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Pork and Shrimp Stuffed Acorn Squash
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Pork and Shrimp Stuffed Acorn Squash

I was in the mood for something different for dinner one night and had some ground pork I needed to use so I went in search of a recipe. Since I was looking for a tested recipe I did a search at the food network for ground pork in a recipe. To my suprise 234 results came up but right on the front page was a recipe by my hero Alton Brown for Stuffed Squash. Now although acorn squash is rather high carb, the stuffing was rather low so I decided that this was a good night to stretch my maintenance muscles and try a little higher carb dish that was mainly from veggies. It would also give me a chance to check my blood sugar to see exactly how well it is reacting to these kinds of carbs.

This is the basic recipe:
Alton Brown's Stuffed Squash
4 small acorn squash, 1 to 1 1/4 pounds each
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces
1/2 pound ground pork
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped celery
1/4 cup chopped carrot
1/2 cup white wine
1 1/2 cups cooked rice
1 (10-ounce) package frozen spinach, completely thawed, drained and chopped
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
Generous pinch kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Cut 1-inch off the top of each acorn squash and scoop out the seeds. If necessary in order for the squash to sit upright, cut off a small portion of the bottom. Put 1 of the 4 pieces of butter in the cavity of each squash. Set squash on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Set aside.

In a large saute pan over medium heat, brown the ground pork until no longer pink. Remove the meat from the pan, add the olive oil and saute the onion, celery, and carrot until they begin to soften, approximately 7 to 10 minutes. Deglaze the pan with the white wine.

Return the pork to the pan along with the cooked rice, spinach, pine nuts, oregano and salt and pepper, to taste. Stirring constantly, heat mixture thoroughly, approximately 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from the heat. Divide the mixture evenly among the squash, top each squash with its lid and bake for 1 hour or until the squash is tender. Serve immediately.


but I did make the following subs and additions:
For the rice I used TVP(textured vegetable protein) hydrated with beef stock.
I added about 1/2 lb of salad shrimp to the pork.
And when I was stuffing the squash I added several thin layers of asigo and fontana cheese.

In a word.....Yum!

Following is what it looked like before and after I baked it.

Thanks Alton!!

BTW, the carbs had very little effect on my blood sugar.

stuffedsquash1.jpg

stuffedsquash2.jpg