Squashed tacos that are anything but flat

Remember the time that you "lost" a zucchini while picking the others, and the next time you harvested, it was big as a kiddie baseball bat? And you GREW it, so you wanted to do something with it? I mean, besides throw it in the compost heap? You probably stuffed it with sausage and baked it, right? How did that turn out for you?

Well, I didn't have zucchini that big, but I did have three squash of different persuasions that I needed to fix before going out of town. And I had chorizo. And a red onion. And tortillas.

Tacos!

And they were fantastically delicious. When people talk about using meat as a condiment, I think of sausage in general. It's too greasy to use on its own, yet it's well-spiced and flavorful in many kinds of dishes.

By pairing it with a fairly bland vegetable, such as squash, you get the pow of the sausage and a lot of nutrition as well.

Lori K's Chorizo Tacos
Serves 4

Ingredients
½ pound chorizo (see note below)
3-4 squash (zucchini, patty pan, yellow ... any summer squash)
¼ red onion
Salt to taste
8-12 corn tortillas
Cilantro leaves
Lettuce, sliced
Guacamole (optional)
Tomatoes, diced (optional)

Instructions
Put the chorizo in a cold cast-iron skillet and turn burner to low. As you wait for it to start frying, gather your condiments and cut your squash in a rough dice. Small dice the onion.

Put the tortillas in a towel or warmer and set them in the microwave.

Chop up the sausage as it fries. When you flip it, add the squash. Cook until the squash is tender but not mushy, about 8-10 minutes. Salt if you think it's needed.

Add the onion and heat the tortillas in the microwave for about a minute. One by one, fill the soft tortillas with the drained mixture, add cilantro, lettuce, guacamole and tomatoes, and enjoy.

Note: Be sure to use the raw Mexican sausage in this dish. The one I used for this dish came from The Rock Barn, via Relay Foods. The Spanish version is not spicy enough and more vinegary. For vegetarians, there are very good vegan chorizos available. I often use them because they are much less greasy and still have the punch and flavor of the meaty kind.

Squash with panache

Plop. Plop. Plop-plop-plop-plop-plop-plop-plop. It's raining acorns outside. Last year, the oak trees gave up so few that there were notes on Freecycle.com begging for anyone who had a bucket of acorns in their garage to please share for their squirrels. The oaks have more than made up for their previous year's stinginess.

It's also the time of year when acorn squash plop, plop, plop down in the stores as well. They look very cheerful with their pointy tips, deep green and orange coloring and scalloped exterior. I think that's why many people just half them, cook them face down on a cookie sheet, then serve them drizzled with maple syrup. Pretty easy, and a half of squash is a hearty portion for one person, a healthy alternative to a baked potato drizzled with butter and stuffed with sour cream, cheese and bacon bits.

Yet, I never much liked them. I pondered whether it was the texture, which can be a bit more stringy than butternut squash or pumpkin, or was it the maple syrup? Thinking it might be the latter, plus the blandness of the vegetable once the coating was eaten, I decided to try to peel the squash and roast it.

Peeling turned out to be the most time-consuming part, because of its scalloped shell. But once that was done, the rest couldn't be easier.

Lori K's pork tenderloin with roasted acorn squash
Serves 2

Ingredients
1 acorn squash, seeds removed, peeled and diced into 1" chunks
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pork tenderloin
Spice rub
2 quarters of cabbage
Salt and pepper to taste
Butter, optional

Instructions
Preheat oven to 500 degrees.
In a dutch oven or enameled iron casserole, toss the squash with chili powder, garlic salt, cumin and oil until well coated. Cook for 15 minutes.
Coat all sides of the tenderloin with your favorite spice rub (I used Mas Guapo; it's spicy and a little sweet).
Remove the pan from the oven and lay the tenderloin on top. Cook for 20-25 minutes until the squash is very tender and the pork is 160 degrees in the center. Take out of the oven and wait 5 minutes for the juices to reabsorb into the meat.
While the meat is resting, put the cabbage in a microwave safe dish, season with salt and pepper to taste and cook for 4 minutes on high, or until tender but still bright green. Add a pat of butter while hot, if desired.
Remove meat to a cutting board and slice thinly. Divide onto 2 plates and pour any juices over the meat. Fill out plate with half the squash, and a cabbage wedge. Serve.

Note: There are usually two tenderloins in a pack; if you get a pack that's about 2 pounds, one will be just about the right amount for two people. You can cook both of them and have meat for sandwiches for the next few days.

