Tour De Squash Update

     I finally got around to trying out some squash recipes. The first two I tried seem to be serious winners based on Linda's enthusiastic response.  Although I have some concern that her perceptions of them were colored by the "full liquid diet" she has had for the past several weeks.  A lot of things would seem pretty yummy after two weeks of yogurt, chicken broth, and popcicles. The first recipe was pumpkin-orange waffles.  I didn't do this recipe justice because I didn't have orange juice handy and substituted white grape juice. I also didn't have any hazel nuts left from last year to do the fancy hazelnut-maple syrup butter and used plain storebought maple flavored syrup. Linda and I both found the plainer version to be pretty tasty. I'm pretty sure the fussiest child would like squash when its put into a waffle. I found this recipe in a pumpkin cookbook entitled "A harvest of Pumpkins and Squash" by Lou Siebert Pappas. The recipe is as follows:

Pumpkin-Orange Waffles with Hazelnut-Maple Syrup Butter

Waffle Ingredients:
  2 cups all purpose flour
  1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
  2 tsp baking powder
  1/2 tsp baking soda
  1/2 tsp ground ginger
  1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  1/4 tsp salt
  3 large eggs, separated
  3/4 cup pureed pumpkin or winter squash, canned or homemade
  1 1/2 cups whole milk
  1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
  1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted

Hazelnut-Maple Syrup Butter Ingredients:
  1/3  cup hazelnuts
  6 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
  6 tablespoons pure maple syrup

      The hazelnut-maple syrup butter is made with nuts that have been roasted and had their skins rubbed off, and chopped fine.  Then it is simply a matter of beating the butter and syrup together until it is light and fluffy and adding the chopped hazelnuts.

   The waffle batter is made by wisking together the dry ingredients, then blending the wet ingredients with the exception of the egg whites.  Then beat the egg whites until soft glossy peaks form. Then the wet and dry ingredients are blended together,  then the egg whites folded into the batter.  They turned out very well inspite of my wholesale substitutions and had a nice pumpkin pie kind of flavor.  I used a winter squash called gold nugget that has fine textured flesh but I doubt if it would matter much which kind of winter squash or pumpkin was used.

    The squash soup recipe came from the same book. It was called a "Butternut Squash-Pear Bisque". First of all, I'm not sure what makes a soup a bisque and I didn't have any butternut squash. Also I didn't have any pears, let alone Anjou pears.  Basically, I diced up an onion, sauteed it in butter, added a garlic clove and seasoned it with dried thyme. I then added about 2 pounds of baked Sugar Pie pumpkin and in place of an Anjou pear I substituted a diced  and peeled Melrose apple.  I added a quart of chicken broth, salt and pepper and brought it to a boil.  Since my squash was already cooked, I didn't have to worry about cooking the soup very long.  As soon as everything seemed to be cooked, I added a pint of whipping cream, ran it through the blender, poured it into quart jars, and stored it in the fridge. I later served some to Linda with a small garnish of shredded cheddar cheese.  It is amazing how a little bit of whipping cream can make an ordinary vegetable soup seem almost decadent.  I think I'm going to try and make this about once a week for the next month. This recipe produced about three quarts of soup. Thanks to a bee store swap, I currently have an ample supply of the sugar pie pumpkins. I'd be very happy to see them all put to good use.  
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