While I’m cooking at home this time of year from our San Francisco Food Tour of North Beach\ Little Italy and Chinatown, one of my favorite things to have is butternut squash. There’s lots of ways to serve it, from soup to stuffing it and roasting in the oven, however one my favorite ways to have it is to cut it into slices and then roast in the oven. The first thing I do is peel it down to the yellow skin. It’s a good idea to leave as little of the yellow skin on squash as possible, as that can turn a little bitter when you roast it. Next, I’ll cut off the very end of the squash and start to slice it in half lengthwise. One you start to slice squash you need to be very careful, as the knife can slip and you can cut yourself very easily. What I like doing is to take my knife, put it front side down and pushing the tip all way to the very bottom and then pushing the knife down to split one end and then do the very same with the other end. Next, I’ll use a spoon to scrape out all the feeds. I like to cut each side into inch size moons. Once it’s all cut up, I’ll toss it with melted butter and salt and pepper and then bake in the oven at a fairly high temperature, usually around 425 F or so on one side for about 25 to 30 minutes and then flip it and cook it for about another 10 minutes until it is nicely browned on both sides. Then, it’s great just by itself or tossed in some Brown butter.
On our San Francisco Food Tours, a lot of our stops like to stuff butternut squash and then roast it. That’s a great way to make it, I’m just a big fan of roasted butternut squash by itself.