Thanksgiving Round-Up: A New Side Dish MUST

This weekend I made a friendsgiving meal for the staff in my building and in my experimenting prepared a show stopping side dish that I recommend including in your Thanksgiving lineup this year. It was acorn squash stuffed shells. The squash and cheese mixture turned out SO luxurious and elegant and would be amazing in any Thanksgiving spread. I also made one of my long time favorite pies, a salted caramel pear pie. Both of these are such great fall flavors and are nice ways to put a spin on some Thanksgiving classics.

To make the stuffed shells, you are going to roast squash of your choice. I chose acorn squash which was really good. It is one of the sweetest squashes and it blends so nicely into a creamy, velvety puree to put inside of the shells. I roasted two acorn squashes in the oven around 425 degrees until soft and caramelized. Once it was done, I scooped out the squash and put it in a blender with about a half a cup of cottage cheese, a fourth a cup of cream cheese, a tablespoon of heavy cream, and about a tablespoon and a half chunk of parmesan. You can definitely do ricotta instead of the cottage cheese and cream cheese, but I actually preferred the cottage cheese here because it got velvety smooth. You can see I keep using the word velvety smooth to describe this dish, but I think that is why it turned out more of a "fine dining" version of stuffed shells. If you want to use traditional Italian cheese instead of the cottage/cream cheese blend, I'd actually recommend mascarpone instead. I really think the texture plus slightly sweet nuttiness of the cheese mixed with the sweet caramelized squash is what was key to this turning out so well.

If you are like me and very good at multitasking, you are also going to boil the jumbo shells and make your sauce. I think I am like an octopus when I am in the kitchen and always have a million things going at once, often also with a glass of bubbles in my hand! The great thing about this dish though is you do not need to do everything at once. You could actually prep the filling and sauce in advance, refrigerate, and stuff the shells the next day and pop in the oven.

I boiled about 25-30 jumbo shells. You want to boil a few more than you really anticipate eating because some break while boiling and while stuffing. One key reason to do this all at once is the pasta water will really help when making the sauce with less heavy cream, but it's not essential if you want to prep ahead.

The sauce was so simple but so delicious. I browned an entire stick of butter on low heat in a skillet and added some chopped sage. Add about a tablespoon of flour and mix. Then stir in some heavy cream to make a cream sauce. Add more flour or cream as needed to get the right consistency. You can also add some pasta water, which will eliminate the need for as much cream and thickens up the sauce. This is a sauce you want to do low and slow and be patient with. Making a cream sauce is definitely more of an art than a science, and with practice and some experimenting, you can learn the way to get the texture right. You want it thick enough that when you run a spoon through the pan, it stays separated and just starts slowly falling back into place.

After preparing the stuffing mixture and sauce, you are going to stuff your shells. Ladle a little bit of the sauce in a baking dish, scoop the stuffing mixture into your (al dente) shells--I just use a metal spoon, one of my bigger spoons--and place in rows in your dish. I had a little bit of stuffing mixture leftover after the pan was full, so I actually mixed the extra into my sauce. This was good, but not necessary. Pour the sauce over the shells, bake for about 30 minutes at 350. Then top with shredded parmesan and sprinkles of sage, and bake for 15 minutes at a little higher heat, around 375 or 400 degrees. This turned out incredible. I am pretty bad at eating leftovers, but I did eat all of these.

This day I also fried a turkey breast and made mashed potatoes. I packaged everything up into these little to go containers that I always keep on hand from amazon and brought them down for the staff of my building to eat. They were super excited. I am really grateful to live in such a great building with great staff and residents, so it was nice to do something for them this year.

The pie was super easy. It's one of my favorite pies to make and I prefer it over an apple pie. Pears are so underrated, in my opinion. I prefer the texture and subtle fall flavors to apple. Dice up about 10 pears (I actually left the skin on) and saute them in some butter. Add about 1/2 cup brown sugar and a little corn starch to thicken. Cook until the pears are mostly softened (they will finish softening in the oven). Pour into a pie dish or shell and bake at 425 for 15 minutes then drop to 350 to finish cooking.

I mentioned I am kind of an octopus in the kitchen and I have a LOT of practice on cooking all at once, so I timed this meal so that the pie started cooking at 425, then I made the shells and put the dish into the oven right at the time I dropped the pie temperature to 350 so they could bake together. Then I deep fried the turkey breast while these were in the oven and simultaneously made mashed potatoes. This whole meal took me around 2 and a half hours to make, which I think is pretty good for all this food! But, I am kind of crazy in the kitchen and it has taken me a LOT of years to get timing down this well!

Also I think you will see I don't use lots of spices and keep cooking very simple. I like to let ingredients and natural flavors shine for themselves and think if your cooking technique is right you really don't need a lot of spices. Shoutout to one of my favorite chefs in Chicago, Stephen Gillanders (owner of S.K.Y., Valhalla, Apolonia) who is one of the chefs that first articulated this concept to me when I was eating at his tasting counter at Valhalla. I think sometimes we see fine dining that just goes so over the top in flavors and presentation, which can be beautiful and has its place, but I personally appreciate letting ingredients shine for what they are on their own, and love dining at a chef's restaurant who feels the same way. This is a side plug that I think Valhalla is probably the best chef's tasting experience in Chicago and 10/10 recommend if you haven't been there already.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!