Roasted squash boats with cherry tomatoes and eggs

I saw this recipe just too late to use any of the adorable small butternut squash it called for, since I'd used those up first. But using the bottom half of a larger squash worked just as well, although I suppose it loses the "wee" factor.

Roasted squash, cherry tomatoes and eggs

Adapted from Martha Stewart Living, October 2016

Ingredients

1 small butternut squash or acorn squash, or use the wide, bottom portion of a larger butternut squash, making sure to cut high enough that you preserve a well in which to bake the eggs

Olive oil for drizzling

½ teaspoon fresh thyme leaves, plus 4 sprigs

1 cup cherry tomatoes

1 teaspoon chili paste (which I was out of, so I used Sriracha sauce) (optional)

2 eggs

Method

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Cut squash in half vertically, removing the seeds. Do not peel. Drizzle squash with olive oil and rub over the surface. Sprinkle with thyme leaves and some salt. Tuck in a few springs in each squash cavity. Place cut side down on the pan and roast squash for 10 minutes. 

Toss cherry tomatoes with about ½ tablespoon of olive oil and coarse salt. Add to the other end of the pan and continue roasting for 20 more minutes. Remove tomatoes at this point and reserve. Flip over squash and roast another 5 minutes.

Remove pan from oven. Put a couple of tomatoes into each squash cavity and a ½ teaspoon of chili paste. Crack an egg into a custard cup and then slide the egg into the squash cavity. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Repeat with remaining squash. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes until egg is softly cooked.

Remove from oven and place squash on serving plates. Top with remaining tomatoes and pass with chili paste or sauce if desired. Serves 2.

Rating: This made a very nice lunch, and caused Dave to say that the day was looking up. (Of course that might not be hard, since he spent the morning working.) The fresh thyme really comes through; I doubt it would be quite so tasty if one substituted dried thyme. We agreed that the chili sauce was a perfectly fine ingredient, but optional. It would be easy to have it overwhelm the otherwise subtle flavors of the roasted squash and tomatoes. Definitely repeatable, although it does take a certain amount of roasting time from start to finish, so it's not a last-minute lunch plan. 

But it was a nice choice when hibernating on a dreary day after dodging freezing rain on a holiday road trip the day before. Unloading boatloads of presents in a downpour when it's 33 degrees with 40 mph winds is bracing, to say the least. And really, thunder storms on Christmas Day in Minnesota?