A Better Pasta With Butternut Squash Sauce
Description
We are hardly the first to suggest infusing butternut squash into a pasta sauce: the internet is lousy with variations of mac and cheese infused with the gourd – same color and texture, and all that. Nice thought, this, but we don’t find this sort of “hiding” all that effective: kids know immediately it’s not the powdered cheese stuff, and the taste, even though it’s naturally sweet, gets old quickly. You won’t want to eat it either.
Instead, let’s take a cue from two squash dishes that we know taste good: butternut squash bisque, which brings all that creamy richness; and kaddu, an afghani roasted squash marvel that deftly balances savory and sweet in every bite. The latter we use for the taste profile and roasting method; the former we use for texture. Heck, you could eat this sauce as a soup–no one, your child included, would blame you.
Chances are you’ll be roasting a whole squash here—or have bought pre-cut squash of equivalent size—but using all of it for the sauce would produce a quantity you could not realistically finish; even the half a gourd allotted in the recipe below will produce enough for you to be able to freeze a portion for the next time you make the dish. If you’re feeding a crowd, go ahead and use the whole gourd for this; if not, here’s a good opportunity for a backup just in case the pasta doesn’t take with your kid: make our handheld version of kaddu, which will only take an additional 2-3 minutes to put together.
Ingredients
Instructions
Prep, Cook, and Assemble
- Preheat oven to 400. Line a shallow baking pan with parchment paper.
- If starting with a whole squash, halve it, peel the outer skin, and remove the seeds and membrane from inside the half. Chop the orange flesh into small cubes, doing your best to keep the pieces somewhat uniform.
- Toss the squash cubes into a large bowl, then add a large glug each olive oil and maple syrup; add a couple shakes each of the ginger, cinnamon, and cardamom powders, along with a pinch of salt and pepper. Toss to coat.
- Dump the squash pieces onto the baking pan, spreading the pieces out to each ensure they’re not touching or overlapping with one another.
- Roast until browned all over, roughly 35-40 minutes; turn halfway through.
- Once squash finish cooking, immediately dump them into a pot or dutch oven. Add two cups of water, followed by a spoonful each of minced garlic and cashew butter to the pot, then add the baking soda and a shake or two of turmeric powder. (Pro tip: if you really want those cinnamony flavors to come through, feel free to add a pinch of cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice here, too.) Stir it up.
- Bring the contents of the pot to a boil; once bubbling, cover and turn off the heat. Allow to sit for 5-7 minutes, then pour the pot’s contents into a blender, leaving the top open to allow the steam to escape.
- While the contents in the blender cool down, cook the pasta, making sure to heat it 1-2 minutes more than the package directions indicate. (This will ensure the middle ridges of the shape are fully cooked.) When finished cooking, drain and plate.
- Add the miso paste, tomato sauce, and a splash of coconut milk to the blender, then blend on high for 30 seconds. If too thick, add another splash or two of coconut milk and blend again. Add salt and/or a big squeeze of lemon if the sauce needs to be perked up a bit.
Serve
If your child is familiar and/or comfortable with sauced pasta, go ahead and serve the dish sauced; otherwise, serve the pasta plain, siding it with the squash sauce.
Adapt
If you don’t have coconut milk and/or tomato sauce on hand, or if you want a thinner sauce, reserve a bit of the water from the pot after cooking the pasta; once you’ve added some of the squash sauce, add a splash of pasta water at a time and mix until reaching desired consistency. (If you make this dish an hour or two ahead of when you expect to eat it, save some pasta water anyway: you’ll need it a bit to keep the sauce from drying up.)
