Delicata Squash Chips

Its right in the midst of fall, and my slacker self still lingers on it seems, for the Panfusine posts alone. My daily blog A Dish a Day steadily marches on towards the finishing line, hovering around the 300th post as I type this up. It was a great creative 8 days of making as many different 'Sundals' , (a South Indian Sauteed bean / lentils dish ), for the Festival of Navratri, The ninth day (today) having tragically cancelled due to the passing of a beloved cousin. Its hard to think of anything else today but the memories of my loving caring brother. But force myself I must.
With the change in season comes the bounty of squashes & pumpkins, one of them being the diminutive delicata squash. With a skin so fine that it slices effortlessly under the sharp blade of a mandolin, this variety of squash is perfect for tempura, bhajias and roasted salads.

With thin slices, it was delicious to discover that the squash transformed itself into healthy chips, crisped up in an oven seasoned simply with a dash of salt, paprika and a splash of olive oil. The Sugars in the squash tend to caramelize and crisp up rather than the starches frying up as is the case with potatoes and yams. Net result, the delicata slices get a lovely fried texture at lower temperatures and practically no oil. (most of oil used I in the chips, stayed behind as blobs on the baking sheet.)

Delicata Chips

You need:

4 smallish delicata squash
2 tablespoon olive oil
salt and paprika to taste

Heat the oven to 225 F.

Slice the blossom end of the delicata squash (with the scar) and scoop out the seeds.
Slice the squash using a mandolin (the thin setting). Toss well in a large mixing bowl with the oil,salt and paprika so that the seasoning coats the slices evenly)

Line 2 baking sheets with Aluminum foil and add the slices in a single layer. Place in the middle of the oven and bake for 40 minutes, taking care to rotate the trays at 10 minute intervals. At about 20 minutes, some of the slices will have crisped up to a light brown. Transfer these slices onto a dish.

From this point on, keep inspecting the slices at 5 minute intervals and removing them once they've changed color.

As for the seeds.. I simply add them on a smaller baking tray lined with kosher salt and pop them into the oven along with the squash. They toast up to a delicious nutty snack.

Sputtering back....

I seriously feel like this scene from the movie 3 idiots .. remember this one? The way I kept racking up drafts and eventually stopped doing that as well. Lulled into complacence by the quick high from Instagram posts. Recipe measurements hastily scribbled into a Moleskine notebook faithfully depending upon my moods. The truth is that I keep over thinking the backstories needed to make the post more interesting while in reality the truth is that ideas and inspirations just occur spontaneously (like little itches , sneezes or twitches) whenever the opportunity happens to strike. Some really cool ideas that scare the beejeezus out of me and yet prove to be utterly delightful and simple in the end. Others, that seem so trivial that I feel it wouldn't be worth crowing about -- even if there are enough other recipes in that genre that get so much publicity simply because the author happens to have the right marketing knack. So in the past 4 years that I've been

Product Review: Ninja Mega Kitchen system and a recipe for Masala Dosa

One of the biggest reasons for attending conferences is the priceless experience of meeting fellow bloggers and get an invaluable exposure to all things culinary. This includes vendors with new products to savor and get inspiration from. I had no complaints about whatever appliances I had for making traditional Dosa (Traditional South Indian rice & lentil crepes) batter, a sturdy tabletop stone grinder that you could add the Urad dal, turn the timer on , and 30 minutes later, come back to a container full of fluffy, batter with the consistency of whipped egg whites. The The cons of this is the cleaning up, of the various parts, the roller, the grinding bin, the multiple trays on which the rollers need to be placed while transferring the rice & lentil batter, the invariable drips of thick batter on the counter.... you get the point, It takes quite a bit of time. I was pleasantly surprised when the appliance company, Ninja asked me if I'd like to try any of their

Pickling & preserving the Buddha's Hand!

Got your attention with that sacrilegious sounding title on this post, didn't I? Well, I'm as spiritual as the next person out there, and never in my life will I ever commit that variety of Blasphemy, so nothing to fret about. I still wonder why these curious looking citrus entities (other than the obvious visual reason) were called such. It turns out that these fruits are used as a religious offering to the Buddha. My neighboring Whole Foods Market (which is quite some distance away, in Princeton) had a stock of these weird looking citrus and I must have been the oddball customer who immediately went cuckoo on spotting them. Since I had never seen one before, I immediately went for the biggest fruit with the most tentacles (since they were sold as individual units rather than by weight) The first three 'tentacles' were peeled off for their zest, dried in the oven and went into making a citrus salt for my Food52 Secret Santa . Making

Panfusine

Search This Blog