Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Pasta with Butternut Squash & Italian Spices

The winter time is the hardest time for me to find fun local organic things to cook - mostly because there's not that much produce available! Winter squash and potatoes store pretty well though, and our neighbor state to the North (Washington) grows tons of each. I made this for dinner the other night and it was easy and fantastic!

Serves 4
$12

Ingredients

12 oz fresh pasta
2 slices pancetta - cut into small pieces
1 onion - diced
1 lb butternut squash - cut into 1 inch cubes
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatos
1/2 a handful of chopped Italian spices (I used rosemary, thyme and sage from my backyard)

Directions

  1. Put the water for the pasta on to boil
  2. Throw the pancetta in a large pan over medium-high heat to render the fat (turn the solid fat to liquid fat). This should take about 5 minutes
  3. Toss in the diced onion and saute about 10 minutes
  4. Put the squash in and toss it around to get it nice and coated with the oil
  5. Cook the squash for about 10 minutes until it starts to get soft and darkens around the edges. We want it to start to get nice and sweet
  6. Pour the tomatoes in and stir it up well. Throw in the spices and stir it up again.
  7. Put your pasta in the boiling water according to the directions
  8. Cook for another 10 minutes until the tomato sauce in the pan has picked up a lot of the sugar and tastes delicious
  9. Enjoy!