Do you happen to have anything that looks like this growing in your garden?
If so...you may be in the same boat as our household...at a loss for what to do with all this squash!
I believe this is a giant pink banana squash...somewhat of a cross between butternut, pumpkin and spaghetti squash. Whatever you wanna call it...its a lot of squash! Too bad we didn't weigh it first, because this thing could have set records.
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| Rachel cutting into the giant pink banana squash |
But what do you do with so much winter squash in the middle of the summer? Well first we cut it in half to see what we were working with. Since Rachel grew it, she did the honors. While I don't want to undersell Rachel's effort, the banana squash isn't as hard to cut as you might imagine. Still a challenge, but not something to be intimidated by. Honestly, I would be more intimidated by Rachel wielding a knife in general.
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| The inside of giant pink banana squash |
The next step was scooping out the stringy insides and seeds. I found the flesh to be a bit stingier than a butternut squash, and almost spaghetti squash-ish. The seeds were super fat and firm. I tried roasting them but the outside shell was just too thick and we ended up surrendering them to the compost instead of eating them.
Next, I sliced one half of the giant banana squash into 1 inch slices and then peeled each piece with a knife. I then diced each slice into little cubes that I cooked until soft. However, there was nowhere near enough room in the pot for all of the squash, so half of that half went in the freezer...we'll see how well it freezes. Does anyone know if you you can freeze uncooked squash? At this point we were too overwhelmed with the quantity to even care if it didn't work - it was worth a shot.
Once the cubes were cooked through and tender, we pureed the cooked squash with a can of coconut milk in the blender. Meanwhile I heated up some oil, onion, and garlic in the large pot before adding the puree back. We spiced it up with curry spices, cumin, s&p, cayenne, crushed red pepper, etc. It made a deliciously creamy, rich soup! Perfect for those cool San Diego nights we've been having.
By the way...again no summer in San Diego??? The rest of the world gets global warming and we get coastal cooling!
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| Giant Pink Banana Squash Curried Soup |
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| Brian excited about some squash soup curry |
Now what to do with the rest....Roasted Squash
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| Roasted Banana Squash |
Because our oven is a bit on the frustratingly small side, we could only roast one half of the banana squash in the oven anyway. It took up the whole oven and baked super quick. We roasted it flesh side up on a large baking sheet at 375 degrees (but we've since done it flesh side down with equal success). The giant thing baked in no time! I would have expected this big boy to take a while to bake, but because the banana squash flesh is thinner than say your typical butternut squash, it cooked very quickly! Because the size of the squash is so variable, I can't recommend exactly how long to bake banana squash, but I would check it after 15 or 20 minutes and then maybe poke it every 5 minutes after that until soft.
I then scooped out the flesh and saved it in a large covered bowl in the fridge for other recipes for another day.
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| Roasting and scooping out the flesh is much easier than peeling the banana squash before it's cooked! |
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| Brian excited/scared about these mystery squash and jalepeno cakes |
Next attempt was trying to make gluten free squash gnocchi with the roasted squash, but I found it to be WAY too watery to hold any form. So instead I made some bizarre squash, chickpea patty/pancake/bicuits that were strangely a huge hit at the party we went to later that night....crazy people! What I did was take the pureed squash that had been mixed in with brown rice flour, garbanzo bean flour, corn starch, and 2 eggs, and then processed in some chickpeas leftover from making hummus and some flax, chopped jalapenos and other spices. I first tried frying the batter in patties in a frying pan, but there was just too much batter to stand around doing that all night. So, I plopped a bunch of it onto a large greased baking sheet and some more in muffin trays and they turned out to be fun patty things that we dipped in coconut milk ranch dressing. We even had the muffins for breakfast the next day.
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| Chaos in the kitchen resulting in strange banana squash patties, hummus, salsa, pepper infused tequila, and jackfruit |
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