As I said a couple of weeks ago, there's no way for someone who lives in a Manhattan apartment to attempt the charcoal-fired cooking of the Basque Country restaurant Asador Etxebarri. Still, our too-big but consistently delicious meal there yielded a couple of practicable ideas.
One was winter squash / pumpkin cooked not to the point of pie-filling creaminess but in such a way that it retained its juiciness and fruity aroma and flavor. I love that fragrance: Next time you cut into a raw squash, take a good whiff and think of ripe melon (they're close botanical relatives, so this shouldn't come as such a big surprise).
After nearly three weeks of travel, Jackie and I came home to a small butternut squash we'd bought just before vacation, and it was still in tip-top condition. I cut the neck crosswise into one-inch (2.5 cm) slices, then peeled them: one slice for each portion as a light first course. To get a hint of smoke (none of the food at Etxebarri tasted anything but subtly of smoke and nothing apart from the steak was charred), I cooked one strip of bacon in a heavy skillet, over very low heat so the fat would render but not begin to taste burnt. I then ate the bacon, leaving the merest slick of smoky fat in the skillet. I seasoned the disks of squash and added them to the pan, which I then covered to encourage the meager heat to penetrate the squash. If I had been using a more spherical squash, I would have cut it into rings rather than wedges to keep each piece's thickness uniform.
Earlier, I had toasted a handful of pecans (in the microwave, checking every half minute to make sure they didn't burn) and used an immersion blender to reduce them to a sandy consistency just on the verge of becoming a nut butter: the oils were beginning to cause the mixture to clump. To this I added salt and perhaps a quarter teaspoon of granulated sugar - just enough to be discerned as a foil to the salt and the toasty nuts. This was intended as an echo of the walnut paste used at Etxebarri. You could, indeed, use walnuts, but I had some new-harvest pecans in the house, which Americanized the dish.
I flipped the squash every four or five minutes - always over low heat - until it was just turning golden and could be pierced with a thin-bladed paring knife meeting some slight resistance: it was not intended to be creamy-soft, but to remain moist and even slightly crisp; as you chew, you should be able to feel the fibers and the moisture between them. The total cooking time for my particular squash in my particular pan over my particular fire was 20 minutes. It can be held for a while and briefly reheated in the oven, though it shouldn't be served piping hot.
A disk of squash went onto each plate, to be generously topped with nut mixture. At the restaurant, the ingots of pumpkin/squash were then bedecked with edible flowers and, of all things, carrot tops. No one's stopping you from following suit, but come on....
If I had this to do again (which I do), I'd choose a more flavorful squash or pumpkin; the butternut was pleasant enough, but not an eye-opener. The cooking method, however, worked just as I'd wanted it to, and the hint of bacon smoke was discernible but not intrusive. The sweet-salty pecan sand was a natural mate for the squash and is something I'll use again soon, to replace crushed amaretti in a squash filling for ravioli, to sprinkle on squash ravioli, or even in some sort of dessert.
STOP THE PRESSES: It dawns on me that not everyone lives in an urban apartment. Some people, I am told, have access to outdoor charcoal or wood grills. They may wish to brush the squash with olive oil and grill it, being very careful to keep the heat low and the smoke under control.
