Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Healthy Butternut Squash Pasta

Ya'll, this recipe is sooo good!  It's healthy and tasty and makes my mouth water for more!  It's not too hard to whip up and once again, I tend to double the recipe so we have enough leftovers!  It's perfect this time of year!  We brought it to our Friendsgiving!  It got cold before we ate, which was a disappointment, but we continued to eat the leftovers through the first week in December!

I think the most difficult part is getting the butternut squash ready to cook.  You can go the easy route and purchase pre-cut butternut squash at the grocery, but it's kinda fun to know you cut the thing up yourself!  If you want to make this by cutting up your butternut squash, here's how I do that:
-Wash the squash
-Cut off about 1/4 of an inch from the bottom and the top of the squash. (make sure the bottom is level so the squash will sit flat on the cutting board)
-Take a vegetable peeler and peel that squash (I used a potato peeler and it worked wonderfully)
-Stand the squash up on it's bottom and cut longways so you have two pieces
-Use a spoon and scoop out the seeds and the pulp
 -lay the squash halves down and cut into slices and then cubes


 Ingredients:
- 1 pound rotini pasta (we used multi-colored pasta)
- 1 butternut squash - small
- 1 bunch spinach - fresh, stemmed and rough chopped
- 2 cloves garlic - chopped
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 8 ounces mushrooms - sliced
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 teaspoon lemon pepper
- 3/4 cup Parmesan cheese - grated



Directions:

-Quarter, seed and peel squash and cut into 1/2 inch cubes.
-Boil pasta until al dente, reserve 1/2 cup of the pasta water. Drain pasta.

-In a large skillet, sauté the squash in the olive oil until almost tender, approximately 20 minutes.


-Sprinkle with salt and stir occasionally.

-Add spinach, garlic, mushroom with the squash and continue cooking over medium heat, stirring occasionally until any liquid is evaporated. (It says to add the spinach fresh, stemmed and rough chopped, but I literally just added the spinach!  It cooks down in with the squash, so it's perfect!)

-Add pasta and 1/2 cup of pasta water.


-Season with lemon juice, lemon pepper, salt and pepper.
-Remove from heat.
-Place in a large serving bowl and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.