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.
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.
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.)
Brad (the Dad) is the founder and Chief Recipe Officer of New Dad's Kitchen. His own cooking/feeding journey started humbly during his son's infancy, preparing and managing his son's bottle intake in order to support his wife; it has since blossomed into a full-on passion to feed his child and family delicious and healthy meals that can satisfy both a toddler and his very tired parents.
