How To Cook Spaghetti Squash

Summer. The word means something different when you own a restaurant. Summer means: the lunch crowd shifts from office workers to families. Summer means: kids at the counter eating cornbread at 11 AM because school is out and Nashville is hot and Sarah's Table has air conditioning and books in the reading corner and a woman behind the counter who'll let you sit for as long as you want if you buy something. Summer means: Chloe is at the restaurant almost every day because she's thirteen and school is out and the restaurant is where the food is and the food is where Chloe lives now.

Chloe has a project. She announced it on Monday with the seriousness of a CEO presenting a quarterly report. She's going to photograph every dish on the Sarah's Table menu — every single one — with her new DSLR camera, the one she got for Christmas, the one that has become an extension of her right arm. She wants to create a "visual menu" for the restaurant's Instagram. She said: "Mama, the Instagram photos are bad." She said this while looking at me with the gentle pity of a thirteen-year-old who knows that her mother's phone photography is, objectively, terrible. She's not wrong. My food photos look like evidence from a crime scene. Overlit, off-center, the kind of photos that make delicious food look suspicious.

So Chloe set up a station in the back — a cutting board, a piece of slate she found at a craft store, some herbs for garnish — and she's been photographing. Cornbread: photographed from above, from the side, broken open to show the crumb ("the crumb is the story, Mama" — she said this, she's thirteen and she's talking about crumb structure, I have created a person who discusses bread architecture). Chicken and dumplings: photographed in a bowl with a wooden spoon, steam rising (she held a wet cloth under hot water and waved it behind the bowl to create fake steam, the girl is a FRAUD and a GENIUS). James's brisket: sliced, fanned on the cutting board, bark glistening, the photo so good I wanted to eat my phone screen.

The Instagram before Chloe: 47 followers, mostly family. The Instagram after one week of Chloe: 312 followers. Two hundred and sixty-five new followers in seven days because a thirteen-year-old girl pointed a camera at cornbread and made it look like art. Because it IS art. The food was always art. Chloe just gave it a frame.

Meanwhile: Jayden is at soccer camp this week. Summer league. He plays midfielder and comes home sunburned and happy and ravenous — the boy eats like he's storing food for winter, which at ten years old means three plates of whatever I put in front of him plus a bowl of ice cream. He's reading "Hatchet" by Gary Paulsen (the survival novel, the boy-alone-in-the-wilderness story, the narrative of self-reliance that a fire-truck-loving, story-writing ten-year-old devours like oxygen). And Elijah is at summer day care — the church program, half days, finger painting and juice boxes and the controlled chaos of a room full of five-year-olds preparing for kindergarten in August.

I made a summer vegetable soup this week — zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes from the farmers' market on Saturdays, corn cut from the cob, all in a light broth with garlic and herbs. The kind of soup that tastes like June in Tennessee. The kind that goes on the menu and sells out by 1 PM because Nashville in summer wants food that's light and bright and tastes like somebody's garden. Chloe photographed it. The photo got 89 likes. The soup got a waitlist. The girl is printing money with a camera and a cutting board.

That summer vegetable soup I mentioned — the one Chloe photographed and the one that got 89 likes and sold out before the lunch rush was even over — started, like so many things at Sarah’s Table, with squash from the Saturday farmers’ market. Zucchini, yellow squash, whatever was piled high and beautiful that morning. If you want to understand how to get everything you can out of summer squash before it disappears into a broth, you have to start here: learning how to cook it simply, on its own, so the vegetable can speak for itself. This is the method I come back to every June, and the one I’d teach Chloe if she ever put the camera down long enough to stand next to me at the stove.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 45 minutes | Total Time: 55 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 medium spaghetti squash (about 3–4 lbs)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced (optional, for serving)
2 tablespoons fresh parsley or basil, chopped (for garnish)
Parmesan cheese, for serving (optional)

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat your oven to 400°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or foil.
Halve the squash. Using a sharp chef’s knife, carefully cut the spaghetti squash in half lengthwise. Use a sturdy cutting board and take your time — the skin is tough.
Scoop and season. Use a large spoon to scoop out the seeds and stringy center pulp. Discard or save the seeds for roasting. Brush the cut sides generously with olive oil, then season with salt and pepper.
Roast cut-side down. Place the squash halves cut-side down on the prepared baking sheet. Roast for 40–45 minutes, until the skin gives easily when pressed and the flesh is tender all the way through.
Rest and shred. Remove from the oven and let the squash cool for 5 minutes. Flip each half cut-side up, then use a fork to scrape the flesh from side to side — it will pull apart into long, spaghetti-like strands naturally.
Finish and serve. Transfer the strands to a serving bowl. Toss with minced garlic, a drizzle of olive oil, and fresh herbs. Top with Parmesan if you like, and serve warm as a side or a base for your favorite summer sauce.

Nutrition (per serving)

How To Cook Spaghetti Squash — The Summer Vegetable That Sold Out Before Lunch