Shirtless Chef – Squash your eggs!

Local fitness enthusiast Jason Murphy remakes favorite meals of his youth into healthy dishes. See the full list of his recipes at www.mysaline.com/shirtless.

Squash your eggs

Nothing is more non-processed than growing your own veggies at home. It’s about time to dig in the dirt and get those backyard gardens to fire up and start producing the best veggies and berries you will get all year. Veggies sold in stores are always picked before they ripen on the vine. Then they are gassed to change the color and help the ripening process happen after the fact. That’s why winter time veggies from the store can taste like an old lump of Silly Putty found under the couch from 1983, while ripe veggies straight from the garden can taste like eating sunshine directly from the source.

The only problem with growing your own can be getting overrun and not knowing what to do with all they produce. Yellow summer squash is a good example. That plant can give rabbits a run for their money in the amount of offspring they can bring into the world. Unfortunately, here in the south, we usually coat these healthy, bright colored veggies in bread crumbs and deep fry, or bury them deep in a mushy casserole dish. That is a shame, because yellow summer squash can be upfront in a dish and hold their own quite well. You just need the right technique and know what they play well with, and that will open the door to use all of your excess produce for something other than throwing at noisy kids and small barking dogs like a makeshift boomerang.

Take an egg souffle, for example. I recently saw an episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown does just that, and yellow squash makes an excellent structural and texture choice there. I know, I know, that sounds fancy for a traditionally soggy fried veggie from around “these here parts”. Not to worry. I put my own spin on this squash dish to make it decidedly southern. Trust me, the Shirtless Chef knows a thing or two about both working the dirt in the southern heat and the style of eating that comes with it:

If you are wondering how I take a fancy, highfalutin’ French sounding thing like a souffle and make it seem like it grew up its whole life around the bend just over yonder, the answer is…gravy. That’s right, a good ol’ cast iron skillet bacon pepper gravy. Of course, it’s modified for my lifestyle, so that means substituting AP flour for Chickpea flour, regular butter and heavy cream for grass-fed, and small farm bacon with no sugar or other preservatives added. If any of you are doubters, I would bet if you tested my blood before I changed my eating habits, it would come back about 70% white pan gravy. I promise you, my new version is not only 1000% better for you, it tastes exactly the same as the original, if not better.

You’ll need a mandolin slicer and your trusty kevlar glove or hand guard to get uniform thin slices on your squash, as they need to be broiled first. The thing is, yellow squash is about 95% water, so a broiler cranked up to around 500 degrees can take thin sliced squash from brown and crispy to burnt and ruined in an instant. We are talking about a real Flight of Icarus situation here. They can go in the oven brightly colored and happy to be here, and come out looking like a dried Peruvian mummy found in the high desert mountains if you don’t watch them. I used the ultra thin slice setting, and that was a mistake. Definitely pick a thicker setting so that there’s enough plant matter left over after the water is broiled out of them.

This dish has everything you would need from a nutrition viewpoint. The eggs and grass fed dairy have protein and healthy omega-3 fats, and the squash is high in vitamins A, B6, C, folate, magnesium, and potassium. It also brings a high load of manganese to the party, and this mineral not only helps to boost bone strength, but it helps your body process fats and carbs. That’s a pretty neat trick. If you pick your ingredients right, there are no preservatives or chemicals here to mess things up. I recently learned that most food additives/preservatives/chemicals aren’t even tested before being approved, and if that doesn’t make you ditch processed foods, I don’t know what will. Maybe the taste of this dish will help. It’s like a breakfast pizza that can be eaten any time of day, and after one bite, that’s when you will want it…any time you can get it.

Yellow Squash Egg Souffle with pepper gravy

Ingredients:

1 lb yellow squash cut into 1/8 inch thick slices

1 tbsp chopped fresh Rosemary leaves

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp fresh cracked pepper

6 large eggs room temp, beaten

1/2 cup grass fed whole milk ricotta cheese

1 oz grated Parmesan cheese

1 1/2 cups grass fed heavy cream

1 tbsp chickpea flour

1 tbsp grass fed butter

1/2 tsp sea salt and pepper

3 slices all natural pasture raised bacon

Instructions:

Wash and slice your squash into 1/8 or thicker slices:

Toss with the olive oil, rosemary, nutmeg, sea salt, and pepper:

Place a cooling rack in a large sheet pan and spray with some non-stick. Use your poker dealing skills to lay out the squash slices in a single layer. This may take more than one batch depending on the size of your cooling rack and sheet pan. Place under the oven broiler set on high for 8 to 10 minutes, checking often to make sure they don’t burn:

Whisk the ricotta, eggs, and Parmesan cheese in a bowl:

Place the squash in a 10 inch non-stick skillet and set to medium heat:

Pour the egg mixture into the skillet and stir gently with a spatula to get the eggs under the veggies. Cook without stirring until the edges are set and the top is just starting to set, about 5 to 6 minutes:

Place the skillet under the broiler until browned and fluffy, about 4 minutes:

Use the spatula to break the edges loose and then slide out onto a cutting board. Slice up like a pizza:

To make the gravy, start 3 slices of bacon in a cold 10 inch cast iron skillet while the eggs are just starting to set in the other skillet:

Cook the bacon over medium heat until done, flipping often. Drain the bacon grease, reserving one tbsp in the pan. Add the butter and when it melts, add the chickpea flour, whisking constantly until the flour is smooth and the color starts to bubble and darken slightly:

Add the heavy cream, salt and pepper, and whisk constantly until the desired thickness is reached. Taste and add more salt/pepper to your personal taste. I prefer a heavy grind of pepper for this application. When the gravy is done, pour over the souffle slices and add some crumbled bacon to serve: