A pumpkin is an irrefutable king of autumnal menus. This gorgeous orange root vegetable comes in many forms and is as suitable for cooking in warm salads and starters as it is in heart-warming stews. Our recipe uses one of the pumpkin’s many siblings in the gourd family — spaghetti squash — for an original take on the well-known bolognaise.
As you may have guessed, for this recipe you will need the specific kind of “spaghetti” squash. When baked, its flesh is particularly easy to dissect into fibres so similar in texture and shape to spaghetti. There is plenty of scope to play around with the texture here and integrate it into a full blown vegetable only version of a bolognaise. The beef typically used in the tomato sauce stew can be substituted with zucchini and some extra parmesan on top.
Ingredients
Spaghetti
Spaghetti squash
Olive oil — 50-60 ml
Salt and pepper — to taste
Hard cheese like parmesan or grano padano — 100-150 g
Vegetable stew
Olive oil — 100 ml
White onion — 1
Garlic — 1 clove
Carrot — 1
Celery — 1
Zucchini — 2 large or 3 medium
Tomato puree — 1 cup (180 g)
Oregano, thyme — 2-3 sprigs of each
Salt — 1/2 tsp
Cane sugar — 1 tbsp
Balsamic vinegar — 2 tbsp
Method
- Cut the squash in half and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Cover the flesh side with olive oil (tip: use a kitchen brush) and place in an oven heated to 180°C for 50 minutes. Prepare the stew in the meantime.
- Prep the vegetables by crushing the garlic, peeling the zucchini, carrot and onion. Take the leaves off the thyme and oregano sprigs. Chop all the vegetables, except for garlic, into one-size small cubes.
- Put some olive oil into a deep heated frying pan, add the garlic, onion and celery. Fry for 5 minutes until lightly golden, stirring along the way. Then add the carrot and cook for a further 3 minutes. Lay out the zucchini and wait for the vegetables to release some water. This should take around 3-5 minutes.
- Pour the tomato puree into the pan mixed with 100 ml of water. Add the herbs, sugar, salt and vinegar and thoroughly mix together for 7 minutes. Remove from the heat.
- Take out the baked squash from the oven and carefully scrape the inside flesh with a fork to form threadlike spaghetti fibres.
- Add half the amount of stew into each squash piece, sprinkling with a hard cheese and ground pepper on top.
- Serve with the squash skin on to preserve the beautiful natural bowl for your dish.