The Cellar and the Pantry Blog

One of the benefits of growing your own onions and peppers is that they go with absolutely everything.  For this edition of Grow Your Own, the cooperative blogging project, I combined them with spaghetti squash, also from the garden, for a quick and tasty dinner that's almost entirely homegrown.  Go preheat your over to 350 and give it a shot!

From the garden I used:

• One small white onion
• One large pepper, as hot as you like; mine was a Joe's Long Cayenne (from Seed Savers Exchange)
• One spaghetti squash, var. Vegetable Spaghetti or similar

From the pantry, I added salt, pepper, butter, olive oil and grated cheese.

Cooking the squash is the only complicated part.  You can cook it in the microwave, but I prefer an oven.  Cut it in half lengthwise, cut out the stem and flower end, and scoop out the seeds and loose matter in the middle of the squash.  Grease a pan and the inside of the squash with olive oil, and place the halves open end down in a the pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

When the squash is done, give it a chance to cool; then create the "spaghetti" by shredding the meat with a fork into a bowl.  As you run the fork along the inside, the meat should come off in long strands.

Once the squash was cooked, I chopped the onion and pepper and sweated them with a large pat of butter and a large pinch of salt.  Once they're cooked, add the squash strands to the pan and toss for a few minutes to combine.  Top with pepper and grated cheese (I used Romano).  Serve hot out of the pan with a glass of homebrew.