Tuesday, September 16, 2008

beautiful failures

isn't this a pretty dish? we had some squash growing outta our compost pile, so i scooped out the insides, baked them and made a pesto style sauce to mix in with it, and stuffed the squash. a twice-baked thing, get it? they looked really darling, but i didn't like how it tasted. perhaps i was taking too much of a gamble on using basil. anyone else have any successes with making squash that isn't sweet? don't get me wrong, i love the plain ol' brown sugar and butter mixture--it just gets kind of tiring. i've also spiced squash using curry, cinnamon, and raisins. recently i made a coconut curry butternut squash soup from you won't believe it's vegan! i liked it, but it seems like all of my curries-(no matter how the ingredients vary) taste the same. vin told me to not worry, because my curry is delicious. but i want to achieve that really good restaurant curry taste. what to do?

so just curious: what are some of your recipe beautiful failures? i shouldn't be so hard on myself. the recipes aren't disasters, i just need to be mindful that tastes are different. point in case-- i made a tortilla pizza-(ill post the pic later) with home made sauce, eggplant, artichoke hearts, olives, banana peppers, and tofu ricotta. it was gorgeous, and tasty. my husband hated it. then there's the jen hates macaroni hates cheese yuk i made. my son loved it! in my recipe binder i make little notes on when i served the dish and gave it a score based on our family taste buds.

5 comments:

Mari said...

I make a savory squash soup pretty often in the fall. I use butternut or acorn or canned pumpkin. I pretty much cook the squash (roasting whole in the skin or deskinned in cubes) and then put it in a pot with some veggie broth and sour cream, salt, black pepper, and maybe a touch of vinegar and sweetner. Then I puree it with my handblender and let it heat through.

I use adobo seasoning in everything, so I always put it in this soup as well.

(you could substitute soy sour cream, soy creamer, or silken tofu)

ChocolateCoveredVegan said...

I think you have the best blog name!

Oh, and I'm loving VHOP!

Bianca said...

Well, I'm sure I'd eat it. But I think almost everything tastes good. I'm not crazy about some textures (like eggplant skin), but tastes...I can do anything, really.

What kind of squash is that? It looks like a hard winter variety, but I've never seen squash that color.

Jen said...

i believe that the squash is a hybrid between acorn and crookneck. there were many squash plants pouring from our compost-(a result of the inner temp of the pile not being hot enough), and we lost most of the squash due to borers. the ones that made it appeared to be an odd hybrid of all the different kinds of squash we eat.

Nicole said...

That's funny - we had "volunteer" squash from our compost pile. It was butternut.