With the holidays over, it was time to do a complete inventory of the refrigerator and see what was hidden behind the eggs, the stock I’d made from the Christmas ham, and other holiday leftovers. There was a surprise or two in the containers, but none had reached the fuzzy-mold stage of decomposition. Altogether, the refrigerator inventory wasn’t too bad; I only had to toss some semi-slimy packaged green beans from the vegetable drawer and a container or two of leftovers I hadn’t been able to incorporate into meals.
I have an unofficial policy of waiting a week before tossing any leftovers, including ones I have a difficulty admitting to myself that I never had an intention of using. It’s a silly little mind game to avoid my mom reprimanding me for throwing away food that’s “perfectly good,” even though she’s been gone for more than 20 years now. After a week in the refrigerator, I feel I can justifiably argue with the spirit of my mom that the leftovers I’m tossing are no longer “perfectly good.”
My mom was a child of the Great Depression who grew up in the village of Walton, New York, where the Delaware County Fair has been held for the last 134 years. The village has a long history of being a hub for agriculture in the area, particularly during my mom’s childhood, which contributed to her having a very personal relationship with food from field to table. Combine this with her Great Depression- and World War II-era mindset of not wasting anything, and I was often scolded to “just cut out the bad parts” of some half-rotted fruit I’d been refusing to eat.
One of the items I pulled out of the back of my refrigerator was a butternut squash I had stashed there before Christmas, after it had begun to develop a soft spot while waiting on the counter for me to decide its fate. When I pulled it out, its wound hadn’t spread more than a couple of centimeters, but it brought back the memory of the acorn squash I encountered while cleaning out my folk’s refrigerator in anticipation of renters moving into their place on Cape Cod sometime in the 1970s. The rental paid for their plane tickets and some spending money so they could spend the summer in Ireland, but it was a sometimes hilarious ordeal to get their place ready for renters.
The ordeal was exacerbated by the fact it would be generous to describe my mom as a “casual” housekeeper. She was a busy, hardworking teacher, but housekeeping mostly interfered with smoking cigarettes and engaging in conversation with anyone within earshot. Enlisting my dad in cleaning was hopeless, as it would be like asking the bull in the china shop to clean out the dish cupboard. I have nothing but love for both, but while their idiosyncrasies were their most wonderful characteristics, they could be their most exasperating, as well.
In an earlier moment of our family history, my mom was overwhelmed getting ready to host a dinner party and my dad asked how he could help. She suggested he might straighten up the living room, which she had to have known was an entirely foreign concept to him. His solution for straightening up was to take the books out of the bookcases and reorganize them by alphabetical order while our toys remained strewn around the room, ashtrays needed emptying, and magazines were spread all over the coffee table.
He came from another era and his quizzical, though entirely predictable, priority to get ready for the renters was to organize the meticulously curated pile of driftwood he’d collected from surrounding beaches in his 1948 Jeep while we scrubbed, swept, and organized the interior of the place. I have no idea what organizing the pile of driftwood entailed, as after hours of organizing, it still looked like a pile of driftwood to me. It was obviously something he felt was a necessary contribution, though.
It was during one of those mad-dash, last-minute cleaning sprees that I encountered the aforementioned acorn squash in their refrigerator. It appeared to be entirely intact as I reached to pick it up, but my hand horrifyingly sank into it up to my third knuckle, causing the squash’s collapse into a semisolid gooey mess. There was no cutting out bad spots as I scraped the sludge previously known as squash off my hand and out of the vegetable drawer.
Thankfully, my butternut squash was nowhere near the state of that acorn squash and only required minor surgery, but I still had to determine its use. After my usual lengthy internal deliberations, I decided to prepare a version of the Neapolitan classic of pasta with winter squash, sage, and walnuts.
The keys to this dish are to cook the butternut squash in brown butter and to crisp the prosciutto in the oven with the sage. The dish is delicious and vegetarian without the prosciutto, but I found the crisps were a wonderful addition, making for an interesting and comforting meal for a winter’s casual dinner when served with a green salad.
Pasta with Butternut Squash, Walnuts, Sage & Prosciutto Crisps
Serves 4
Ingredients
4 oz very thinly sliced prosciutto
Approx. 2 dozen sage leaves
2 Tbl olive oil
6 oz unsalted butter, cut into 6 pieces
1 medium butternut squash, peeled and diced into ½-inch pieces (about 3 cups)
2 cloves garlic, thickly sliced
8 oz quality dried tubular pasta of your choice (I used garganelli)
4 oz toasted walnuts, chopped into smallish pieces
2 oz grated Parmigiano Reggiano
Salt and pepper to taste
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Toss the prosciutto slices and sage leaves together in a bowl with the olive oil. Without overlapping the prosciutto slices, spread them onto a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and roast for 12 minutes. Put the pan aside, allowing the prosciutto to continue crisping.
In a large sauté pan with a cover, begin to brown the butter over medium-high heat, shaking occasionally, until it turns a light brown. Add the butternut squash and sauté uncovered in the butter, tossing occasionally, for a minute or so. Add the garlic, stir, and lower the heat to medium. Cook, covered, for approximately 5 minutes, stirring occasionally until the squash begins to break down.
Meanwhile, put a large saucepan with 6 cups of salted water on to boil. Cook the pasta for one minute less than the instructions for al dente and drain, reserving 1½ cups of pasta water. Add the cooked pasta and walnuts to the squash and cook, covered, over medium heat about 2 more minutes while stirring in about ½ cup of pasta water every 30 seconds. The squash should be almost entirely broken down at this point, creating a creamy, thick sauce.
Add half of the prosciutto crisps and grated Parmigiano Reggiano and combine. Add salt and pepper to taste, while being aware that the garnish of the remaining prosciutto crisps and cheese will add salt. Spoon the pasta mixture into shallow, wide bowls and garnish with the remaining prosciutto and cheese.
