Cooking for the Continental Man - Vol. 1

Oops! Got a little side-tracked after the last post and discovered a million other things I'd rather blog about, but seeing as I've committed myself to this cooking thing. Here goes...

Squash with Lemon and Herb Chicken

Stuff (I hate the word "ingredients" - Its such an ugly word):

Half a Butter nut squash (the long kind not the short kind)

3 giant table spoons of butter

Chilli flakes

1/4 Nando's Chicken

Cooking Time: 30 minutes (or 45)

What to do:

Melt the butter in a pan (preferably not a frying pan, use a pot). Ooops.. before that, rinse the squash, peel the squash, core the squash (i.e. chuck the seeds), and slice the squash into cube-like chunks. The latter part of all that can be rather difficult. I ended up using this massive knife, and even that didn't make it much easier. Squash is a bitch! But this bitch is now a pro after having battled with several of the yellow bitches by the time of writing.

Oh and in case you forgot, you're only chopping up half of the squash. Wrap up the other half, put it in the fridge and save it for dinner time! Yippee.... Not!!

So where was I? Now you can melt the butter and then place the squash chunks in gently - you don't want hot butter soiling your cashmere jumper and my pot is notoriously bitchy when it comes to spitting at cashmere! {I'm such a bloody liar - I wasn't wearing a cashmere jumper when I did this. Do I even own a cashmere jumper? Okay maybe I do... But there's no way in hell I'd ever wear it whilst cooking!!}

Now this part annoyingly takes a VERY long time. What we're trying to do is fry the squash in the butter to the point where it gets soft and slightly mushy - kinda like fried yam (after you've boiled the yam first oh... not those yam rocks some people pass around as fried yam!). The problem with squash is that the darn thing likes to brown and caramelise before it hits the yummy mushy-goodness stage that we want.

One trick (and I'm blushing with pride that I discovered this all by myself and not on "squash4dummies.com", if such a thing does exist) is to boil the squash first before frying. The hot water does all the softening for you and when it comes to the frying all you need is half the above-stated amount of butter to seal the deal!

Down-sides to this method are the spitting and fizzing that will ensue when you transfer the wet squash from the water pot to the butter pot, and the annoying fact that the squash loses almost all its sugariness whilst being softened in the water pot. The latter point is a huge disadvantage from my perspective because the joy of squash is in its sugary goodness.

Whatever method you decide upon should be determined by (a) your indifference to butter and the huuuge amount of saturated fat that entails, and (b) the amount of time on your hands - The "water pot and butter pot method" takes about 10 minutes whilst the "butter pot solo method" takes about 25 to 30.

Once you're over the hurdle I now refer to as "the softening", you can begin "the seasoning", with a pinch of salt and some chilli flakes, and then finally, "the gentle placing" of the slightly mushy chunks on a clean plate beside a warm piece of chicken. If you acquired your Nando's chicken a short while before you began the grueling course of dealing with the squash, you can even skip the warming part and save yourself a few seconds.

And with that, you have it... a deeelish plate of squash and lemon and herb chicken.

P.S. This was my first recipe so forgive the simplicity of it all. I was rather apprehensive about the task at hand. I was also in a hurry to get something into my tummy.

Stay tuuuned for Vol. 2 - Squash and Broccoli Cream Soup!