Have you tried spaghetti squash? It’s such a funny vegetable. It looks like a pumpkin, but when prepared, you don’t have ‘chunks’ of pumpkin, but spaghetti like strings.
I haven’t seen spaghetti squash much in regular stores in Belgium (they were available at Horeca Totaal when we last visited), but if you have a vegetable garden, you can of course grow them yourself! So we did, and we had a plentifull pumpkin harvest last Summer.
The spaghetti pumpkins are the long shaped yellow ones in the middle. We had 8 or 9 spaghetti pumpkins in total!

Potiron Bleu, Uchi Kuri, Red Kuri, Spaghetti squash and some that just grew on the compost heap

preparing spaghetti squash

Preheat oven to 220°.

Remove stalk from spaghetti squash. Cut squash in half (either way is ok).
Remove the seeds and the middle soft part.
Put 2cm water (small 1 inch) in an oven tray.
Place the halves in the oven dish, with the open side down. With a fork, pinch some holes in the spaghetti squash.
Cover with alu foil.
Put in oven for 30 to 40 minutes (the older the pumpkin, the longer it requires. For a pumpkin that was several months in our cellar, it took 45 minutes in the oven).

Remove from the oven.
You can now scrape the inside from the spaghetti squash with a fork. It looks like spaghetti strings!

Spaghetti squash, cut in half

remove the inside from the squash: it looks just like spaghetti!

ingredients

• 1 spaghetti squash
• pearl couscous
• tempeh
• 1 can azuki beans
• soy sauce
• maple or agave syrup
• olive oil
• salt
• handfull cashews
• 3-4 chicory
• white vineager
• mustard
• 2 pears

spaghetti squash with tempeh, pearl couscous and azuki beans, and chicory salad

Boil the pearl couscous. Set aside.

Start preparing the spaghetti squash (see above).

Marinate the tempeh for 15 to 30 minutes: chop the tempeh in small pieces and put in a dish, add soy sauce and mix till al pieces are covered in soy sauce.

Heat peanut oil in a large pan. On large heat, bake the marinated tempeh in agave syrup, till a crust is formed.
Reduce the heat, add the prepared pearl couscous and some olive oil. Stir occasionally, and let simmer.
Then add the azuki beans (already prepared, canned), till warm.

Meanwhile, make the chicory salad:
Roast a handfull of cashews in a frying pan with oil (about 5 minutes). Add some salt. Add a couple of tablespoons of maple or agave syrup and mingle well, and roast a little bit longer. Put baking paper on a seperate dish and place cashew on them. Let cool. Chop the cashews.
Chop 3 to 4 pieces of chicory.
Make dressing: mingle 2 tbs white wine vineager, 1 ts mustard, 4 tbs olive oil and some salt.
Cut 2 pears in pieces and mix with the chicory and dressing. Put some roasted cashews on top.
Recipe for this chicory salad is based on a recipe in 500 Vega gerechten (500 vegan recipes), by Deborah Grey.

tempeh and pearl couscous wit azuki beans, chicory salad and spaghetti squash

Serve the tempeh with pearl couscous and azuki beans with spaghetti squash and chicory salad on the side.
Drizzle some olive oil on the spaghetti squash if desired.