Butternut Cranberry Fusion (Or, A Procrastinator’s Guide to Thanksgiving in February)

The fact is, I’m a procrastinator.  I told gansie way back around Thanksgiving 2008 that I would share this yummy butternut and cranberry squash springroll recipe with the ES crowd.  And I had all the elements waiting: a ton of pics of the prep, a pic of the finished product, testimonials from other t-day attendees about how substantially delicious the springrolls were, a link to the recipe that inspired me, all but the actual text of this blog post.

And I let it sit… and sit.  I did everything but write this fucker.  I wrote a post about another subject in the meantime.  I kvetched about this and that in a gagillion comments on ES.  I made fun of (and bragged to others about) Gansie’s egg obsession.  I sent her and BS links to important food related articles.  I’m terrible.

And today I’m finally writing this frackin recipe down, frackin finally because I have to write a VERY IMPORTANT document to save babies around the world or some such thing, and I’d really rather procrastinate by writing down my overdue, Thanksgiving recipe for ES.  I was rather proud of how the recipe turned out, but posting it seemed like an awful lot of effort after having put forth so much effort doing the actual cooking.  Mehhh….

Yes that was a whine.  Anyway, the deal is, I don’t love pumpkin seeds, I do love spice and I liked the idea of scrapping the noodles recommended by recipe girl and instead putting the cran-dipping sauce on the inside with extra cilantro.

First I roasted diced up butternut squash, soaked it in a mixture of wine, cinnamon, allspice, a few dashes of Jamaican curry powder, and sea-salt and then roasted it more, this time with cranberries and peanuts until it was tender.  Smelled divine.

Then I made the cranberry sauce.  I placed fresh cranberries in a pot on the stove along with two tablespoons or so of harissa and several liberal dashes of red pepper flakes.  I let the cranberries simmer until they popped.  I removed the sauce from the stove and placed it in a bowl with some peanuts I’d dry-roasted.  Smelled even better.

I set up my work station, with hot (but not too hot, didn’t want to burn the fingers) water sitting in a large frying pan, cilantro in a bowl, cran sauce in a bowl, and butternut squash within reach.

I soaked a sheet of rice paper in the hot water for several seconds, spread it out on a plate, placed a few sprigs of cilantro and butternut squash on the paper and a few dabs of cranberry sauce on  top.

Next I rolled that little sucker up, cut it in half and placed a toothpick through it.  Repeated all those steps about 20 times.  I put in the fridge for a bit and then served them as thanksgiving apps at a friend’s orphan’s t-day dinner.

Along with another Maids-friendly app (a dairy-free creamy artichoke and spinach dip breadbowl (!!!!), produced by E-dubs and Miked), the springrolls were awesome additions to the thanksgiving meal.

I later learned that these springrolls are also very yummy pan-fried and served warm.

Ahhhh thanksgiving.  Thank the blessed lord for gluttony!  I guess I’m finished with this post now. Only three months late, but there’s no reason you can’t chow on some cranberry fusion goodness for St. Patrick’s Day or Easter.  Back to the grind stone (saving babies and what not).

Peace out!

More: appetizer recipes