During my family’s visit, we cooked a delicious fall feast one night. I had never cooked rack of lamb, acorn squash, or butternut squash soup before, so a lot of the prep was new to me. All of the dishes turned out to be super easy!
Here is how the prep work leading up to dinner went:
- Turn on oven to 350.
- Cut acorn squash in half, seed, and place cut-side down in casserole dish with about 1 inch of water. Set timer for 30 min and put in oven.
- Run zucchini and yellow squash through food processor to slice. Sprinkle liberally with salt and let sit.
- Start a large skillet on low-medium heat with several (3 or 4) tablespoons of butter. Chop an onion and toss it in. Look in fridge for fresh garlic (none there); pull roasted head of garlic out of leftover roasted chicken from yesterday, pluck out the garlic cloves and add to pan. Leave to caramelize.
- Rinse meat and season both sides with salt and pepper. Leave on counter so it can come to room temp before cooking. (Note: this may be against food safety recommendations, but I prefer to cook my meat from room temp.) I did not trim any fat or meat off the chops to make them into lollipop style – it seemed like a waste of meat and flavorful good fat.
- Peel, seed and chop butternut squash.
…Pour a glass of wine! I had to wait about 20 min for everything to cook, stir the onions occassionally, and think about dessert…
I got to chatting with my mom and suddenly everything was ready for the next steps!
- Put the butternut squash in the pan with the onions and garlic and add 6 cups of frozen homemade chicken stock (I meant to defrost it but forgot), put the lid on the pan and turn up to melt stock, then bring to boil gently.
- Take out the acorn squash, flip them over, fill each with about 1 tablespoon butter, 1 teaspoon muscovado, and sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. Put back in the oven.
- Skim butternut squash soup if needed after chicken stock has come to a boil.
- Rinse the zucchini and yellow squash and lay on a towel to dry.
The final cooking and pulling things together was all done nearly simultaneously, alternately flipping, stirring, and blending as needed:
- Heat a skillet on medium and add 2 to 3 tablespoons of butter. When the skillet is heated through, add the lamb. Cook 5 min each side using the timer. I had 2 racks, or perhaps one rack cut in half? Each was about 5 by 6 inches. As each is finished cooking, place on a plate covered with foil to rest.
- Melt about 2 tablespoons butter in stainless steel wok. Add zucchini and cook on medium until cooked through. This took over 10 minutes – perhaps because there were 5 squash total and the wok was deep.
- Use hand blender to puree butternut squash soup.
- Repeat (Flip rack, stir zucchini, puree some more… Put second rack in pan, stir zucchini, puree some more…)
Finally, the soup was blended, the zucchini was cooked through, and the acorn squash was ready to come out of the oven. At the last moment, I added sour cream and mustard to the pan the lamb had been cooked in, and stirred it on medium heat for about 2 minutes to create a delicious sauce.
Butternut squash with lots of pepper and a spoonful of sourcream
Closeup of the acorn squash - these were divine!
Zucchini and yellow squash, a happy and colorful pairing
Rack of lamb, sliced into chops
Everything was delicious, with just a bit of zucchini and soup leftover. After clearing the plates and letting everyone rest for a bit, I pulled together a quick dessert. But that will have to be a different post. In all, it was a fine fall feast!
Notes on ingredients for this meal:
Acorn, butternut, zucchini, and yellow squash were all local organic, purchased at the Saturday Austin Farmers Market. I’ll get better about getting vendor names to give them credit.
Rack of lamb is organic and grass-fed, also from the Farmer’s Market.
Muscovado is an unrefined sugar with a delicious flavor that I like to use in place of brown sugar. It should still be used in moderation, but is more of a whole food than commerical brown sugar.
The stick and a half of butter used on this meal was Organic Valley Pasture Butter
I prefer pink HimalaSalt in the grinder because of the flavor and the variety of the grind – some bits crunchy, others so small they dissolve
I’ll post about making homemade Chicken Stock on another day!
Recipe credits:
Acorn Squash – mom’s recipe
Butternut Squash Soup – adapted from Courtney’s vegan version
Zucchini – Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon
Rack of Lamb – adapted from Eat Fat, Lose Fat by Mary Enig and Sally Fallon
