Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

[Update: It's out of the oven and half eaten. See below.]

Take one of the large, red, mystery peppers that anniemal brought back from Arizona. Rinse off the dust, pour out the seeds, and set it to soak in warm water.

Finely chop one medium onion. Partially sautee in butter or oil with a very tiny quantity of anise and a dollop of dried dill. (I just tossed butter on top and threw it in the microwave for a few minutes.)

Rinse and dry the knife while kicking yourself for forgetting that the garlic should be chopped first, and chop two cloves of regular garlic. (Tonight we used one really large clove and one smallish one.) Chop fine.

Take a whopping huge butternut squash. Halve and seed, then cut trenches leading partway up the neck of each half from the seed cavity.

Chop up the bits of squash removed to make the trenches. Aim for a size that will smoosh easily once cooked a little bit. Cook in microwave with oil and a bit of "21 Seasoning Salute"[*] until soft.

Cut elephant garlic into thick slabs.

Chop the now-softened red pepper coarsely. Add more water to the bowl it had been in and bring the water to a boil. Add red lentils to the water, bring back to a boil and let sit a few minutes.

Very lightly dust the inside of the squash with nutmeg.

By now all the microwave-heated stuff should be done and the lentils mostly soft (sort of al dente). Preheat the oven to 350F. Throw the lentils, chopped squished squash bits, onions, garlic, a handful of ground cumin, a splash of soy sauce, and doggone it I got distracted by a conversation and forgot what other spices (wait, wait, a small amount of fennel, right [edit: and a wee pinch of fenugreek]) into a bigger bowl and stir up thoroughly.

Glop the mixture into the squash-halves, piling it up in the middle. Sprinkle ground cinnamon over the whole thing. Arrange the elephant garlic slabs to cover the still-exposed squash-flesh. Place the squash halves on a baking sheet and cover each with foil.

Set a timer for an hour later and try to remember what the heck we did for this writeup because we forgot about taking notes halfway through.

Dunno yet whether it's any good. It's still in the oven. I wanted to write this down before I could forget more than I already had. Another fifteen minutes and we'll poke at it to see whether it's done yet.

[Update @ 23:45: It came out well, definitely worth repeating, though it could use minor tweaks, which I'll describe in a comment in a little while.]

Photo, thanks to syntonic_comma:

[*] "Trader Joe's Spices of the World 21 Seasoning Salute" -- the label says: "Onion, Spices (Black Pepper, Celery Seed, Cayenne Pepper, Parsley, Basil, Marjoram, Bay Leaf, Oregano, Thyme, Savory, Rosemary, Cumin, Mustard, Coriander), Garlic, Carrot, Orange Peel, Tomato Granules, Lemon Juice Powder, Oil of Lemon, Citric Acid." Basically a shortcut used because it was handy and had a balance of flavours that's pretty close to what I would've done trying to balance a bit of this, a bit of that, taste, adjust, repeat.