Butternut squash pizzette
A recipe that will save your dinner.
Exactly three years ago, on the 13th of November 2018, I was writing:
Today Juls’ Kitchen is about stories and recipes. The stories are those of the daily life of a thirty-something couple living in a farmhouse in the Tuscan countryside with a huge white dog and a postcard view from the bathroom window. Despite the beauty of the landscape, we shy away from clichés and aspire to reality, to tell you about our real, imperfect, messy life. We face the daily challenges of working together, failing to find a balance between private life and work. We are committed to creating a sense of family, inventing a new routine of dishes and rituals. We are working on our priorities as a newlywed couple, trying not to get overwhelmed by work and expectations.
We believe in the importance of content, and for this reason, we will continue to focus on the blog and on the newsletter, more than on Social Media (though we are there too, even if sooner or later we will have to learn how to control the – too much – time we spend there).
The recipes are those we love to eat, those we teach during cooking classes, those that we put on the table in the evening after a day spent cooking, photographing or writing. And washing sinks full of dishes, too. There are the everyday recipes that save you dinner with a few ingredients, or those reserved for special occasions when your friends challenge the distance and the country road to visit you.
Well, apart from having two dogs now, and a fourteen-month-old baby, nothing has changed. We still aspire to reality, we still believe in the importance of content, we still wash sinks full of dishes on repeat.
Three years ago I was sharing a recipe for these butternut squash pizzette: I’ve made them countless times since then. Maybe now the time has come to make them for Livia, too.
A recipe that will save your dinner: butternut squash pizzette
The recipes that save your dinner are brilliant ideas to use common ingredients and turn them into a meal. These butternut squash pizzette are a good example. When you have a sudden desire for pizza, one of those burning, insatiable cravings, it is impossible to calm it down with a bowl of spaghetti or a grilled chicken breast. But if you have a few slices of butternut squash, a jar of peeled datterini, and some mozzarella, your dinner can instantly improve. It won’t be a pizza, but the taste is so similar that you’ll want to cook these pizzette more often, not just to save your dinner at the very last minute.
In summer I would use eggplants, now I slice the top of butternut squash. You will get round slices: brush them with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper, then roast in the oven until slightly caramelised. They are a delicious seasonal side dish I like to serve with a roasted pork loin, but add a few tablespoons of tomato purée and a mozzarella torn into pieces and you’ll get in about half an hour tasty pizzette, your dinner.
Get the recipe for the butternut squash pizzette on the blog.
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More recipes with butternut squash from the blog archive
Butternut squash parmigiana. You know that eggplant parmigiana is my favourite dish. If I could, I would eat it all year round in spite of the season. Well, I found a worthy substitute that does not make me regret the eggplant! The baked squash is quick to prepare and if you brush thin slices with extra virgin olive oil they’ll become crisp, keeping a soft and sweet heart, just like the eggplant slices you would fry at the end of summer. Then you proceed as in the most classic of parmigiana: a good tomato sauce, pieces of mozzarella torn with your hands and heaping tablespoons of Parmigiano Reggiano.
Chickpea and butternut squash soup. A few years ago I found myself with a bowl of cold chickpeas and some butternut squash which screamed to be used as soon as possible. They married in a thick soup tinted in autumnal colours and since then this has been my go-to meal when I’m in a hurry and I need a comforting bowl of steaming soup to cheer up my day. Save a few tablespoons of chickpeas to spoon over the soup, they’ll add texture and a nice decorative touch. Serve it with toasted bread smeared in blue cheese and you can call it a meal.
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