Candied Acorn Squash Slices

Early March and the in-between week — the sap not yet running, the snow still deep in patches, the calendar insisting it is March and the weather not yet committing. I went down to the lower sugarbush Monday to walk the lines and look at the trees the way I do every March about ten days before tapping. The big red maple at the bend of the trail — the one with my father's 1943 initials migrated up the trunk — is in its hundred-and-twenty-first year and showing the kind of slight branch dieback at the top that the very old trees show in late life. The tree is not dying. The tree is aging. There is a difference. I made a note in my head to give that tree fewer taps this year — three instead of the usual four — to ease the load on it. The tree has given my family sap for eighty years. It has earned the consideration.

Made a roast chicken Sunday — the simple roast, the truth-teller. Whole bird, salt, pepper, lemon halves and thyme in the cavity, butter rubbed under the skin, into the oven at four hundred for an hour and a quarter. The chicken came out the way a properly roasted chicken should come out, and I ate it with mashed potatoes and the late carrots from the cellar and the kale from the freezer. The dish is one of the most reliable suppers I make. It is the supper I will probably be making the week before I stop cooking, whenever that week comes, and it will be the right supper for the occasion.

The blog post for the week was about the old red maple at the bend of the trail — the tree, the carving, the history of the sugarbush, the decision to ease the tap count this year. The post was a slow patient piece, the kind I write less often than I used to but that pulls the most thoughtful comments when I do write them. A man in Massachusetts wrote in about a tree he had been managing on his property for fifty years, an old white pine that he had recently begun to think about as a friend rather than as a resource. A woman in Quebec wrote about a maple her grandfather had carved her birthdate into in 1953 (we are the same age, she pointed out, and the tree is also still standing). The thread was the kind of thread that the writing should produce — slow, considered, the readers thinking the same kinds of slow thoughts the post had asked them to think.

March 15 falls next Saturday. The envelope is ready in the desk drawer. The check is written. The address is on it. The envelope will go to the post office at noon Saturday. The donation has been made every year for thirty-five years now. The pattern does not require attention. It simply continues.

The roast chicken that Sunday was the kind of cooking I trust most — no performance, just salt and heat and time doing their work — and the acorn squash I had left from the cellar deserved the same honest treatment. When the week ahead was already carrying the weight of the sugarbush walk and the old tree and the envelope in the desk drawer, I wasn’t looking for a recipe that asked much of me; I was looking for one that gave back more than it took. Candied acorn squash slices do exactly that: a little butter, a little brown sugar, the oven steady at its work, and the kitchen smelling like something worth coming home to.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 50 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 medium acorn squash (about 1 1/2 lbs)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
3 tablespoons packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 400°F. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or lightly grease it.
Slice the squash. Cut the acorn squash crosswise into 3/4-inch rings. Scoop out and discard the seeds and stringy center from each ring using a spoon.
Make the glaze. In a small bowl, whisk together the melted butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and pepper until the sugar is mostly dissolved.
Coat the slices. Arrange the squash rings in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet. Brush the tops generously with half of the glaze.
Roast. Roast for 20 minutes, then flip the slices carefully and brush with the remaining glaze. Return to the oven and roast for another 18 to 20 minutes, until the squash is tender when pierced with a fork and the glaze has caramelized to a deep amber at the edges.
Rest and serve. Let the slices rest on the pan for 2 to 3 minutes before transferring to a platter. Serve warm as a side alongside roast meats, mashed potatoes, or on their own.

Nutrition (per serving)

Candied Acorn Squash Slices — The Honest Supper at the End of a Long Winter Walk