Stuffed Acorn Squash

Made my signature dish for secretary last night. Hot Sausage Stuffed Acorn Squash. yeah, you heard it. And for the first time ever, the recipe here on the interweb.

Carpenter's Stuffed Acorn Squash

Ingredients

• 2 medium acorn squash
• 2 lbs hot italian sausage (remove casing)
• 1/2 onion (yellow, spanish, or even better- shallots!)
• 1/2 stick butter
• hot water
• 1 bag stuffing, or make your own out of stale bread and spices
• dried cranberries (handful)
• small block of blue cheese - the stronger the better
• small amount of fresh Habanero (you make the call, I used like 3 tiny slices of one I gre myself, and it was great)
• real maple syrup

All right, for the record, if you are looking for exact measurements and whatnot, you are not going to find them in my recipes (unless I am baking or doing some really scientific shit). I make the dish a little different every time, and I expect you to feel it out as well.

Halve the acorn squash lengthwise, seed them, and bake them at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Cover them in some sort of fat (butter or bacon - not olive oil which seems to taste odd in this recipe). You are just precooking them. Bake them open side down.

While those are pre-cooking, saute the onion and maybe some garlic in a little butter, and when sauteed, add the italian sausage and cook until brown. Add the chopped habanero (really chop it fine) to the mix. At the end of the browning, add a 1/2 stick of butter and melt over the sausage.

Mix the sausage with the bag of stuffing and a big handful of cranberries. Mix with some hot water (just as much as you need) until the shole shebang is wet enough to hold together. Add salt and pepper as needed (eveything is cooked at this point, give it a taste!!!)

Sidenote: Last night Secretary suggested putting some blue cheese into the stuffing itself, which I have yet to try. You might want to. Tell me how it turns out.

Ok, so, pull the par-cooked acorn squash out of the oven. Cut a small flat piece off of the bottom round end so that they will sit in a flat pan. Put a big hunk'o blue cheese in the bottom of each squash cavity, and then loosely fill with stuffing. Put a little water in the bottom of your baking pan, and cover the stuffed squash. Return to the oven for 20 minutes. Then uncover the squash, add a big ol hunk of blue cheese to the top, and return to the over for 5 more minutes.

Pull those bad-boys out, and drizzle with maple syrup. Serve with something green. Secretary made stringbeans.