Squash-off: bruschetta with butternut squash​

The lovely dailychao was given the task of writing a blog post about butternut squash, and we decided to do it Top Chef style; we both came up with dishes we thought really highlighted butternut, then prepared them head to head. Hers was a delicious vegetable stew with butternut squash, and mine is a bruschetta with butternut squash, bacon, paneer, shallots and a balsamic-bourbon reduction. It’s hard to say who won (:

This is one of the more involved things I’ve made. Note that you’ll need two weird ingredients: the first is glycerin flakes, which act as an emulsifier, and the second is xanthan gum, which is an awesome, magic thickener. You can buy both on Amazon.

Cut the bread thinly (~8mm thick) and let sit on the countertop to dry for an hour. Warm sous vide bath to 70 degrees C. Cut butternut squash into long triangles and put in vacuum bag with sea salt and olive oil, and when water bath is hot, cook for 45 minutes. Once the squash is in the bath, make the sauce. Warm about a tablespoon of chili oil in a saucepan over medium heat, then dissolve a quarter-teaspoon of glycerin flakes in the oil. Whisk it to make sure that it’s totally dissolved; the glycerin acts as an emulsifier to allow the other ingredients in the sauce to mix completely with the oil without any separation. Add three tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce and a quarter cup of bourbon and whisk in. Set the mixture on fire and burn off the alcohol in the bourbon. This also toasts the vinegar a bit and gives it a nice smoky flavor. You shouldn’t expect a big flame here (not like the one coming later :) Add an eighth of a teaspoon of xanthan gum to a quarter-cup of cold water and stir until dissolved completely. The result should be about the consistency of liquid soap (if not, add more xanthan to make thicker or more water to make thinner). Add this, one tablespoon at a time, to your sauce, mixing after you add each tablespoon, and stop adding when it’s reached a thin consistency that clings to a spoon. Salt to taste, then you’re done with the sauce; let it cool and then load a plastic syringe with it. The rest is much easier, I promise! Look, this step is just one sentence: mince a shallot and sautee in peanut oil, and set it aside. Cut paneer into long fingers and fry in a dry pan over medium-high heat. When the pan has come back up to temperature, pour about a tablespoon of soy sauce into the pan to give it a nice salty glaze (alternatively, you can substitute halloumi for paneer and skip the soy sauce – Whole Foods was out of halloumi). Pour about a quarter-cup of bourbon over the whole thing after the soy has boiled off and set it on fire. Expect a big flame here – maybe two feet high – that should go out in around 30 seconds. Fry a few strips of bacon, then pat them dry and let them cool a bit and dry out so they end up crispy. Skip this step for vegetarians. You’re done with the prep! Now you just need to assemble them. Put the paneer and a wedge of butternut on the bread, then take a blowtorch and blacken the edges of the butternut; while you’re doing this, you’ll toast the bread a bit, which is good. Make a zig-zag pattern over that with the sauce, then put down a strip of bacon and a small spoonful of shallots, then garnish with Italian parsley. For bonus points, give the shallots a little blast with the blowtorch to give them black edges; you can’t really taste the difference, but it makes them look beautiful. Eat!

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