The other day at Fred Meyer we saw acorn squash on sale for 50 cents. Although neither of us had ever tried acorn squash, I had just read an article in Edible Portland about various types of squash, and we have also been wanting to cook more seasonally: which means lots of root vegetables for fall / winter.
After browsing a few acorn squash recipes online, we decided on Moroccan-style stuffed acorn squash. In this simple recipe, the acorn squash is stuffed with a mix of couscous for sustenance, garbanzo beans for protein, carrots and celery for crunch, and finally raisins for a little bit of sweetness. This sweet and salty stuffing combines wonderfully with the flavorful creaminess of the acorn squash.
Since the ribbing on acorn squash makes it difficult to cut, pretty much everywhere recommends cutting the squash into halves and roasting. We pretty much followed the Moroccan-style recipe exactly, except for how we roasted the acorn squash. Most of the other recipes we looked at suggested cooking the squash with the cut side up, so we decided not to use the recipe’s recommendation of cut side down. Additionally we added some of the butter to the squash to help it roast. (Vegans can use vegan butter :))
Of course we subbed veggie broth for the chicken broth, and we were a bit skeptical of the raisins, but they turned out to be a delicious addition. We should probably learn to cook with fruit more.
One last thing to note is that the recipe does not allot enough time for cooking the carrots and celery, which really take more like 10 minutes to cook down (the recipe calls for 5).