With fall quickly approaching, we are all harvesting vegetables with warming menus in mind. In our 20-foot raised bed garden at the Pine Street Senior Garden plot, our butternut squash began producing in August and shows no sign of slowing down.
In most traditional American cooking, winter squash and sweet potatoes and are used mostly as holiday dishes, topped with butter and a sweet element such as brown sugar.
But two of my students, Win and Francisca Thomas, who are avid and inventive cooks, prepared this recipe for our gardening class, and everyone wanted the recipe. Win recently purchased a small outdoor pizza oven to use on their Carlsbad condominium patio, but he also gave instructions for those who are not so lucky to have the real thing!
Butternut Squash Pizza
We often think of making pizza with a tomato and cheese topping, but this recipe is a savory combination of baked butternut squash, fresh mozzarella cheese, roasted Kale chips and parmesan cheese.
Ingredients:
- Fresh or frozen pizza dough or pre-made Boboli
- One 3-4-pound butternut squash
- Two one-pound pieces of fresh mozzarella
- One cup of freshly grated Parmesan
- Olive oil, salt and pepper
- For Kale chips – two large handfuls of fresh kale, smooth variety.
Directions:Â
- Poke holes in whole squash and microwave on high for two minutes. This will loosen skin. Peel and slice into rounds, removing all seeds.
- Cook the sliced rounds, adding a drizzle of olive oil and salt, in a baking dish in a 350-degree oven until soft. Remove and cool. Cut into bite-size pieces and set aside.
- Prepare dough. If using frozen dough, defrost completely and allow to rise for two hours, tightly covered with plastic wrap.
- If you are familiar with pizza dough, prepare it in your normal fashion, pulling until one large round is formed.
- If using pre-cooked Boboli, prepare in the same fashion.
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees; place a pizza stone or pan in the oven to preheat.
- Place pizza dough or Boboli on the pan. Top with slices of mozzarella to cover. Add squash in a decorative fashion.
- Cook only until the cheese melts, about five minutes. Remove from oven.
- While cooking pizza, prepare kale chips. Strip kale from stems, toss in salt and olive oil and bake
- Turn oven down to 250 degrees and cook kale leaves on a cookie sheet, turning once until crispy.
- When the pizza is done, add fresh parmesan cheese and kale chips.
- Serve to your hungry crew!
A Place for Pumpkins
While shopping for winter squash, don’t miss the display of smaller pumpkins soon to appear at our favorite vegetable markets. Unfortunately, pumpkins are one of the most under-utilized vegetables that will be available this fall.
Ask your vegetable purveyor to find a small pie pumpkin or Long Island cheese pumpkin. The best cooking pumpkins will have thin skin and weigh no more than three pounds.
Cooked Pumpkin Puree
What could we do instead with this flavor-packed vegetable? It could be baked, roasted, or stewed into soup. Because of the sheer thickness of the skin and the difficulty of cutting into it, we avoid cooking with it.
Given the overabundance of vegetables at this time of year, it makes sense to cook with them and puree and freeze them for later.
Cook in the same fashion as any winter squash. Open the small pumpkin, scoop out the seeds, and place face down in the baking dish with a small amount of water in a 350-degree oven.
Allow to cook until skin is soft and the inside is cooked.
Remove from oven and allow to cool. Scoop out the inside portion. Process in a food processor or blender. If the mixture is too watery, strain. Freeze or use immediately in pumpkin soup, pumpkin muffins or any recipe from The Food Network!
In the next few weeks, we will be visiting local pumpkin patches and will pass on our recommendations to you. Contact us if you have a favorite pumpkin patch or vegetable market.
Jano Nightingale is a Master Gardener and horticulturist and teaches vegetable gardening at the Carlsbad Senior Center and other venues. Contact her for her upcoming schedule at [email protected]
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