‘Twas American Thanksgiving this past weekend and my friend Carla decided to throw a Thanksgiving party seeing as our friends never get to spend the holidays together because we’re too busy with family. Carla made the amazing turkey (a happy turkey!) and SIX PIES (2 apple, 2 pumpkin, 2 pecan) and the guests were in charge of side dishes and whatnot. A few weeks ago I saw a recipe for a “vegducken” on @epicurious and indeed became very curious…

I’m not a vegetarian but I do love vegetables and making new things so I thought I’d try this crazy dish. It’s a play on the turducken (a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey) but with zucchini, eggplant and butternut squash. Here is the recipe!

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/vegducken

Ok, if you took a moment to read up on that you’ll notice that it’s VERY labour intensive, with a ton of ingredients.

The one thing I had a big problem with was hollowing out that damn raw squash. HOW DO YOU HOLLOW OUT A HARD, RAW SQUASH? It seemed impossible so I roasted it a bit first. This made the squash VERY hot and hard to deal with. I didn’t have time to let it cool. Needless to say there was a lot of swearing involved and my entire kitchen was covered in squash. Otherwise, everything else is pretty straight forward. The food processor part is a pain, but not difficult by any means.  Of course I stuffed the squash WAY too full and it wouldn’t seal properly but at that point I didn’t give a shit. I put it in the oven and poured myself a whiskey to calm my nerves. I’ll have you know that while my squash wasn’t as beautiful as the one on epicurious IT WAS DELICIOUS.

It tasted so hearty, earthy and meaty despite being 100% vegetarian. I made it gluten free by adding ground almonds instead of bread crumbs and you could make it vegan by adding nutritional yeast instead of cheese and using soy butter or olive oil. I think if I make this again I’ll make it in a different form like a casserole or vegetable tart. If you’re vegetarian, make this instead of a salty old tofurkey. It’s MUCH better. Perhaps a better name for it might be the squeggchini?