried sage.
The filling was easy too, my favorite, butternut squash!

I roasted a beautiful squash with olive oil and some salt and pepper, when it was ready I mashed it, and mixed it with ricotta cheese.

I rolled out the dough in golf ball size proportions, and that is easy too because I use my handy dandy pasta rolling attachment for my KitchenAid mixer. The difficult part for me, is cutting and stuffing. There is nothing uniform about this process for me. Part of me loves the beautiful inconsistency, even messy look of (my) fresh pasta. There is another part of me the worries about the inconsistency of my pasta for cooking and presentation.  Perhaps someday I will have a ravioli stamp, or maybe higher counter tops to streamline this process, as for now, it's a little (delicious)  mess.

It is fastest, and easiest for me is to make ravioli pockets, that is cut a rectangle of rolled pasta, place the filling on one side, dampen the edges and fold over, press to seal. I only do it this way because I then don't have to cut identical pieces of pasta. :)
Once I made all of my little pockets I dropped them into a large pot of boiling water. Like all fresh pasta cooking these ravioli only takes a few minuets.
I dressed the ravioli with fresh basil pesto, tomato jam (I may be a little obsessed, I am incorporating this into every meal) and fresh goat cheese.

The garlic in the basil, the sweetness of the squash and tomato, with the tangy-ness of the tomato and goat cheese was a winning combination.
Our sage and butternut squash ravioli with pesto, tomato jam, and goat cheese dinner was a delicious success.