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Yellow Squash and Meat
3/4 pound mutton 3 tablespoons chopped onion 5 tablespoons shortening 3 1/2 cups cubed squash 2 cups tomato...salt 1 teaspoon paprika Cut the mutton into small pieces and brown with the chopped onion in the shortening. Add the squash cut into small cubes. Brown for a few minutes, add the tomato and seasoning, put into a baking dish, and cook in a moderate oven 35 minutes. Fifteen minutes before serving, remove cover and let the top get brown. With a mixed vegetable salad, this is a complete meal. Serves 4.
A straightforward braise of meat, summer squash and tomato that goes from skillet to oven in one pan. Two things in the original need attention: the oven temperature, and the fact that mutton is not the meat you will bring home from the store.
- Moderate ovenSet it to 350F. The dish is covered for the first twenty minutes, so the heat is doing gentle braising work rather than roasting.
- MuttonMutton is meat from a mature sheep (usually defined as over a year old), strongly flavoured and tougher than lamb; it is hard to find at American butchers today. Lamb shoulder, cut into half-inch pieces, is the practical substitute and suits the 35-minute cooking time better. Mutton cut this small would likely still be chewy at the end of the stated time and would want longer.
- The squashYellow squash here means summer crookneck or straightneck, not winter squash. Cut it into cubes of about three-quarters of an inch; smaller pieces collapse into the tomato during the braise.
- ShorteningFive tablespoons is generous by current habit. 'Shortening' at the time could mean lard, drippings or a hydrogenated vegetable fat. Two to three tablespoons of oil or butter will brown the meat and onion adequately, and lamb renders some of its own.
- SaltThe original gives no measurement for the salt. Start with about a teaspoon for this quantity and correct after the tomato has cooked down, since tomato flattens seasoning.
- TomatoTwo cups is unspecified in the original; canned tomatoes with their liquid, or an equivalent measure of peeled fresh tomatoes in season, will both work. Drain very watery canned tomatoes slightly or the squash will stew rather than braise.
- Browning the topUncovering for the last fifteen minutes is what keeps this from tasting like a wet stew. If the surface is still pale at the end, two minutes under the broiler finishes it.
- YieldFour servings as written, and it is meant as the whole plate with a salad alongside. If you serve it over rice or with bread it will stretch to five or six.