If your climate is anywhere close to mine then your local farmers market, garden or grocery store is probably overflowing with fresh tomatoes and squash. So in the spirit of fresh food and easy fast recipes here is an absolutely awesome one from my Maw-Maw Bobbie's files. If your not a squash fan or have never cooked with squash give this dish a chance. My boyfriend swore he hated squash and after I coxed him into trying a bite he ended up heating two plates. So if your new to squash or even swear you hate it just give squash a chance.
INGREDIENTS:
~ Ground Meat - 1 to 2 lbs. (I used 1lb. in the example recipe below)
~ Onion - for l lb use 1 small onion for 2 lbs use a large onion or two small ones
~ Squash - the regular yellow is fine, the fresher the better for taste.
~ 1 can Rotel
~ 1 can tomato sauce
A variation is to use 1/2 can Rotel and 1/2 cup of fresh diced tomatoes. Do this if you are worried about the whole can of Rotel being too spicy or just need to use up some of those garden tomatoes.
DIRECTIONS:
cut up onion into medium to small pieces.
Add meat and onions to skillet and brown on medium heat till the onions are soft and clear and the meat is brown. I do add a little Tex-Joy Steak seasoning at this point but not very much, a small sprinkle. If your not lucky enough to have Tex-Joy in your area salt and peper will be just fine. http://www.texjoy.com/
Drain any excess fat or liquid from the skillet. My meat is local grass fed Longhorn Beef http://www.gentzlonghorn.com/ and is very lean but I still pour the whole wad of meat and onions in a strainer and shake it really good. This is a personal preference so once it gets to the left over stage in the fridge it doesn't have little white clumps in it. The main point is get most of the grease off because we are using the same pan to cook the rest of the squash concoction.
OK, now the magic happens. Add the drained meat and onions back to the skillet and proceed to cut up those beautiful fresh yellow squash. They are the star of the show here and we really want them to shine so cut them fairly thick or they will wither away to nothing and turn to mush in the meat. Not too thick either or they may be tough to cook evenly. Maybe your can see from the picture about the size but the picture quality isn't that great and some of them are actually a little too thin.
Mix the squash, Rotel, and tomato sauce (I used paste but only because I didn't have sauce, and I improvise a lot.) You can also throw a few fresh diced tomato in it and leave out some of the rotel if you don't want it to be too spicy.
Turn on medium heat. Wait a few min to see if you will need to add water. This will totally depend on how juicy your squash and tomatoes are, sometimes a lot of water comes out of them and sometimes little to none. Eyeball it. The picture below is before I added water.
Cover and simmer untill squash is soft and opaque. At this stage you are required to taste test - yippee :)
DONE! Now just try to keep your boyfriend that hates squash from eating it all.
I serve this over rice the way my Maw-Maw always did but we are Cajun meets Cowboy where I live and the Cajun side of the family is know for eating rice with everything. My point is you could serve it with other things like toasted buttered bread or probably even noodles but I have never tried. Let me know if you do and if its good. Enjoy!
