Get your fill of fall fave with stuffed butternut squash

I loved stuffed vegetables. Peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, acorn and delicata squash are all delicious when stuffed. And I never met a stuffed mushroom with whom I didn’t become fast friends, even if the friendship ended with me eating the mushroom. Of course, a mushroom is a fungus and not a vegetable, but it is eminently stuffable.

My husband and daughter, for reasons I cannot pretend to understand, don’t love stuffed vegetables. They’ll eat them, but they don’t display the enthusiasm that one hopes for when presenting a loved one with a scratch-made dinner entrée.

I try to explain why I find them so exciting. It’s food! Inside another kind of food! The food is the container, see?

But they just stare at me blankly. “Why can’t we eat our foods in separate piles like normal people do?” their pleading eyes seem to convey.

Well, I have tortured my family yet again by putting food inside other food. (I am reminded of Monty Python’s Royal Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things.) I recently cooked the King of Stuffed Vegetables, the butternut squash. I filled it with onions, mushrooms, bacon, rice and fresh sage and topped it with goat cheese, then baked it in the oven until the cheese was bubbly and the squash skin was a dark mahogany brown. You may not know this, but a butternut squash’s skin is just as edible as the rest of it. Many people don’t enjoy squash skin — it’s chewy and sort of papery — but it’s like an extra treat to me.

The problem with butternut squash is preparing it for stuffing. Those things are hard as granite and resist being cut like a 2-year-old resists putting on socks. (To be fair, socks are rather constraining.) I have nearly cut off my appendages on several occasions trying to cut butternut squash. This time, I vowed to beat the squash at its own game by baking it in the oven for an hour until it was soft but not mushy and then letting it cool to room temperature — easy peasy, squashy squeezy. I mean, you can always simply purchase a squash that’s already been cut in half, but why would you want such a simple solution?

This recipe makes enough for two (or three to four not-very-hungry people). It can be a main dish or a side dish; just cut each squash half into as many portions as you need.

Start with a small-to-medium butternut squash. Put the entire thing, skin on, in a 350-degree oven and bake for one hour. Bake it on a cookie sheet or in a baking dish because it will ooze squash juice while it’s baking. If it’s not on a pan, all that liquid will drip down onto your oven and your house will smell like my house does right now, which is to say, not good.

While the squash is baking, put on a pot of rice. You’ll only need a heaping ½ cup of cooked rice for this recipe, but I usually make a whole 2 cups and save the remainder for another recipe, maybe Spanish rice or a warm rice salad with walnuts, cranberries, kale and feta in a light vinaigrette. I used white rice because that’s what I had but wild rice would be even better, or you could try red rice, quinoa or couscous.

While the squash is baking, you might want to reach in and poke it a couple times to make sure it’s not getting too soft or to make sure the skin isn’t burning. The cooking time may vary because every squash is a different shape and size. It should hold its shape when you pick it up (with oven mitts, of course). Allow it to cool for maybe 20 minutes or half an hour. It doesn’t have to be room temperature, but it does need to be cool enough to handle. When the squash is comfortable enough to touch, pop the little stub of a stem off and slice it right down the middle lengthwise. Next, scoop out the seeds and discard them. Then scoop out the flesh and put it in a bowl, leaving a ½ inch border around the outside to help the squash hold its shape and cradle the fillings.

Remove five slices of turkey bacon from the package and cook them however you like them, in a pan or in the oven. I put mine in a 350-degree oven and baked them until hot and cooked through but not crisp. Pork bacon is just fine, and you might be tempted to use more than five slices, but you don’t want to let bacon overwhelm the other flavors. For a vegetarian filling, omit the bacon altogether and double the mushrooms.

While the bacon is cooking, slice up a whole small-to-medium onion and saute it with a generous tablespoon of olive oil, 1/8 teaspoon salt or salt to taste (keeping in mind that you’ll be adding other salty ingredients), a couple dashes of lemon pepper and five fresh sage leaves, chopped fine. I was feeling quite contrary when I was cooking this and so I also added a dash of cayenne pepper, even though my husband dislikes the heat. If you like the heat, add three dashes. Five dashes will likely render you senseless, but you do you. Let the onions get quite soft, adding more oil if necessary. If you have fresh mushrooms, that’s excellent, but I didn’t so I added a 4-ounce can of mushrooms, plus the liquid. Let everything simmer together until the liquid has cooked off and the onions are just starting to caramelize.

Chop the cooled bacon into little bits and add it to the squash in the bowl, then add the onions, mushrooms and rice. Stir everything together and taste for salt. Scoop the filling into the hollowed-out squash boats, placed in a glass baking dish. It’ll fill each squash half and rise up in a hillock of filling above the edges of the squash and that’s just fine. Crumble about half a four-ounce package of goat cheese over the top of both filled squash or use more or less as you like. Remember, this is cheese we’re talking about here, so don’t be skimpy.

Bake everything in a 350 degree oven for half an hour. Everything is already cooked by this stage so the final baking is just to get that cheese all golden and melty. Serve as an entrée or as a side and remember to point out how thrilling it is to eat food inside of other food. Look forward to your Thanksgiving turducken.

Stuffed Butternut Squash

1 small to medium butternut squash, baked in the skin, cooled and sliced in half

1 small to medium onion

1 4-ounce can of mushrooms or 1 cup of fresh mushrooms

5 slices turkey bacon

Heaping ½ cup cooked rice

1-2 tablespoons olive oil

5 fresh sage leaves

Dash lemon pepper

Dash cayenne pepper (optional)

1/8 teaspoon salt or to taste

2 ounces goat cheese

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Slice the squash in half lengthwise. Discard seeds. Scoop out flesh and put in bowl, leaving ½ inch of squash around the outside. Place scooped-out squash in baking dish. Set aside. Cook rice per directions and bacon as you like it. Saute onions and mushrooms with olive oil, chopped sage, lemon pepper, cayenne pepper and salt. Mix with rice, squash and bacon. Fill each squash half and top with crumbled goat cheese. Bake for ½ hour or until cheese is melty and starting to brown. Serve as entrée or side dish. For vegetarian stuffed squash, omit bacon and double the mushrooms.