I attended a wedding a few weeks ago for two of my friends. The bride is a vegetarian, so I knew that whatever the vegetarian option was at the reception, it was going to be good. After all, she’s not going to just feed herself crap, right? I was correct in my assumption, but I was not prepared for exactly how good it was going to be.
Pasta is always an easy choice for vegetarians, so it didn’t surprise me that we had a gnocchi dish. However, this is not your ordinary gnocchi dish– this is out of this world. Sauteed spinach, mixed mushrooms, cubes of butternut squash all covered with a healthy topping of feta cheese and a splash of red wine. It was sweet, savory, and I did not want it to end. Alas, however, it did. So I decided to continue its legacy in my own house.
The cool thing about this is that I was able to make the dish using several organic ingredients. At Super Target, I was able to get organic gnocchi and baby spinach, but they were out of butternut squash, so we had to end up getting a bag of frozen organic squash from the regular grocery store. For the mixed mushrooms, we had some dried mixed mushrooms that we had gotten from Costco, so I decided to rehydrate those and throw them on in there.
Here’s the problem: the only time I had ever used that frozen butternut squash was when I was straining it into baby food, so I’ve never cooked with it before. It was cut in blocks, and my intent was to get them crispy on the outside, so I decided to saute them in garlic, olive oil, and a some salt and pepper. That did not work. By the time I added the other ingredients and started sauteing them all together, my blocks of squash had broken down, and basically created strained squash all over my other ingredients, which is why you can’t even really see it in the picture.
Even though the squash broke down, the dish ended up tasting basically the way I wanted it to. The dried mushrooms ended up being fine, but in the future, I’m definitely going to get both fresh squash (which I guess I’ll roast?) and fresh mushrooms. Other than that, this is a super-easy and super-quick meal to make that uses a lot of really interesting ingredients that, chances are, you’re not eating on a daily basis. While the dish I ended up with may not quite be up to Clyde’s standards, I highly recommend you give it a shot yourself. Or, if you’re in the D.C. area, just go to the restaurant and have them do it for you.
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on Oct 12, 2009 @ 12:00 EST5EDT
This sounds delicious. I have a question about the splash of red wine, though. Straight out of the bottle? Was it reduced at all and made into a sauce? Or did you mean red wine vinegar?