Hello, it’s Chef John testing out the new microphone and today, we’re doing Stuffed Summer Squash which is a delicious vegetable side dish, and there is my very irregularly shaped summer squash.
Those are sometimes called starbursts. They also come in yellow and actually, the yellow ones tend to be a little more evenly sized. I got some goat cheese. I got some plain bread crumbs. I got some Romesco sauce and as usual, all the amounts and all the details and all the secret info is on the site, so check it out.
Now, when you cut the squash, I want you to be careful. I’m going to take off a little bit of the top and bottom and the outside is much tougher and it’s actually kind of brittle and the inside is very soft. So if you try slicing this in half evenly, it’s very difficult to get an even cut. So I kind of almost scored around the edge with the tip of the knife and once I’ve gone all the way around, then I can slice down through and the size, the diameter isn’t what you’re going for, okay? So those are different diameters but when I trim them, I’m going to give them the same thickness. That’s what’s important so they cook evenly. So I’m going to do a little freeze frame there, I just learned that.
So thickness, more important than the shape. Then you're going to take a spoon and we’re going to scoop them out, but not too much, just a little bit because there’s not really any kind of seed—big amount of seeds in there. We just want to make a little bit of a well for our cheese and our sauce. And if you’ve got one of these, one of these melon ballers, you can use that. But really, a spoon will work. The only advantage of the melon baller is just it’s sharper.
Alright, I want you to preheat your oven very hot, 450, and in your baking dish a couple tablespoons of olive oil and we’re going to lay in our scooped out summer squash. Again, I didn’t go too deep. You’ll see when I do the close-up here, another thing I learned, doing close-ups. That was the mailman by the way.
Okay, so we’re going to season this with salt and pepper and see, I had a salt and pepper mix leftover from a steak and it wasn’t enough pepper, so I hit it with the pepper grinder. And then, very important, I want you to crumble your cheese and I don’t want you to spread it. I want you to crumble it in a regular little crumbles. I’m going to say there’s going to be about a tablespoon per squash, tablespoon per squash half, and what we need is cracks and crevices because if you spread it, it would be smooth and there wouldn’t be cracks and crevices. What’s going to happen is we need our sauce and our bread crumbs to kind of have space to intermingle, and that won’t happen unless you’re kind of crumbling, like I did.
So about a tablespoon of cheese and I don’t know, I hate to give out exact amounts because this is all just cooking. So I’m going to say it’s about a half a teaspoon to a teaspoon of sauce. Now, I’m using Romesco and again, you’ll read about that on the site. It’s a spicy red pepper almond kind of Spanish sauce. You could use salsa, you could use hot sauce, you could use a lot of different things, any kind of pepper relish.
And then about a teaspoon of bread crumb goes over the goat cheese and the sauce. And then, just to moisten it, and this is very important, about a teaspoon of olive oil on top of the whole thing.
So first it’s the scooping, then the cheese, then the sauce, then the bread crumb and a drizzle of olive oil, and we’re going to bake those—it’s just an estimate, 15 to 20 minutes. And man, are they golden brown and delicious. I’m actually going to let you listen to these sizzling. Really nice.
Now, as far as done this, these are going to continue to cook obviously once you take them out, so you want a little bit resistance to the knife. You don’t want them to be just super droopy. Anyway, let me freeze frame there. Once I tested it, see that olive oil? I’m not throwing that away. I’m going to strain that olive oil. That’s going to make a vinaigrette to go with whatever dinner I’m cooking here. See, you don’t throw stuff away. And there is my out of focus finished plate of delicious Stuffed Summer Squash. I do need to get a digital camera so I can take some awesome, sharp, after-filming photos, but not this time. One step at a time here. And that’s it!
Go to the site for the ingredients. I hope you enjoyed that and anyway, we’re still testing sort of but we’re getting better. So anyway, make that, very delicious, and enjoy!
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