sunday dinner: acorn squash with rosemary and brown sugar

Yes, we did tailgate Saturday for the Ball State game.  Very fun.  I mostly baked contributing a heavily adapted version of citrus cream cheese pull-apart rolls, the famous cinnamon apple cake and the recently posted chocolate chewies.  I'll post a recipe for the pull-apart rolls because they were divine, but they are adapted from my cinnamon roll bread recipe and it would be way easier to post those two recipes together.  If I forget, for goodness sake, please remind me someday.  The crowd devoured the queso and Maureen's buffalo chicken dip at half time.  We missed the best play of the day wandering back into the stadium at the start of the fourth quarter.  That's a good tailgate if you linger too long at half time, but still rally to head back in for the end of the game.  Pre-game Lance fired up biscuits and gravy and post-game Maureen heated up her excellent pulled pork.  Antje and Audie (the "A" team) contributed too.  Good crowd, good food, kind of ugly football but a win is a win.

Since I didn't title this post "tailgating" you might guess we'll be talking about dinner instead.  Sunday afternoon Sara and I were all set to cook and enjoy our spaghetti squash with fire-roasted tomato sauce and turkey meatballs when Greg's flight was cancelled and he would now be home for dinner and the "Manning Bowl".  We invited his dad over since he's bach-ing it while Becky is in Colorado for "bridge camp".  I'm not sure I've ever written a paragraph with that many parentheses before.  Good thing my resident editor isn't here to correct me.  Anyway, the EIC and I headed off to Whole Foods and just figured the new Fine Cooking magazine she perused would lead us in some yummy direction.  Indeed, the October/November Fine Cooking is worth the splurge at the checkout (seen mainly at Costco and Whole Foods) if you haven't succumbed and subscribed yet.  Already heavily dog-eared it's ready for fall cooking and Thanksgiving (at my house this year) planning.

Our base recipe was for acorn squash with rosemary and brown sugar.  The meat case had some beautiful turkey tenderloins.  We needed to restock our new favorite barbecue sauce, Austin's Own medium sauce with just 4 grams of sugar and amazing flavor.  Some very green and plump local green beans rounded out our purchases for the day.

Sara and I started with the acorn squash dish.  We have a lot of fun with the blog photography.

halve the squash

seed it

slice it

brown it

deglaze with white wine  

season with rosemary, brown sugar and lemon

yummm

Acorn Squash with Rosemary and Brown Sugar

1 2-pound acorn squash, unpeeled, halved at the equator, seeded and sliced into 8 wedges or so

1 T unsalted butter

1 T olive oil

1/2 C dry white wine

2 T packed dark brown sugar

1 T chopped fresh rosemary

1 T fresh lemon juice

Score each wedge of quash lengthwise down the middle of the flesh (never figured out why, but maybe it cooks faster or softens better).  Heat the butter and oil in a large saute pan over medium-high heat (big fan of my LeCreuset buffet casserole pan for browning).  Arrange the squash in a single layer and brown, turning occasionally until deep golden-brown on all cut sides (about 10 minutes).

Carefully pour the wine into the pan, then scatter the brown sugar, rosemary, lemon juice, 1/2 tsp salt and 1/8 tsp pepper over the squash.  Cover the pan and reduce the heat to low to simmer the squash until almost tender (about 10 minutes more).

Uncover the pan and increase the heat to medium.  Flip the squash and cook to thicken the liquid (about 5 minutes more).  

Serves 4

Here's a photo of the yummy turkey tenderloins.  I rubbed them with olive oil and sprinkled them with salt and pepper before cooking them on a medium hot grill about 10 minutes per side.  I turned mine once, brushed them with the Austin's Own medium barbecue sauce and cooked the other side before turning the second time to finish with more sauce.  

sunday dinner!