Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 295 kcal | 84 kcal |
| Protein | 5.9 g | 1.7 g |
| Fat | 0.7 g | 0.2 g |
| saturated | 0.1 g | 0 g |
| Carbohydrate | 59 g | 16.7 g |
| sugars | 0 g | 0 g |
| Fibre | 11.1 g | 3.1 g |
| Sodium | 22 mg | 6 mg |
Estimated from the ingredients, for the finished dried product. Actual values vary with the produce you use and how far you dry it.
Ingredients
- 5.2 kg acorn squash
Instructions
- Choose a squash that feels heavy for its size with dull, hard skin. A glossy acorn squash was cut young, and its flesh is watery and bland however it is treated.
- Halve it through the stem and scrape the seed cavity out with a metal spoon. The stringy part around the seeds never softens and turns into threads in whatever you cook later.
- Cover the halves loosely and bake at 177 °C for half an hour. Acorn squash is dense and starchy, and it is this pre-cooking that turns it sweet — dried raw it tastes of very little.
- Let it cool enough to handle and the skin comes away in sheets. Attempting it hot costs you a layer of flesh and a burnt thumb.
- Cut the flesh into cubes of about 13 mm, all much the same. It is soft now and tempting to hurry, but a fat cube will still be sticky at the centre when the rest is hard.
- Lay the cubes on mesh with air on every side. Softened squash slumps into whatever it is touching and the two dry as one.
- Dry at 52 °C for 9 hours. Cooked squash goes through a long leathery phase that looks like the end — push past it until a cube is hard and rattles when dropped on the tray.
- Cut a cooled cube in half to confirm it. Orange that looks moist rather than matt at the centre means the whole batch goes back on.
- Sealed in a jar in the dark they hold a year. Twenty minutes in simmering stock brings them back, or grind them to a flour that thickens a soup without tasting of thickener.
