What exactly is a butternut?

When your mom gives you a butternut squash, what do you do with it? You could certainly dice it with some other veggies and roast them in the oven. But when your mom also gave you the 2009 (and 2010) Cook's Illustrated Annual and it has a recipe for Pasta with Butternut Squash and Sage, you of course give that one a whirl!

Now, lucky for me, I had a wonderful cooking partner to dice the butternut squash, but this helper happens to be a vegetarian and the recipe was not. The recipe called for chicken broth and bacon and the fat rendered from the bacon, but we were able to improvise. Vegetable broth and butter.

Step one: Cook some bacon in a skillet, sliced lengthwise and then cut into pieces. Add 8 large fresh sage leaves and let it cook until fragrant. Separate the rendered fat from the sage

and bacon.

Step two: Cook a medium squash, diced, in the skillet with 2 Tbsp. of the bacon fat (or

butter, if you're dining with a vegetarian). Caramelize the squash, then brown it, add some butter, 6 thinly sliced scallions, 1/4 tsp. nutmeg, 1 tsp. sugar, salt, pepper and 1 Tbsp. minced sage and cook, stirring occasionally, until scallions are soft. Add 2 cups of chicken broth (or vegetable broth for the vegetarian-friendly version).

Step three: Meanwhile, cook some pasta, like penne, until al dente (I can't think of any recipes where you cook the pasta to anything but al dente) and save 1/2 cup of the cooking water in case you need to adjust the consistency of the pasta sauce. Put the pasta and squash together in a big bowl or a Dutch oven, add 2 Tbsp. parmesan, 4 tsp. lemon juice and the bacon-sage mixtures. Add more cheese as desired.

And then eat it!