Pasta with Butternut Parmesan Sauce

One of the best things about fall is the abundance of pumpkins and hardy winter squash. Ever wonder why winter squash is called “winter” squash when it first makes its appearance in the fall? Perhaps considering whether stored in a cool place, they’ll last several months, well into winter. Anyway, butternut squash is the queen of winter squashes. The taste is so good, and so consistent, that from what I understand, most “canned pumpkin” that we use to compose pumpkin pie is actually made with butternut squash and not pumpkin at all.

The ever fabulous Garrett came by recently with a pint of roasted butternut squash purée and a mission to create a pasta

sauce with it. We often find butternut squash inside of ravioli, why not on the outside? It just needed to be thinned a bit with cream, made savory with Parmesan, and brightened with some acid (from lemon juice) and parsley. The outcome was absolutely delicious; I ate the leftover sauce with a spoon straight out the fridge for days. The way we made it was chunky, with a little crunch from the shallots, but whether you wanted it smooth, you could easily purée it some more or pass it through a food mill.

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