Originally posted by Jess – November 23, 2015
Hello everyone, Jess here. Happy Meatless Monday! I was checking my squash in the basement and found a little blemish beginning on my giant spaghetti squash from the summer CSA. Time to use it!
I was pretty inspired by the many fresh ingredients I had on hand today. It felt like a good time to get a little adventurous. What if I made some spaghetti squash into the shape of a nest? Maybe stick a poached egg in the middle? The gears are turning, so look out!
I started the way I usually start with squash, by halving and baking it until just tender, mine went about 45 minutes at 350.
I made a little “nest” and returned the shreds to the oven at 425 for about 10-15 minutes, until things set a little and had a bit of color on the looser strands. (The cookie sheet was greased with a bit of coconut oil, and a little butter dotted on the top as well). I also tried a version with some panko and egg mixed in to firm things up a little more, but it just didn’t look or taste as good to me. I will say not binding it with something made it a little trickier to handle, but nothing I couldn’t reshape as I went along.
For the nest to rest on, I had a little thing going with a shredded red cabbage, shredded carrot and, shredded broccoli stem. I put in roughly 1 part each of soy sauce, peanut butter and brown sugar and grating of ginger until it gave a little Asian slaw flavor.
Shredding the stem while holding the broccoli crown is quite convenient, as the “branches” of the broccoli will fall away from the stalk as you shred it, leaving you with nice cuts for steaming, sautéing, etc. As always, watch your fingers!
Fresh and delicious slaw material is left!
Fellow farmer Elizabeth Almeida from Fat Moon and Fresh Start Food Gardens fame gave me a pint of shiitake mushrooms in exchange for minding her chickens. I marinated them with a bit of soy sauce and sesame oil before sautéing. Especially on Meatless Monday, the more veggies, the merrier!
The birds nest went on top of the slaw, the mushrooms sat inside the nest as a little bed for the fresh poached egg, and this shaped up to be a delicious and aesthetically pleasing meal! I like that there wasn’t much interfering with the fresh tastes in this dish, the veggies really spoke for themselves. It’s the type of dish that’s really unique to local and seasonal cooking, as these same ingredients conventionally grown and traveling for thousands of miles would not yield the same deliciousness. How lucky are we!??!?