It’s amazing to me that I can deal so well with an abundance of squash considering that just three years ago I was convinced it was poison. I have an aversion to nightshades, I managed to get over it with squash, now I aspire to be able to eat eggplant. Back to abundance though, if you’re only feeding two, even a medium butternut squash can be enough for 2-4 different recipes.

I used half of one in this Butternut Squash Galette inspired by Julie’s sweet potato version. I’d been wanting to try Julie’s recipe for quite awhile, but I just recently finally bought myself a cast iron skillet. With the fontina cheese, this is a perfectly rich autumn dish.

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After coming across snippets and rumors about an unmelting grillable cheese on the interwebs for a while, I tried it in a salad on a beautiful patio on tourist trap Granville Island. It was called Halloumi, and it was good.

I started keeping an eye out for recipes and came across a few like
Sizzling Halloumi Cheese with Fava Beans, but I could never find the cheese, not even in the snooty $100 bread flown in every morning from France grocery store. Finally, on a long and failed mission which involved walking very far to a closed wine bar last Sunday, I stumbled across a Greek grocer, stumbled up to the cheese counter, and inquired. “You mean Haloom?, It’s in the refrigerator case”.

So I set out to make the Sizzling Halloumi Cheese with Fava Beans from Epicurious.com the next day, arriving home from the dayjob an hour late due to tracking down the fava beans. Luckily I was already planning on reducing the recipe to 4 servings, if not 2, from 6. Where the recipe calls for 1 1/4 lbs of fresh fava beans to turn into 10oz after shelling and peeling, I came out with 4 ounces. Luckily the recipe I was making for the weeks lunches at the same time had left over a bit of a package of baby spinach so I was able to improvise . . . and of course it was good, it was fried cheese!

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A few weeks ago I made this Onion and Fennel Bisque, which called for a whole two tablespoons of Pernod. While the soup was quite good - I actually liked the fennel in it and I don’t tend to enjoy fennel - I wondered what else to use the rest of the 750ml bottle in.

Google didn’t reveal much, mostly meat recipes, but I did come across one appealing recipe for Fresh Spinach with Leeks in Pernod, which I slightly modified and paired with some cumin spiced white bean and rice patties for a quick one dish meal (quick after the beans & rice are cooked of course) . . .

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