Second Breakfast

Squash and sage are a perennial autumnal pairing, and for good reason. This easy dish is good for a weeknight supper, or elegant enough for an impressive pasta course. We thought this paired nicely with a South African Shiraz, but a sturdy Chardonnay would work well too.  While there are a few extra steps, you can do them all while everything is cooking, and the extra effort is definitely worth the added flavor.

Items

• 1 lb butternut squash (1/2 typically of what you’ll buy in the market), peeled and cut into 2″ cubes
• 1 large onion, diced
• 1-2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 lb gemelli, penne rigate, or similarly-shaped dried pasta
• 8-12oz chicken or tomato-free vegetable broth
• 4Tb butter (or 2Tb butter and 2Tb olive oil)
• 1 cup pecans or walnuts, toasted and roughly chopped
• 12-15 fresh whole sage leaves
• 1/4 cup chopped flat leaf parsley
• 2oz freshly-grated Pecorino Romano

Method

1. Heat 2Tb of the butter, or 2TB olive oil, over medium-heat in a large sautée pan. When hot, sweat the onion until translucent, 5 minutes or so. Add the garlic and stir for another minute.
2. Turn up the heat a bit and add the squash, and stir so the squash is at the bottom of the pan. Let cook for a few minutes and turn the squash over. The idea is to caramelize a little bit the sides of the squash to deepen the flavor. Do this for 6-8 minutes or so.
3. Add enough broth to cover the squash, along with half of the sage, finely chopped. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low, and cook, covered, stirring occasionally, 6-8 minutes until the squash is tender.
4. Cook the pasta in salted water carefully according to package directions until al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup of the pasta water when draining the pasta.
5. While the pasta is cooking, heat the reserved 2TB butter in a small pan over medium-low heat. Add the reserved sage leaves, and cook whole until the sage leaves are crispy and the butter solids have precipitated out of the butter. The butter will turn a golden brown color and emit a nutty fragrance. Remove from heat. Extract the sage leaves and chop finely.
6. When the squash is done, mash roughly with a potato masher. The idea is to incorporate some of the squash into the sauce while not creating a soup. Check seasoning and add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Stir in the cheese, half of the brown butter, the chopped sage, and half of the toasted chopped pecans or walnuts.
7. Add the cooked pasta to the sauce, turn up the heat, and cook a minute or two until the flavors are combined. Add some or all of the reserved pasta water if the dish looks a little dry.
8. Serve topped with the reserved nuts, the reserved brown butter, and more grated cheese.

Serves 6-8 as a first course, 4-6 as a main course.

www.theelderparty.com 

I’m in a mostly-black church, and we’re starting to sing gospel hymns. I pick up the hymnal and I know it is going to be unfamiliar, and I can’t find the hymn I’m looking for, so I give up and just start singing along. We’re walking around the sanctuary singing, and I see a pile of little books of published sermons in the corner with ornate cover frontispieces that tell me that the church I’m in is in Ypsilanti, MI. Everyone is friendly and I feel welcome despite the fact that I’m in an unfamiliar place among strangers.

The song we’re singing is a 1-4-5-1 gospel number, and the leaders who are singing the verses are mostly white people, who are singing about the evils of racism. The chorus (I could still sing it when I woke up, but as the morning has progressed I’ve forgotten it), went either “A-li-bah-mah” or “A-li-ham-brah”. The former is of course a southern state, the latter is either a bluegrass band, a Moorish fortress in southern Spain, or a city in Northern California.

I awoke, singing.

I feel slightly guilty for “owning up” to the fact that we watched yet another series in toto via Netflix.  I think “I can’t believe I spent so much time in front of the TV.  I should do something with my life!”

But Buffy was so cool.  It was imaginative television, Whedon and his crew took the audience seriously, took great risks in killing off important characters, weren’t afraid to blow up central ideas of the story, and went to some pretty dark places with the characters and the series.  There were some truly wonderful and scary moments (”the Gentlemen” from “Hush” scared the pants off of me…I still have nightmares).  And as my husband points out, even when it was sometimes a little bad, it was still pretty good.  I guess Buffy was like pizza and sex, as the only saw goes.

Mostly what these TV series watching projects are good for is to expand the repertoire of references by which the husband and I communicate.  We’re basically like Dennis Miller without the paranoia and with better shoes.  Not surprisingly, one of our favorite ST:TNG episodes is Darmok.  We basically sit around and quote stuff at each other.  It is often annoying, at best, for outsiders who don’t share our collective intertextual context.  But fun for us, so deal.  We may both be really big geeks, but at least our geekiness is compatible.

Joe. My. God.: Dubya Speaks Of World War III

Joe.My.God writes about Dubya ratcheting up the rhetoric of war regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

This all reminds me of a great quote from Season 4 of the West Wing:

“Franz Ferdinand, who was the nephew of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor, was killed by a group called the Black Hand, and because they were a Serbian nationalist society, the Empire declared war on Serbia. Then Russia, which was bound by a treaty, was forced to mobilize, which meant that Germany had to declare war on Russia. Then France declared war on Germany… and that was World War I. Because the Emperor’s nephew was killed.”

And from “The History Boys”:

Mrs. Lintott: Can you, for a moment, imagine how depressing it is to teach five centuries of masculine ineptitude? [...] History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.

Where is our JFK? Hell, I’d even go for George H. W. Bush at this point.