Roasted Acorn Squash With Chestnuts and Mushroom

The deep orange and green colors of the acorn squash remind us of the autumn leaves.  This is a great dish to serve at a Thanksgiving dinner, either as a beautiful first course, or as a side-dish during the main course.  If acorn squash is not available in your area, use a butternut squash instead.

The recipe below calls for both pine nuts and chestnuts.  Seeds and nuts are nature’s spark of life.  A tiny nut has the potential of producing an enormous tree, when eaten these seeds and nuts provide us with a huge amount of condensed energy.  Eaten in large quantities, oil rich nuts tax the liver.  Eaten in small quantities, nuts and seeds are beneficial to the immune system.  

Nuts are fatty foods that serve as a great source of vitamin E.  Vitamin E serves as a nerve protector and as an immune-enhancing oxidant.   When eaten in small amounts, seeds and nuts can strengthen the immune system and prevent the need for taking vitamin E supplements. 

If you find that you crave nuts and seeds you might want to cut back on your consumption of refined vegetable oils.  Refined vegetable oils play a significant role in our need for vitamin E.  The more refined vegetable oils that you use, the greater the need for vitamin E.

Nuts and seeds have a tendency to become rancid very quickly.  It is healthier to buy nuts in their shell and to crack them at home.  This does not have to be an overwhelming proposition, give your older children a hammer and let them have the time of their lives!

The recipe below has a few steps but it isn’t complicated

Ingredients:

  • 4 acorn squash.

Slice the squash in half and discard the seeds. Bake in a preheated oven at 180c (350f), for  30 minutes. The squash should be slightly soft but not fully cooked.  Remove from the oven, fill, and bake for twenty minutes more.

Stuffing:
  1. olive oil
  2. 1 tbsp ground flax
  3. 2 tbsp hot water
  4. 1 box button mushrooms
  5. 1 clove garlic, pressed
  6. 1 onion, chopped
  7. 1/2 package of tofu, cut into small cubes
  8. 1 bag peeled and roasted chestnuts (100 gr)
  9. 1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
  10. salt and pepper
  11. 1/4 tsp all spice
  12. 1 tbsp cranberries, for garnish

Mix together the flax seed and the hot water and allow to sit for five minutes.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan.  Lightly saute the remaining ingredients for five minutes, until they have slightly softened.  Remove from the flame and puree in a blender or food processor until the mixture  is smooth.  Stir in the flax seed and spoon the mixture into the hollow at the center of the squash.  Garnish with the cranberries and bake for twenty minutes more.

Serve warm.  Serves 8.


Ethiopian Injera Bread for Sigd

In Ethiopia, injera is served with almost every meal, and is a traditional accompaniment, used to scoop up food in Middle Eastern fashion, to such dishes as doro wat, sik sik wat and zilzil alecha. Most Ethiopian main dishes and vegetables are very spicy. A7 brings you this in honor of Ethiopian Jews in Israel who recently celebrated Sigd.

Ingredients:


  1. ½ kilograms Sifted flour
  2. Bag Baking powder *
  3. 50 grams Quick yeast
  4. ½ cup Oil
  5. 8 cups Water
Put the flour in a deep bowl. Add the yeast and baking powder Add water gradualy while stirring until you get a smooth batter. Keep for 3 days at (Ethiopian) room temperature. Stir every four hours. 


Heat a frying pan (25-30 cm diameter) and oil with 2-3 Tbs oil. 

Pour batter to form a layer at least ½ cm thick. 

Cover and fry for 2-3 minutes. When the bread starts to lift at the edge and solidifies at the lower side, turn it over. You get a kind of soft and porous pita.

Wet with water the lower side of the pan and oil the inner side before each bread.

Enjoy!

Ethiopian Injera Bread for Sigd II
  1. 1 servings
  2. Measure Ingredient
  3. 4 cups Self-rising flour
  4. 1 cup Whole wheat flour
  5. 1 teaspoon Baking powder
  6. 2 cups Club soda
Combine flours and baking powder in a bowl. Add club soda plus about 4 cup water. Mix into a smooth, fairly thin batter. Heat a large, non-stick skillet. When a drop of water bounces on the pan's surface, dip enough batter from the bowl to cover the bottom of the skillet, and pour it in quickly, all at once. Swirl the pan so that the entire bottom is evenly coated, then set it back on the heat. 

When the moisture has evaporated and small holes appear on the surface, remove the injera. It should be cooken only on one side, and not too browned. If your first one is a little pasty and undercooked, you may need to cook a little longer or to make the next one thinner. 

But, as with French crepes, be careful not to cook them too long, or you'll have a crisp bread that may be tasty but won't fold around bits of stew. Stack the injera one on top of the other as you cook, covering with a clean cloth to prevent their drying out.