Unloved Squash

With fall in full swing we are constantly hounded with all things pumpkin — which is not always a bad thing. But did you know there are, in fact, other fall squashes out there? Shocking, I know.

Each week, The Daily Meal team picks a theme for SWAT (Sharing With A Theme), and our Culinary Content Network of food bloggers submit corresponding recipes for a chance to be featured in a recipe round-up. But the path to this week's SWAT had a few twists: We asked our amazingly witty and creative network of food bloggers to share their favorite squash recipes with one caveat: No pumpkin allowed.

Almost instantly inboxes were dinging with recipes, and, in a matter of minutes, I had about 10 butternut squash soup recipes on my hands. "Ok," I said to myself, "Let's see if we fix this."

We went back to the bloggers tweaking the theme just a tad in an effort to avoid a full-on "soupageddon." As a result, the soup recipes submissions halted (I even got a few "NO SOUP FOR YOU" lines), but butternut squash flood kept rolling in.

When the submission window closed, I had more than 70 recipe submissions... and roughly 90 percent of them were butternut squash. Some of them were so beautiful, I swear, I almost wanted to do two SWAT round-ups. But, alas, this week's SWAT is dedicated to all the other over-shadowed, unknown, and unloved squash out there.

Moore Or Less Cooking filled her buttercup squash's hollow center with lots of butter, molasses, and brown sugar. There is no way that this won't taste amazing. Click here for her recipe.

A Calculated Whisk gently shuttles eggs into par-baked delicata squash rings and returns them to the oven just until the whites set so the yolks remain runny. To check out her recipe, click here.

Picky Eater uses Indian spices like cumin, coriander, and cayenne to season her spaghetti squash. When cooked, she adds chickpeas and cashews for some crunch, and acidic tomatoes and piquant cilantro for bursts of freshness. Find her recipe here.

A Little Rosemary and Time just gets it: "Delicata squash is the unsung hero of just about...everything." She goes on to say, "[With] flesh that is almost honey sweet, with soft, edible skin- there's nothing that matches it." Here, she uses her delicata to make a hearty lentil stew. Check it out here.

A delicata seasoned with ginger, spices, topped with harissa and labneh, Oat and Sesame calls this dish "a favorite." Click here for the recipe.

Diary of a Mad Hausfrau was a bit disappointed to find that her pink banana squash was not, in fact, pink on the inside. Nevertheless, that didn't stop her from making a pink banana squash curd and filling a chocolate ginger pie crust. Read more about it here.

Take A Bite Out of Boca chose the unloved kabocha squash for her party salad. "It also is a beautiful shade of green so it gave the dish another layer of color among the bright orange squash, deep red cherries, and the charred beige pine nuts," she writes. Find the recipe here.

Delicata squash is glazed with a mix of date syrup, pomegranate molasses, and olive oil, and then roasted until tender. Then, OMG! Yummy garnishes her unloved squash with fresh pomegranate seeds to finish. Click here for the recipe.

Spice Chronicles teaches us something that we may not have known: "Delicata is a bona fide North American creation, a variety developed at the University of Minnesota, a quick growing, and quick cooking variety." Delicatas have a thin skin that requires no peeling, and this dish roasts delicata squash with cumin, lime, and green chile. Check it out here.

Platter Talk calls for "winter squash — such as butternut, buttercup, kabocha or hubbard," hitting many of the unloved squashes on our list. Here, he simply roasts his squash and then tosses the tender cubes in fragrant sautéed garlic and chopped parsley. Check out the recipe.

Take On Elizabeth managed to stuff all of fall into personal-sized carnival gourds. "It's a veritable fall feast," she explains. "Many of my favorite Thanksgiving flavors—turkey, sage, apples, corn, rosemary— [are] combined in a hearty, healthy, beautiful package." For this recipe, click here.

"Want to bring a little drama to your next dinner?" asks The View From Great Island. She makes a grand entrance with her whole roasted kabocha squash that is cut tableside and served with chipotle pepper compound butter. Click here for her recipe.