Butternut Squash Queso Fundido

Super Bowl weekend is coming up and I'm sure all sports fans are gearing up for a fun game night. I am not a big football fan and don't follow it too closely. But I'm excited about the half time show and the commercials more than the game itself :-)

This queso dip made with butternut squash will be a yummy addition to your super bowl party menu. It is secretly healthy with the addition of squash and sports two-thirds less fat than the classic queso (or cheese) dip.

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Black & Wild Rice Salad with Roasted Butternut Squash

Blogging Marathon# 49: Week 4/ Day 1

Theme: Bookmarked Recipes

Dish: Black & Wild Rice Salad with Roasted Butternut Squash

My theme for the final week of this month's marathon is 'Bookmarked Recipes'. Like all of you, I have a ton of bookmarked recipes and find every opportunity to try those out. So when we have it as a theme in Blogging marathon, I make sure I make the most out of it.

So for the first day, I have an interesting salad with black rice, wild rice and butternut squash. This is a colorful and healthy salad that is very filling and can be served as a light meal or as a side dish to a bigger meal.

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Brown Rice Salad with Roasted Butternut Squash & Pomegranates

Hope all of you had a good Thanksgiving meal yesterday. We had our Thanksgiving party at our friend's house and we had some amazing food and great time chatting. I felt like I was in a food coma yesterday after eating all that food.

So today I have a healthy and light salad recipe to get back in track before the holiday and more noshing starts. This salad is very filling, colorful and tastes great. Using brown rice makes it fiber rich and fills you up very easily.

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Assam -- Labra (Mixed Vegetable Curry)

Blogging Marathon# 39 - Indian States: Day 3
State: Assam
Dish: Labra

Assam is a state in the North eastern part of India. It is located south of the Eastern Himalayas and comprises of the Brahmaputra and the Barak river valleys. It is surrounded by the six of the other Seven Sister States. Geographically Assam and the other sister states are connected to India via a narrow strip of land in West Bengal called the Silguri Corridor or 'Chicken's neck' (this is something new to me and wanted to share with all of you)

Cuisine: Because of the geographical location, Assam has both the mountains and plains which influence their style of cooking. It is a confluence of cooking habits of the hills that favor fermentation and drying as forms of food preservation and those from the plains that provide fresh vegetables and abundance of fish from the many rivers and ponds that run through the state. The cuisine is characterized by very little use of spices, little cooking over fire and the preparations are rarely elaborate.

Staple Food: Rice, Fish, Meat & Vegetables.

Specialties: Tenga (light and sour fish dish), Pura (Assamese version of smoked or barbecued meat or fish), Pitika (side dishes), Bor-a etc.,

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Baked Risotto with Butternut Squash & Kale

Blogging Marathon# 27: Week 3/ Day 7
Theme: Seasonal Dishes - Winter Entree
Dish: Baked Risotto with Butternut Squash & Kale

Winter is not one of my favorite seasons. But over the course of last 10 years, I've started to appreciate the holiday spirit and the festivities that winter brings. I still don't like snow and shoveling. Winter means cozying up in the house with a big bowl of soup and a chunk of bread. But winter also brings the much awaited holidays and tons of yummy and sometimes not so healthy food.

Today I have a risotto recipe that is much easier and faster to make when compared to the traditional stirring method, all you have to do is par-cook the rice on the stove top and then bake it off in the oven until rice is tender and cooked through.

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Butternut Squash Curry (Revisiting Old Recipes)

Blogging Marathon# 26: Week 4/ Day 3
Theme: Revisiting Old Posts with New Pictures
Dish: Thiyya Gummadikaya Kura (Butternut Squash Curry from August 2007) 

Butternut squash is one vegetable that I buy and keep in the pantry. It doesn't have to be refrigerated, which is a bad thing because I usually end up forgetting that I bought it and it stays in the cabinet for days. Good thing is it is a tough veggie and can be stored in a cool dry place for quite some time. Once the realize I have it and cook with it, I always end up thinking why did I wait for this long!! 

So this time I decided to make 2 dishes with the 2lbs. butternut squash that I bought. I cooked with half of it right away, then microwaved the rest of the pieces and stored it in the fridge for later use. I made a Kale-Butternut Squash risotto with one half and for this curry I used with the microwaved pieces later in the week.

I had blogged this post way back in August of 2007 and I think my pictures have come a long way from then :-)

This curry is tangy, sweet and spicy and once you have the cooked squash in hand, it takes mere minutes to put this dish together.

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Pressure Cooker Curried Butternut Squash Risotto

Hope everyone celebrating Thanksgiving had a good time this weekend. 4 day long weekend flew right by. We spent most of the weekend at my cousin's place and returned home in the afternoon today. We were hungry from the long drive and I wanted to make something real quick with minimum effort. So I made this one pot pressure cooker risotto with butternut squash from Nupur's blog.

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Bengali Butternut Squash & Chickpea Curry (Kumror Chakka)

My theme for 3rd week of Blogging Marathon# 22 is "Bengali Dishes". I fell in love with Bengali cuisine after cooking for BM# 5. I love the use of various whole spices and the combination of flavors that make Bengali dishes, so unique and delicious.

