Say hello to Spaghetti Squash. Perhaps the strangest squash I’ve ever met.

Growing up in the Philippines, the only squash I ever had the pleasure of meeting was the kalabasa, which you see below. I found out that the variety is called the kabocha squash in the US. But for 25 years of my life, the kalabasa was all I knew!

Back home, the kalabasa sings in the popular duet of string beans and coconut milk (as in ginataang sitaw and kalabasa), has a starring role in Pinakbet (a vegetable stew flavored with bagoong or shrimp paste) and is the diva of the Dinengdeng (Pinakbet’s less complicated cousin. Thank you, by the way, to Ate Christine for introducing me to the comforts of Ilokano cuisine!) Nanay Manet who was my Yaya Extraordinaire and was the first great cook in my life, used to make candied squash by cooking the pulp from mature ones with lots of sugar.

So you see, kalabasa was, to borrow my friend Bona’s term, my “homegirl”. We hung around each other for something like 25 years. And then, I came to the US and met the quite-eccentric spaghetti squash one random day in the produce aisle.

Its name comes from the fact that after it’s cooked (baked or steamed in a small amount of water), the flesh is scraped off the skin with a fork and it comes out in strings (!), just like spaghetti.

After being so used to kalabasa, this was one of the strangest moments in my cooking life.

It’s often buttered and herbed, sometimes served with pesto or, as in my case, topped with a simple marinara sauce. (Yes, from a can. I was lazy.) It was yummy with some parmesan cheese. I wish I had pictures of this with the sauce on it, but it was unfortunately consumed at the most rapid of speeds (that’s code for we were too busy eating it to bother taking pictures.)

Happy weekend to all. Hope it’s filled with the comfort of familiar food and the fun of strange, new ones!