Butternut Squash Sauce

My grandmother used to make a sauce from Birds Eye frozen winter squash. Bright orange, garlicky, cheesy in flavor, silken in texture - I can still picture the way the thick sauce coated broken pieces of pasta in the bottomless bowls she served on a weeknight. The summer I went to live on the farm in Connecticut, I spent half the time recreating her lentils and the other half perfecting this sauce. When I wouldn’t get it right I’d eat it alone as a mash and sit in silence. I enjoyed it even when it wasn’t perfect and particularly by the heaping spoonful. Heaping spoonfuls of frozen squash made gourmet. What I adored most about my grandmother’s cooking were her kitchen concoctions - I also  know it’s where I get my recipe free beliefs from and my throw it together and see if it works mentality.

And after all this yammer about frozen squash, I ended up using roasted butternut squash that I overcooked to a state of mush. Should you go frozen butternut squash, you can do the same proportions. Should you go nonna style and use winter squash, it’s more liquidy so you won’t need as much chicken stock - go for ½ the amount below. Use your judgement, use your senses, see how it looks and taste as you go. Cooking is about engaging with your food, even more so than following a recipe.

Veggie on veggie action rocks my world and dinner plate, as I used Trader Joe’s cauliflower gnocchi in this preparation. You can easily use regular pasta, broken spaghetti or eat it by the spoonful.

More veggie based sauces to come, it’s going to be a hearty winter - I promise.

Get the recipe for this bodacious butternut squash sauce below!

XO

Grandma’s Butternut Squash Sauce

2 cups of roasted, steamed, frozen butternut squash or frozen winter squash
1 tablespoon of butter
½ cup of chicken stock
¼ cup of ½ and ½
2 teaspoons of minced garlic
¼ - ⅓ cup of grated pecorino romano
Freshly ground black pepper

Add butter, butternut squash, garlic and chicken stock to a small stock pot over a medium flame
Heat until butter melts and squash heats through, about 7-10 minutes
Remove from flame and blend using an immersion blender, regular blender or food processor
Blend in cream and cheese
Serve over heaps of pasta or eat off of a spoon and don’t forget your freshly ground black pepper