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Vegan African Squash & Sweet Potato Stew

We have been having trouble with our electricity at home, thanks to the crummy contractor we hired to renovate our bathrooms a year ago. He messed up the internal wiring and now whenever we try to start the computer or run a vacuum, the fuse blows up. So had been away from the computer for the past 4-5 days. Hopefully we'll have it fixed (with a licensed professional this time) very soon.

Coming to today's recipe, I never thought Peanut butter based dishes could be this tasty. I was ranting and raving about this dish ever since I tried it. Peanut butter gives this stew both creaminess and slight sweetness that complement the texture and sweetness of both squash and the sweet potato.

Very simple to put together and the ingredients can be easily substituted with what you have on hand. I used butternut squash, but you can easily use any other winter squash like acorn or kabocha or even sweet pumpkin (thiyya gummadikaya). You can add cooked chickpeas or cannellini beans to add protein and make the dish more wholesome. Stew can be made as spicy as your palette can tolerate or bland-I think mine was somewhere in the middle. Served over rice or couscous, this is a very filling and comforting dish.

Recipe adapted from Vegetarian times.
Ingredients:
Butternut squash – 2-3 cups, peeled and diced (½ of a medium sized squash)
Sweet Potato – 1 medium, peeled and diced
Onion – 1 medium, chopped

Other Veggies – 2 cups chopped, I used frozen mixed veggies which had cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini and carrots. Feel free to use any veggies you have on hand. Original recipe only had cauliflower.

Ginger – 1” piece, finely grated
Garlic – 2 cloves, minced
Fresh Red Chili (like fresno chili) – 2, slit
Diced tomatoes – 1 15 oz. can (or 3 fresh ripe tomatoes chopped)
Peanut butter – ¼ cup
Cinnamon – 1/8tsp
Chili powder – ½ - 1 tsp (or to taste)
Salt – to taste

Method:

• Heat 1tbsp peanut oil in a large pan, add onions and sauté till transparent.
• Add ginger & garlic and cook for 1 minute.
• Next add sweet potatoes and butternut squash along with ½ cup of water or vegetable broth. Cover and cook till the veggies are half cooked.
• Add the remaining veggies; cover and cook on medium heat till all the veggies are cooked through, about 15 minutes.
• Stir in tomatoes along with cinnamon, chili powder, salt and ½ cup of water or broth. Cover and cook till the stew thickens a little bit.
• Whisk peanut butter with 3tbsp warm water into slurry. Slowly stir in peanut butter into the stew and simmer for 4-5 minutes.
• Serve warm over rice or couscous.

Soup Overdose

It is raining cats and dogs today ruining a much awaited weekend. It has also got very cold not very typical for this time of the year. So that gave me plenty of reason to make not one but two soups even though DH was sulking that he wasn't getting real food, ONLY SOUP.. NO FOOD!!! But the tune changed when he tasted the roasted butternut squash soup, "Wow.. mmmm.. this is good".

The first soup I made is with Roasted Butternut Squash from Bad Girl's Kitchen: Recipes from Shell. I have been paired with Shell for this month's Taste and Create (Created by Nicole @ Forfood and hosted by Min @ Bad Girl Kitchen) and this soup recipe sounded awesome and it tasted awesome too. The only additions I made are, I added curry powder, maple syrup and some lemon juice and of course to make it vegan I used olive oil and did not add any milk. It was still creamy and delicious.

Second soup was my leftover veggie soup with carrots, red and green bell peppers, onions and some ditalini pasta simmered in veggie broth. I totally forgot to add tomatoes, it was on the bland side but still served the purpose of warming us from inside.

Have a great Rest of the Weekend Everyone.

Butternut Squash Curry

I picked up a butternut squash (Thiyya Gummadikaya in Telugu or Sweet pumpkin) from the farmer's market last week without any particular recipe in mind. I have never cooked with butternut squash before and had to ask my mom for a quick curry recipe and to my surprise both my husband and I loved it.

 

Pic Updated March 2013

Ingredients:
Butternut squash - 1 lb. makes about 2 cups chopped
Tamarind paste - 1 tbsp
Green chilies - 3
Red chilies - 3
Urad dal - 1 tsp
Mustard seeds - 1 tsp
Cumin seeds - 1 tsp
Curry leaves - 4
Hing (Asafoetida) - pinch
Turmeric - pinch
Sambar powder - 1 tsp
Salt - to taste

Method:

• Place the chopped squash pieces with 1/2 cup of water and turmeric in a microwave safe bowl and cook in the microwave for about 8-10 minutes, until the pieces are fork tender. You can also boil the pieces on stove top.
• In heat 2 tsp oil in a pan, add urad dal, mustard and cumin seeds, hing and curry leaves. When the seeds splutter, add squash and saute for 2-3 minutes.
• Add tamarind paste and 1/2 cup of water. Cover and cook on medium low flame for 5-6 minutes.
• Add sambar powder and salt, cook for another 2-3 minutes. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve with rice.

The curry was slightly sweet and sour with silky sweetness from the squash and tartness from tamarind paste. Loved it and I packed a little bit in my lunch box for tomorrow.

Next time I want to try Asha's Butternut squash stir-fry and Indira's Butternut squash halwa.