stuffing a squash

Sweden doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, but my friends in the states were posting enough about the holiday, and the foods that they eat for that meal that it inspired me to do some cooking.

The specific prod was a conversation about stuffing, and if it should be cooked inside or outside the turkey (my family always did it inside), which reminded me of the time, som 20 years ago, that I had a vegetarian housemate, so in addition to a stuffed turkey I also did a stuffed squash. These days I tend to eat vegetarian, so I decided to try doing another stuffed squash, and asked on FB if anyone wanted to come help me eat it. Of course the only replies I got were from people far away, who want to, but can't get here. Undaunted, I made it anyway.

Some of them who wished they could come over asked for a recipe, so I will type it up. However, I will warn you that this made way more stuffing than needed for one squash, so if you want to try this at home either reduce the recipe, get more squashes needing stuffing, or, like I did, put some in a squash and the rest in a casserole dish. Note also that I got the black currants and dried nettles from my garden before freezing (the berries) and drying (the nettles).  If you don't have these you could try substituting other berries, and some other green leafy plant, but it will be quite different, since they both have a very distinctive flavour.

Stuffed Squash

1 largish squash (I used a spaghetti squash that weighed almost 2 kg before cutting)
6 to 7 cups of coarse bread crumbs
1 liter milk
5 eggs
1/2 cup almond meal
1//4 cup chopped almonds
1/2 cup chopped pistachio
1/4 cup roasted chopped hazelnuts
3 T flax seeds
1 cup frozen black currants
1/3 cup dried nettles
cardamom powder
ginger powder
grains of paradise
pepper
salt
coriander powder
nutmeg, fresh grated

• Bake a loaf of bread the day before. I did mine using mostly white wheat flour, plus a little oat flour and not as much rye flour, and added powdered milk and some butter.
• Cool the loaf, cut thick slices, and cut the slices into 1-2 cm cubes, and let stand in a bowl, covered with a cloth, overnight.
• The next day use your hands to break up the bread chunks a bit
• Pre-heat the oven to 150 C (~300 F)
• Beat together the milk, eggs, and spices and pour over the bread and let it stand while you do everything else
• Coarsely chop the nuts (I used a food processor, chopping one type at a time) and add to the bread mixture
• Coarsely chop the frozen berries (I used a food processor) and stir them into the bread mix
• Set your squash on the counter and determine which side should be "up" to have it lay flat and not roll.
• Carefully cut an oval around the full length of it, about 2/3 of the way up.  I did this by stabbing the squash with a smallish pointy knife deeply enough to reach into the seed cavity, holding the knife such that the entry line is horizontal, but the blade is at an angle so that handle is higher than the blade (which will make the lid sit properly in place later). After doing one lap around the squash with the stabs, it was easy to so the second lap with the knife sliding along the path, cutting the last few connection points so that the lid could be removed.
• Take off the lid and remove the seeds and stringy bits holding the seeds.
• Brush the inside of the squash and the lid with a thin layer of melted butter.
• butter the inside of a large glass casserole dish, and the inside of its glass lid, too.
• Fill the cavity of the squash with some of the bread mixture and put the squash lid on (I slightly domed the filling so that it would just touch the underside of the lid
• Fill the casserole dish with the remainder of bread mixture and put the lid on
• Put the squash into a square baking pan (to catch any drips)
• Put both the squash (in its pan) and the casserole into the oven and bake for one hour
• While it bakes clean, toast, and eat the pumpkin seeds (and wash the cooking mess, or, if you prefer, wash up, and then enjoy the seeds)
• About halfway through baking move the squash to the other side of the oven with respect to the casserole dish (especially if your oven heats unevenly).
• Turn off the oven and let the food rest therein another half an our or so to be certain that it cooked completely through, and to make it easier to scoop the squash out of the shell.

I found both the contents of the casserole dish and the stuffing in the squash to be yummy, but, of course, they taste differently. Of course, the stuffing has the advantage of being able to also eat the roasted squash with it,