Hello again! The recipe that I’ll be sharing today was taught to me long ago by my friend Stef. It is an excellent cold weather choice as it will heat your house by way of the extended use of the oven and also lets you enjoy an underutilized vegetable. This is also a pretty passive recipe as it just spends a bunch of time in the oven, so it is a good one to whip out when you need to multitask. Say, for example, editing your first graduate school paper. A medium size spaghetti squash will make about two meals worth of food for a single person or a solid single meal for two people. My general rule of thumb is the larger the squash, the more meals I’ll be eating. In any case, the recipe below turned out to be vegan, but it is easily adapted toward non-vegan persuasions, by adding feta (delicious) and/or bacon (double delicious).
Cut the spaghetti squash in half. Carefully. The squash is very difficult to cut when it is uncooked, so please don’t hurt yourself. Proceed with caution! This is also a good time to start preheating the oven to 425 degrees (if you believe in that sort of thing…).
Once your squash is carefully cut in half you’ll want to scoop out the center, with the seeds and such, with a spoon. Feel free to save the seeds and roast them like you would with pumpkin seeds.
Lightly grease a baking sheet and place the squash flat side down. Bake at 425 degrees for 35 minutes.
While your squash is roasting, prep your other vegetables. I used grape tomatoes, broccoli, and onion. Divide your cut up veggies into two medium bowls or a large bowl if you have one.
Carefully (and with two hands as spaghetti squash is heavy) remove the squash from the oven. At this point I moved the squash halves to a glass baking dish with sides to prevent them from squirming around. Take a fork and rake it back and forth through the squash. It should shred easily and will sort of look like spaghetti! Be careful to not slice through the skin of the squash and to leave it structurally sound, as you will be putting all the veggies back in the shells to bake for a little longer.
Take the newly shredded squash and mix each halve into a bowl with the other veggies (or one large bowl, whatever the case may be). Some of the strings tend to stick so I usually give it a quick once through with a knife to cut off any of the stragglers. Once the shredded squash and veggies are mixed, place back in the squash shells.
Place the squash back in the oven for about 15-20 minutes. This allows you to cook the other veggies. I would also recommend turning your oven down slightly so you don’t burn the ends of your broccoli; 375 degrees will do.
Take out of the oven (with both hands!) and enjoy!
[Optional] When there is about five minutes left for roasting the second time, pull out the squash and carefully mix in some feta and/or bacon. Then stick it all back in the oven to finish baking for those last five minutes.
Please note: I like my cooked veggies crunchier than the average person, so if you like your cooked veggies softer, lower the heat and extend the cooking time.
Until next time!
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