Baked butternut squash and sausage.

katienotinnola

Jan 1

I am still in the world of sheet pan suppers. This recipe is from the NYT, with modifications. Most of the prep time is dealing with the butternut squash and the potatoes. Then the oven does the rest of the work.

The ingredients:

4 Italian sausages (we used 2 hot and 2 sweet);

3 medium-large Yukon Gold potatoes;

some butternut squash (maybe 4 cups of slices);

some broccoli (maybe 1-1/2 cups of florets);

1/4 cup olive oil;

1 tablespoon lemon juice; and

some kosher salt and black pepper.

I started by cutting the top part of the squash off the bottom. I cut the bottom part in half lengthwise, scooped the seeds out and baked it (cut side down, with about 1/2" of water) in a 9"x13" pan while the oven was heating up (to 425 degrees). This has nothing to do with the rest of the dinner prep. When the squash is soft, you can scoop it out and process it in a food processor until smooth and then use it instead of pumpkin.

Then I peeled the top part of the squash. I cut the squash in half lengthwise, and then cut each half into half moon shapes.

I put the squash slices into a bowl.

Next, I added the 4 sausages, making some slashes in the skin, both to keep them from bursting and, on a more positive note, to let the spicy porky juices flavor the vegetables.

Next, I washed the potatoes. I cut the potatoes in half (no peeling) and cut each half into half moons, discarding out the ends which were mostly potato skin. Then I added the potatoes to the bowl, followed by the olive oil and about 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper and tossed everything around.

I took out a large rimmed sheet pan and poured everything onto it, spreading the ingredients around into a single layer.

Spreading the ingredients.

While the sheet pan was in the oven, I cut some of the broccoli so I had about 1-1/2 cups of florets. I cooked the florets briefly so they were cooked through but not mushy. Maybe 10 minutes. I set the cooked broccoli bits aside.

Baking time: about 40 minutes. I stirred stuff around after about 20 minutes. After 40 minutes, the potatoes and squash were browned on the underside and tender and the sausage was cooked.

I cut the sausages into thirds and poured it all into the attractive serving dish.

I mixed the broccolit with the lemon juice and poured that over top of the sausage and potatoes and squash. Dinner!

The recipe called for all squash. Which would be fine. I preferred some squash and some potatoes. Don't use russets which fall apart.

The recipe called for 1-1/4 cups of fresh parsley, which I did not have, to be mixed with the lemon juice. So I went with the green vegetable I had on hand. It was fine: tasted and looked good.

One could run the sheet pan under the broiler if one wished to brown up the sausages. I didn't. Leftovers were good, warm or cold. Cleanup was easy.

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