Recipes for when cooking recipes seems ridiculous
It's a weird week to talk about butternut squash.
Hello, chefs.
I wrote a newsletter about various tech industry goings on every week in my last job. Inevitably, every few months, some kind of global tragedy would unfold that would make the whole thing feel ridiculously aloof, and I’d call that out. The absurdity of making coffee and living life as usual while the world burns is not lost on me.
When I was 18, my dream was to be a diplomat in the Middle East. I studied democratization and nationalism and game theory and policy making. I spent whole semesters predicting what would happen if X did Y to Z, moving governments and civilizations around like chess pieces. The reasons why I didn’t ultimately pursue a career in foreign service are manifold, but the distillation of human livelihoods and futures into theory and bargaining chips was certainly one. Despite this very strange previous life, I have little to add to the current global conversation other than this: let’s be aware of the distance we put between ourselves and the humanness of war.
Three years ago, a tornado ripped through my neighborhood in Nashville and turned it to rubble in just a few minutes. Despite seeing images of disasters and destruction for my entire life—photos of shelled cities in textbooks, bombs in the news, earthquake-rocked cities on the internet—walking through the evidence of lives changed forever was profound. There is no veil. It is horrific and close and your senses are a live wire. You can’t shake it and move on. I had never experienced that from an image in the news.
It’s clear that our brains have adapted to see images and videos of human calamity and block the emotional response that would follow if we were there physically. Of course they have. That protection against trauma saves us. But in times like this, when the conversation so easily slips into human chess—who did what to whom, who deserves what, whose government is following the rules and whose is breaking them—it’s critical to take a moment to make yourself feel the realness of it all. Tie your heart up with the people you see on the news. Imagine their fear and make yourself feel it. It’s easy to agree with each other when we start from and stay close to that human experience.
And when you’re feeling too much and need a moment to ground and soothe—that’s when we cook. We have maple butter roast chicken and butternut squash two ways this week. I hope it’s a hug for you and that you share it with someone. Let’s be excellent to each other.
-Faith
Maple butter roast chicken with cabbage and butternut squash
Preheat your oven to 400. Spatchcock your chicken if that’s your preferred roasting method (it’s mine), place it on a roasting pan, and salt and pepper it all over.
Make your maple butter: in a sauce pan, melt 4 tbsp butter. Add in a handful of chopped fresh rosemary, then 2tbsp maple syrup. Cook on med-low for about 2 minutes.
Spread your maple butter over your chicken. Bake for 30 minutes.
While the chicken is baking, peel and chop a butternut squash and set aside. Cut a cabbage into wedges. Place the cabbage wedges on another baking sheet, and drizzle with olive oil, salt, and red pepper flakes.
After 30 minutes in the oven, pop out your chicken and add the butternut squash to the pan, tossing in the juices. Put both the chicken/squash and cabbage pans back in the oven for 15 minutes.
After 15 minutes, flip your squash and cabbage and put it back in the oven for 15 minutes. Your chicken should read at 165 degrees from the deepest part of the thigh.
Slice up and serve! I like this with some chili oil or chili crisp.
Farro with butternut cream sauce
This is a risotto-like dish that makes great use of leftover butternut squash and requires none of the fussiness of a typical risotto. Top it with leftover slices of chicken!
Bring 4 cups of chicken broth to a boil. Add 1.5 cups of farro and simmer until soft, about 20 minutes.
While the farro is simmering, blend 2 cups of roasted butternut squash (leftover is great) with a ladle full of broth from the farro. Keep adding broth until you have the consistency you want; you’re going for smooth and glossy here, and slightly looser than you want it in the end, as it’ll thicken up. Season with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. You can also roast up a few cloves of garlic and add them here.
Drain the farro and add to a sauce pan. Add the butternut sauce and cook over low heat until the sauce thickens a bit. Add fresh grated parm while you stir and cook.
To serve, top with the usual suspects (parm and pepper), or if you’re feeling crazy you can make a little infused oil drizzle with sage or red pepper flakes.
Thank you.