Saturday, April 27, 2019

That's No Skin Off My Squash

How hard can it be?

Butternut squash soup. Hearty, delicious. You have to figure there's liquid in it, and butternut squash, and you need to render the vegetable soupworthy somehow, but hey: it says "squash" right in the name. In other words, it practically makes itself.

So. Here we go. Peel and cube the squash, add broth and a few other items. I thump the squash onto a cutting board and commence peeling.

Remember that dumb old allegory about the dove that rubs his beak on a boulder once every thousand years and when the boulder is reduced to a grain of sand, one day in Eternity has passed? They could totally have made the same point using a budgie and a butternut squash.

Because Lord love a duck in springtime, the peeler doesn't penetrate the thing at all. After a few minutes, I discover that although I have not persuaded the peel to liberate itself in any way, I have got a real nice polish on the squash. After a half hour investment and the removal of several of my favorite layers of knuckle skin, I'm most of the way there, but I'm starting to have flashbacks on the disastrous wallpaper removal project of 1983, a.k.a. the Confetti Situation.

The internet, consulted afterwards, recommends stabbing and microwaving the sucker into submission before attempting to peel. I'm all for violence when it comes to vegetables; it takes the sting out of them not being pork. I'll try it next time. It does occur to me that something involving a garbage can and small explosives might take care of the peels and the dicing all at once.

You really can't trust vegetables. I tried a mango recipe once that suggested, in a bland way, I remove the skin and then remove the seed from the fruit. As it turns out, this is really hard to do when you don't know what's in there. Is it like an avocado pit? Is it like an apple core? It is like neither of these, or anything else I've ever seen. It takes up an undeterminable amount of space inside the fruit and is shaped like old soap. I gave it a whirl and then realized I was inviting Mary Ann over for dinner. All I had to do was get the rest of the salad ready and then say "Mary Ann, do you have any idea how to persuade mango meat out of one of these things?" and she would not only have one idea, but several, including an assortment of hacks she'd read on the internet and had always wanted to try. Mary Ann has a whole closet of hacks in her brain, all accessible and ready to roll. And then you hand her the mango and she delightedly--delightedly, I say--does the deed, to perfection, trying her latest hack for the first time, which involves rubbing the mango along the lip of a drinking glass.

I remember that much. I don't know how it happened, though. Rubbing a mango along a drinking glass seems just as expeditious as taking your pants down using the toilet seat lid. But she did it. I added a note to my recipe: "Wait until Mary Ann is coming for dinner." That might go on the butternut soup recipe, too.

I still am not certain why a butternut skin should be so tenacious, especially in a house where the paint exfoliates itself and porcelain chips fly off the sink. But I'm alerting NASA. If they had only used a butternut skin for the Challenger, Christa McAuliffe would be president today.

28 comments:

  1. Just one of the reasons why I don't cook any of the hard squashes. Never mind peeling them, I can't cut the damned things either. I once made a sizable gash in my finger while trying to de-pit an avocado, so I'm a bit leery of the more truculent fruits and vegetables.

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    Replies
    1. I've mastered the avocado pit, but I once bought a plastic bagel slicer back in the day I thought I needed to buy stuff.

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  2. Trader Joe's carries cubed, peeled squash!

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    Replies
    1. Hmm. Is it in plastic? I can't bring myself to buy a grocery item in plastic that already comes in its own packaging. Which mean I could starve to death in West Virginia, by the way...

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    2. Yeah, I hate these "green" groceries like Trader Joe's and, locally, Harvest Market, because of all the plastic they use to package the produce. Not only would I prefer to pick my own, thankyouverymuch, but I would prefer not to even put it in a separate bag -- just my canvas one. Lump 'em all in there!

      Fortunately, there is a local farm/orchard close to me, so I don't have to deal with this dilemma very often.

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  3. The only way that I will make Butternut (or Acorn) squash is to cut 'em in half, scoop out the seeds, pack the empty cavity with butter and brown sugar, and then bake them covered for about 3 times as long as anyone says...That said, James has perfected the stab-and-microwave method of separating the skin from the meat...Do you suppose we could accumulate a lot of skins and sew them into a cool leather jacket?

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    Replies
    1. I just had a hideous flash on Silence Of The Lambs, so probably not.

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  4. If you want an even richer squash with the same recalcitrant skin, try buttercup. It's worth the effort. Our preferred plan of attack is a big knife and an ambulance on standby.

    I do love your turns of phrase. So many good lines!

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    Replies
    1. Stab all over, nuke three minutes, peel. I tried it. It works!

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    2. I've written it down - thanks :)

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  5. So. A budgie? Is that what that thing is called?!

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    1. Wait a minute..."budgie smuggler"... isn't that a thing?

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    2. Budgie smugglers are tight speedo type swimwear.

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    3. I knew it was a thing. I even knew it was crotchular. Just couldn't pull it out, as it were.

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  6. We call them butternut pumpkins, and they are easy to peel (though I don't always bother, just as I don't peel potato). And mangoes are worth the effort. Totally worth the effort.

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  7. Microwave is you answer. Whack the beggar in half with an axe, soften it in the microwave and proceed from there.

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  8. I take my life in my hands in order to cut the squash in half lengthwise. If I survive that, I clean out seeds, put halves face-down on a baking sheet and roast them. This caramelizes the pulp. After it’s cooled a bit, I scoop the cooked insides out with a grapefruit spoon, discard the rind, and soup at will. Or just mash and season.

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    1. The recipe I was going for was diced squash with chorizo. Pretty simple but you do want dice, not pulp!

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  9. Butternut squash is called pumpkin over here and receives the same treatment: cut into sections with a large kitchen knife then slice off the skin, before cubing and adding to whatever soup ingredients are in your broth. For me, that's sweet potato, celery, grated ginger, garlic and onion, in vegetable stock, then blended to a puree once it's all cooked. For roasting, cut into sections and roast with the skin on, like regular pumpkin, but it's a softer type and cooks faster.

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    Replies
    1. No, I'll have to try it myself, so please send some over.

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  10. Wow,i am in support of anything that would promote Christa McAuliff to anything powerful! Next post is going to be the mango hack...right?

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    1. No, I totally do not understand the mango hack.

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    2. Lots of them out there. Search Peel mango with a glass. Here's one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMXd-vbOLNo

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  11. Super easy: Preheat oven to 350. Wash and dry the squash, pierce it once or twice with a sharp knife, and put the whole thing in the oven and let it cook for an hour and a half. It will be very easy to cut and scoop out after it has cooled enough to touch it. Works with all squashes and pumpkins.

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