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Stuffed Squash à la Creole
Use I or more crookneck or patty pan squashes. Cut out a piece at the stem end and carefully remove seeds and central soft pulp.
Dry some sliced bread very thoroughly in the oven, then put it through the food chopper.
Make an estimate of the quantity of filling needed to stuff the squash; then for each cupful of bread crumbs allow 1/2 cupful of chopped firm tomato (watery juice discarded), 1 tablespoonful of chopped onion, 2 tablespoonfuls of chopped sweet red pepper, a scant 1/2 teaspoonful of salt, 2 dashes of cayenne, I heaping tablespoonful of chopped boiled ham and 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Lightly fill the squash with this, pin on the covers and steam until very tender.
Cut in slices and serve with a savory tomato sauce.
A summer-squash recipe built on a dry crumb stuffing, from an era when leftover bread was never thrown out. The method is sound; only the equipment language needs translating.
- The hinge: dry the bread properlyThe crumbs are the only thing absorbing the tomato and squash liquid, so they must be genuinely dried out in a low oven (no temperature is given; a slow oven until the slices are crisp through will do), not merely stale. Soft crumbs turn the filling to paste as the squash steams.
- Which squashPatty pan is the easiest to work with: cut a lid from the stem end and hollow it with a spoon. A crookneck has a narrow neck and gives you very little cavity, so choose fat, mature specimens about 4-5 inches across. Allow one small squash per person or one large one for two.
- Food chopperThe hand-cranked meat grinder common in kitchens of the period. A food processor pulsed briefly gives the same coarse crumb; avoid grinding to flour.
- Pin on the coversWooden toothpicks or short skewers through the lid into the shell. They hold the cut piece in place so the filling steams rather than dries.
- Chopped sweet red pepperA red bell pepper, seeded and finely diced. "Sweet" distinguishes it from the hot kinds.
- Boiled hamDeli-style cooked ham, cut thick and chopped, works exactly as intended. It is here for salt and savour, so taste before adding the full half teaspoon of salt.
- Steaming timeNo time is given. In a covered steamer over simmering water, reckon on roughly half an hour for small patty pans and appreciably longer for large ones; test by pushing a knife tip through the side wall, which should meet no resistance.
- Draining the tomatoDiscarding the watery juice is not optional. Fresh summer tomatoes will otherwise release enough liquid to flood the shell during the long steam.
- The sauce"A savory tomato sauce" is left undefined; a plain cooked tomato sauce with onion and a little butter suits it better than a herb-heavy one. Serve the squash sliced across into rounds so the stuffing shows.
"A la Creole" in early twentieth-century American cookbooks was often shorthand for tomato, onion and sweet pepper, with cayenne for heat -- a formula applied to eggs, rice, chops and, as here, vegetables, frequently with little direct connection to Louisiana cooking beyond the flavour trio. The dish belongs to the economy literature of its day: dried bread crumbs bulk out a filling that contains barely an ounce of ham, and the squash itself was among the cheapest garden produce of high summer, when patty pans and crooknecks came in faster than a household could eat them.