Microwave Brown Sugar Squash

Mid-May. Miya's school year is ending and the summer cooking project is already planned: this year, we work through the harder recipes. Not the simple onigiri and tamagoyaki that she has mastered. The hard ones. Gyoza from scratch, including the dough. Miso soup with homemade dashi, not the simplified version I've been teaching her. Kabocha nimono with proper knife work. The seven-year-old is ready for the next level. The next level is where Fumiko lived: precision, patience, the understanding that good enough is not good enough, that the craft demands respect, that the ingredient deserves attention, that the knife must be sharp and the dashi must be made from scratch and the shortcuts are not shortcuts — they are detours away from the truth of the food.

I made Fumiko's inari sushi — the sweet tofu pockets stuffed with sushi rice. The aburaage (fried tofu skins) are simmered in a sweet soy broth until they become soft, glossy pouches, and then stuffed with vinegared rice. The dish is picnic food, bento food, the portable sushi, the food that travels. Fumiko made inari sushi for every school event, every park outing, every occasion that required food that could be eaten with hands and transported in a box. I make them now for the same reasons: Miya's school picnic, the end-of-year celebration, the box of food that says: my mother made this. The making is the love. The box is the container. The love travels.

The blog is approaching twenty thousand readers. The pre-publication publicity is working — the Portland magazine profile, the Tokyo interview, the word-of-mouth that builds when a book is coming and the book's author has been writing in public for seven years. The readership is not just Portland anymore. The readership is national. The readership includes people in New York and Los Angeles and Chicago and Sacramento — Sacramento, where Ken does not read my blog but where the blog exists, in the same city as the garden and the daikon and the condo where Fumiko's absence is still present in every empty apartment down the street.

The story in our kitchen this season is kabocha nimono — proper knife work, proper patience — but even as Miya and I plan our way toward harder things, I keep coming back to this brown sugar squash as a kind of warm-up, a reminder that sweetness coaxed from a simple ingredient is its own kind of craft. It’s the dish I make on the nights when ambition needs a gentle, caramelized counterweight, when the lesson isn’t about precision but about noticing how something humble can become something genuinely good. Fumiko would have approved of that.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 25 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 medium acorn or butternut squash (about 2 lbs), halved and seeded
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
Pinch of ground nutmeg
2 tablespoons water

Instructions

Prep the squash. Pierce each squash half several times with a fork or paring knife. Place cut-side down in a large microwave-safe baking dish and add 2 tablespoons of water to the bottom of the dish.
Microwave until tender. Cook on HIGH for 10 to 12 minutes, rotating the dish halfway through, until the flesh is easily pierced with a fork. Remove from the microwave and let rest, covered loosely, for 2 minutes.
Make the brown sugar glaze. In a small microwave-safe bowl, combine the butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, salt, and nutmeg. Microwave on HIGH for 30 seconds, then stir until the butter is fully melted and the mixture is smooth.
Glaze and finish. Flip the squash halves cut-side up. Spoon the brown sugar glaze evenly into the cavities and over the cut surfaces. Return to the microwave and cook on HIGH for 2 to 3 minutes more, until the glaze is bubbling and beginning to caramelize at the edges.
Serve. Let cool for 2 to 3 minutes before serving. The glaze will thicken slightly as it rests. Serve directly in the skin, scooping the sweet flesh at the table.

Nutrition (per serving)

Microwave Brown Sugar Squash — The Sweet Side of Next-Level Cooking