A nage to remember

©2012,  Lori Korleski Richardson

Nage isn't a word we use much, even among dedicated cooks. It is a French word that means "swimming," and is used to describe a dish served in a soupy sauce.

For my birthday this year, my dear husband - who before he met me was considered a gourmet bachelor cook - took over the kitchen for an afternoon and made me a version of this dish. He substituted haricots verts for sugar snap peas, a wild mushroom mixture for the chanterelles, and he skipped the baby squash.

There's a saying popular among cooks: "Never go to a restaurant for a meal that's not significantly better than what you make at home." It's no wonder we don't eat out more often.

And I must say, my birthday dinner was better than the meals at any of the restaurants that we tried for Restaurant Week, although the one at Ten came very close.

Jim found this recipe in "Terra: Cooking from the Heart of Napa Valley" (Ten Speed Press, 2000, 256 pages) by Hiro Sone and Lissa Doumani. We've eaten at cozy Terra several times, but have never ordered this dish.

If this seems like way too much work (not everyone has a whole afternoon to prepare a dinner), or you don't care for scallops, I'll be posting my simplified version of this recipe, made in less than 30 minutes with chicken breasts, later this week.

Sautéed Maine Scallops on Garlic Mashed Potatoes with Chanterelle Mushrooms and Parsley Nage
Serves 4
Typed in by Lori Korleski Richardson
Ingredients
For the nage
2 teaspoons minced shallots
1/3 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup heavy cream
Salt and freshly ground white pepper to taste
1 bunch flat-leaf parsley, stemmed
1/2 cup packed spinach leaves
2/3 cup chicken stock
Pinch of minced garlic
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
4 1/2 ounces chanterelle mushrooms, cleaned and cut or torn into bite-size pieces

For the rest
3 tablespoons clarified butter
20 ounces large scallops, cleaned (hinge removed)
Salt and freshly ground white pepper
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
8 peeled young thin carrots, tops trimmed to 1/2 inch and blanched
4 baby yellow squash, blanched
12 sugar snap peas, blanched
2 cups hot garlic mashed potatoes (recipe)
4 sprigs parsley, for garnish

Instructions
To start the nage, combine the shallots and wine in a small, heavy, nonreactive saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook until reduced to 2 tablespoons. Add the cream and return just to a boil. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Set aside and keep warm.

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add the parsley and spinach, and blanch for 10 seconds. Drain and immerse in ice water until cold. Drain, squeeze out all the excess water and coarsely chop. Combine in a blender with the cold stock and garlic and process until smooth. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve, pressing the solids with the back of a large spoon to extract all the liquid. Reserve the liquid and discard the solids. Melt the butter in a medium sauté pan or skillet over high heat, add the mushrooms and sauté for 2 minutes. Set aside.

To sauté the scallops, heat the clarified butter in a large sauté pan or skillet over high heat until hot. Season the scallops with salt and pepper, dust with flour on both sides, and sauté until golden brown, about 1 minute per side. Remove the pan from the heat and let the scallops rest in the pan for 1 minute.

Meanwhile, finish preparing the nage: Reheat the cream mixture, and add the parsley-spinach purée and the mushrooms. Bring just to a boil, then remove from the heat. Taste and adjust seasoning. Set aside and keep warm.

At the same time, melt the butter in a medium sauté pan or skillet over medium heat, add the carrots, squash and sugar snap peas, and sauté until heated through, about 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

To serve, put 1/2 cup garlic mashed potatoes in the center of each of 4 warmed shallow bowls. Spoon the mushroom and parsley nage evenly around the potatoes, then place one fourth of the scallops on top of each serving of mashed potatoes. Arrange the vegetables on and around the scallops. Garnish with parsley springs.

A ravioli to rave about

My friend Bambi Nicklin, a fine page designer I worked with in Orange County, California, years ago, likes to post her dinner menu as her status report at least several times a week. And we, her Facebook friends, are better for having such creative ideas plop onto our virtual plates.

She included this recipe (scanty, yes, but enough to get you to experiment), so I'm reposting it here.

Bambi's Butternut Squash Ravioli

Boil salted water. Fry the bacon, remove to dish, dump the grease. Put olive oil in the pan, toast the nuts, remove to same dish. Cook ravioli in the water, drain thoroughly. Heat olive oil and saute ravioli, add fresh spinach and cook just to barely wilt the spinach. Add nuts, bacon and Gorgonzola cheese. Toss and serve.