Our favorite Thanksgiving recipe
Come fall, the markets in New York fill with a wide variety of squash. Chef Marc loves to roast them in the oven until tender and pair them with something salty or spicy to complement their natural sweetness. A couple of years after arriving in the States, Marc adopted the American tradition of Thanksgiving dinner. Each year on the holiday, his house fills with friends, many of them also Spanish expats, and they can’t help but add some Iberian touches to the American classics on the table. Stuffing gets butifarra sausage and potatoes are whipped to a fluff with fragrant extra virgin olive oil. Marc created this dish for one of those Thanksgiving feasts a few years back and it ended up stealing the turkey’s spotlight. A few days later, he added it to the market menu at Boqueria.
The recipe pairs sweet acorn squash with toasted hazelnuts and sobrasada, a soft, spreadable cured pork sausage from Mallorca. When cooked, the rich, fatty sausage releases the intense aroma of the smoked paprika that gives it its bright crimson color. We slather the cooked sobrasada over rounds of the squash, drizzle it with local honey, and shower it in toasted hazelnuts and sharp Mahón cheese.
Serve it at any meal. It will steal the show, just as it did at Marc’s Thanksgiving.
Ingredients:
Calabaza con Sobrasada:
1 acorn squash, trimmed, cut into
½-inch rounds, and seeded
extra-virgin olive oil, about 2½–3
tablespoons
½ ounce coarsely chopped toasted
hazelnuts
2 ounces sobrasada sausage, skin removed
½ ounce aged Mahón cheese
2 teaspoons honey
kosher salt
Procedure
Preheat the oven to 400ºF.
Place the squash on a sheetpan; generously drizzle with oil and sprinkle with salt. Toss until evenly coated. Spread in a single layer on the pan. Roast until the squash is browned and tender, about 20–25 minutes.
Meanwhile, toss the hazelnuts with a little salt and reserve.
Heat a small cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. Add the sobrasada and cook, stirring and breaking the sausage into small bits, until the fat renders and the sausage sizzles and browns a bit, about 2 minutes.
Arrange the squash on a serving plate. Top with the hot sobrasada and any pan juices. Scatter the hazelnuts on top. Shave the cheese directly on top using a cheese plane or vegetable peeler, then drizzle with honey. Serve immediately.
