Cookbook Club – Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes

For September’s Cookbook Club, we used Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes by Peter Meehan and the editors of Lucky Peach. I chose the Roasted Squash with Red Glaze. Go to my Cookbook Club site to see all the recipes we got to try at the event – 15 of the 101! For now – my dish!

I’ve had red glaze meats before and they were delicious. My squash repertoire is pretty limited, so I thought why not try this recipe? The hardest part was cutting up my kabocha squash into 1-inch thick pieces – I was afraid I was going to cut a finger off! I definitely need lessons on how to cut a squash.

Luckily I managed to seed and cut the squash with all digits intact. I sprinkled with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and popped in the oven to roast until tender.

While the squash was roasting, I simmered ginger, garlic, scallions, water, soy sauce, mirin, vinegar, and sugar until it was a syrupy glaze.

Once done, I drizzled the glaze onto the roasted squash and garnished with more scallions.

These turned out great. They are salty and sweet with a nice punch of ginger. I wasn’t sure whether I was just supposed to drizzle the liquid, as the recipe didn’t specify. The picture in the cookbook didn’t appear to have chunks in the glaze, but I figured what the heck… and spread some of the ginger/garlic/scallion bits around too. The bits added some zing and texture – I’d do it that way again. Oh, and don’t waste your squash seeds – pull off all the stringy stuff, let the seeds dry, then sprinkle with olive oil and a little salt, and roast those too. Great snack to have around!