Category: Side dishes

Yellow Squash Casserole

I fell in love with squash when we lived in western Kentucky.  One year when our next door neighbor offered us space in her large garden in return for our help in tending it, I planted 24 different kinds of squash.  My wife thinks that it was not more than 20, and she may be right, but I know that I had at least 5 different kinds of zucchini, 2 or 3 kinds of yellow squash plus patty pan, scallop and spaghetti squash and every kind of winter squash I could find.

Today I pick up my favorite kinds of squash at the farmers market.  One of those favorites is yellow summer squash.  It is famous in our family as the main ingredient in one of my most abject failures in the kitchen.  “Not as bad as sherried summer squash” means that something I have made is at least edible.  The sherried version complete with walnuts, butter, maple syrup, cinnamon, onions and sherry ended up on the compost pile.  I tried my best to eat it, though the snickers and gagging sounds were distracting.

Just to show me what a real cook could do with yellow squash, Jerri found a recipe in one of her Book of the Month Club bonus cookbooks for a yellow squash casserole.  We often call it a soufflé, because it is so light and flavorful.

Here is how to make it.

INGREDIENTS:

2 to 3 lbs. yellow squash
2 tsp. salt
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 cup cottage cheese
4 large eggs
1 cup bread crumbs
2 T minced parsley
1/3 tsp. white pepper
3 T melted butter.

PROCEDURE:

Wash and remove the stem and blossom ends from the squash.  Larger squash with tough skins should be peeled.  Grate the squash and mix it with the salt in a medium bowl.  After it sits for 20 to 30 minutes, drain and press the liquid from the squash.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.   Grate the cheese, mince the parsley and beat the eggs until lemon colored.  Butter a 3-quart casserole or soufflé dish.  Melt the butter.

Mix the squash, parsley, cheddar and cottage cheese, bread crumbs, eggs and pepper thoroughly.  Put the mixture into the baking dish and pour the butter over the top.

Bake for an hour.  A knife inserted near the center should come our clean when the casserole is done.  This is an excellent side dish with barbecued ribs or chicken.

NOTES:  You should have three to four cups of grated squash.  We prefer using sharp cheddar cheese, but use medium if you want a milder flavor.

Candied Dill Strips

Like most country kids, I was in a 4-H club.  Ours was called the Busy Beavers, and we met at Mrs. Carlson’s, about a ten minute bike ride from my home.  I became the club secretary and dutifully submitted a short news item to The Sawyer County Record after every meeting.

The meetings did not offer many opportunities for dramatic reporting, but I did my best.  I remember that one time a chicken got loose in the kitchen where we were having our meeting, but Mom didn’t let me put that news into my report.  Dull or not, I was still excited to see my name in print, and Mom sent clippings to aunts and uncles who lived far away.

I suppose that I might have had a chicken project myself, but my heart was set on raising watermelons.  Thus I registered a kitchen garden project, and Dad let me have a sizable part of our garden plot which I staked off, manured and planted with the different seeds listed in the project guidelines.  Besides carrots, radishes, peas, beans and lettuce, there were cucumbers and the whole reason for the project–watermelons.

The watermelon seed packet showed round dark green melons developed for shorter growing seasons.  Dad suggested that I plant the seeds in mid May rather than waiting until the recommended dates for northern Wisconsin and be careful to cover the hills after the plants came up until the frost danger was past.  That would give my plants a few extra days before the first killing frost and if I were lucky I might get some melons.

Alas it was not to be.  It was a hot dry summer, so I hauled buckets of water in my wagon.  I weeded, hoed and talked nice to my plants, as Mom suggested.  Everything looked pretty good, and I was proud of my radishes and peas.  There were lots of little cucumbers, and my watermelon vines had a respectable number of melons getting bigger every day under the hot August sun.  Some already looked like big smooth green muskmelons when a hard frost killed even my covered plants.

I did get a white ribbon for my cucumbers.

Most of my cucumbers ended up as pickles.  One kind I really like are sweet or candied dill pickles. I don’t have Mom’s recipe, and candied dill strips are hard to find in the stores nowadays, but here is a version I adapted from one I found years ago on the web.  Since you start with commercial dill pickles, it takes just a few minutes to make them.

INGREDIENTS:

2 quart jars of non-kosher dill pickles
3 cups white sugar
2 cups cider vinegar
1 cup pickle brine
1.5 T pickling spices
1/2 tsp. dill weed
1/2 tsp. dill seed
1” piece of cinnamon stick, broken in half
Fresh dill (optional)

PROCEDURE:

Empty the two jars of pickles into a colander over a bowl.  Reserve one cup of the brine and rinse the pickles under cold tap water.

Put the vinegar, brine and sugar into a stainless steel or enameled pan.  Tie the pickling spices, dill weed and dill seed into a piece of cheesecloth and put the bundle into the liquid.  Bring it to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes.  Let cool about 15 minutes.

While the liquid is boiling, cut the pickles into strips.  I cut small ones into quarters and larger ones into sixths.  Put the strips back into the jars.  Top with a half inch stick of cinnamon and a sprig of fresh dill in each jar and fill them with the warm liquid.

Seal the jars and store them in the refrigerator, turning them over every other day for a week or so to make sure that all strips are immersed in the  liquid. Store the pickles at least one month before eating.

NOTES:  Buy the least expensive dill pickles you can find, but use real apple cider vinegar.