Winter squash

The nature of the seasons is such that you have time to forget what a nuisance it is to fiddle with winter squash and how little rewarding it is by the time it is in season again. If you put enough butter and cream and salt and pepper into a butternut squash soup, of course it tastes good, and I will probably go that route soon. But Deborah Madison let me down with a recipe for winter squash that came out flat and insipid, and I don't think it was due to faulty execution.

It sounded great -- winter squash braised in apple cider. We got the fresh apple cider and some very fragrant rosemary from the farmer's market, and the butternut and delicata squash called for in the recipe. I laboriously hacked the butternut into cubes and the delicata into rounds as specified. I melted the butter and flavored it for 3 min. with the chopped rosemary, than added the squash and cider and water to cover and cooked until the squash was tender. However, the liquid did not boil down into a syrupy coating but remained in great abundance that not even the recommended fix of boiling it down at higher heat could not dent. The squash would have been total mush if I had continued, so I removed it with a slotted spoon. As a result, however, there was very little buttery, rosemary or cider taste, but just watery, bland squash. It would have no doubt helped if I had used a skillet instead of sauteuse, which probably just held too much liquid, but I can't imagine this really turns into syrup if you actually cover the squash with water.