Tuesday Tastings: Butternut Squash Strozzapreti

We eat loads of pasta at our house, and I’ve got to admit that I thought I’d tried just about every incarnation possible: linguine with sundried tomatoes & fresh mozzarella, pumpkin ravioli with brown butter, rigatoni with sausage and eggplant, spaghetti with roasted cauliflower & golden raisins, and orecchiette with sautéed kale are only a small sampling of the recipes in my regular rotation. But a pasta tossed with sauce made of shredded butternut squash lightly sautéed with sage leaves? Thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I flipped open to this beauty in last month’s Bon Appetit (an original pasta idea!) and over the weekend I finally gave it a try. Butternut squash and sage is one of those flavor combinations that takes two great-on-their-own ingredients and makes total magic when put together…especially when it involves sautéeing them in butter and tossing them with pasta and lots of parmesan. I shredded way more butternut squash in the food processor than I actually used, and it’s become one of my favorite ingredients to have on hand this week – thrown into lunchtime salads and even tossed into an Asian stir fry tonight for a little added sweetness. But it really shines in this Butternut Squash Strozzapreti…keep reading for the recipe.

 Butternut Squash Strozzapreti

*serves 4

Ingredients:

• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 4 cups shredded butternut squash (I used the coarse grating attachment on a food processor)
• 1/4 cup thinly sliced fresh sage
• 3/4 pound strozzapreti (or any tubular-shaped short pasta like penne or cavatappi)
• Kosher salt
• 1/2 cup Parmesan, finely grated

Instructions:

1. Cook pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water, stirring occasionally, until al dente. Drain pasta, reserving 1 cup pasta cooking liquid.
2. Heat oil and butter in a heavy saucepan over medium. Add squash and sage and cook, stirring occasionally, until squash begins to brown, about 3 minutes.
3. Add pasta and 1/2 cup pasta water to squash and stir to coat. Cook over medium heat, adding more pasta water as needed, until sauce coats pasta. Stir in 1/2 cup Parmesan. Divide pasta among bowls; top with more Parmesan.

*recipe slightly adapted from Bon Appetit; photos by Camille