Cooking the Chronicle – Oct. 11

Did Jessica Grann know I had extra zucchini asking to be used, just lying around from last week’s zucchini bread recipe? What a delightful surprise to find that this week’s recipe for delicata squash and feta pasta also included zucchini, and I could use up the extra I didn’t end up needing last week. (“Delicata squash and feta pasta, Oct. 11). Another absolute delight—any recipe that calls for two whole cups of feta cheese. Yes, please.

Have you ever made a recipe that asks you to sauté onions to a soft and caramelized brown, but then tells you that will take 3-5 minutes? It always makes me suspicious. My favorite part of Grann’s recipe this week is that it felt honest. Yes, it will take you more than 10 min to sauté and soften your squash. Yes, you need patience and time to caramelize onions. With all this time, all my vegetables browned and caramelized so nicely, which felt critical to developing the flavor, because this dish doesn’t have a heavy sauce.

Overall, this recipe was simple and delicious. I’m not always a personal fan of pasta, but this is exactly what you would want to eat as these nights get colder and cozier.

But as I shared last week, my whole vision was to ‘Cook the Chronicle’ with my toddler each week. And so I did go slightly off-script in order to make this possible—the last thing I wanted was an almost-three year old to stand over a hot pan for 20 minutes. I ended up sautéing each of the vegetables separately, with garlic and the seasonings, and popped them into bowls. That way, she could be in charge of dumping all the vegetables and feta into the pasta and mixing them up before broiling. Not quite following the steps in the recipe, but this worked well for us, and (I hope) achieved the same effect. I do think it would be great to stick to the original recipe if you don’t have an impatient toddler in your life, so all the flavors really got to know each other in the pan.

I was surprised how much food this made, though in my head a know a pound of pasta is a lot. We had a ton of leftovers, which will make great work lunches this week.

Let’s end on a classic toddler note. She insisted on dipping all her noodles into ketchup. Because, of course.