ALRIGHT kids, it's time for another Scary-Crayon recipe! This one's come a long way, but I think you'll be pleased with the results. Originating as a potential Random Lunch to ring in the new year and later evolving into a bona fide recipe over several attempts, the tasty Twisted Pretzel Squash Seafood Medley is a fun and easy meal you can make in mere minutes! Rachel Ray's got nothin' on SC.
To start, you'll need a bowl -- and, if you're anything like me, several action figures and/or interesting cups to pose around said bowl while you take photos to document the creation process. But since you're probably not (God help you if you are!), the bowl will probably do. :P
Per the name of the dish, you'll also require vegetables -- SQUASH, to be specific! Use as many or as few kinds of squash as you want. In the cooking session depicted above, we have frozen sliced yellow squash and frozen sliced zucchini, which is apparently a type of squash. And we used frozen veggies, but use whatever you like -- fresh, from the can, what have you. It's not that important. If you're using frozen veggies, though, make sure to either thaw or microwave them in order to soften them up... and if you're using veggies that are in whole pieces (whether completely whole or sliced), take a moment to chop 'em up a bit. It'll make the medley mixin' easier.
So once you're finished with that -- or in the process of doing it, if your veggies required a microwave break -- you can get out the rest of the ingredients! Natch, since this is the Twisted Pretzel Squash Seafood Medley, a twisted pretzel will be required! However, if you don't happen to have one on hand, I should add that I've also had remarkable success substituting tortilla chips in loco pretzelis. And seafood's in the name too, so you'll want to have some of that. Fake crabmeat is always a welcome addition, but you're free to use real crabmeat, scallops, lobster, or whatever else you've got on hand! Somehow, though, it would strike me as odd to use expensive seafood to make a quick dish that involves tearing up a pretzel. Your call! And grab a handful of those delectable little french fried onions and anything else you want to add. Fixins make it bettah. :D
By this point, you should have a bowl of slightly smooshed up squash bits and your other ingredients on the side. Here, you take your pretty twisted pretzel and rip it up, making sure to have softened it up a bit in the microwave if, like mine, yours started out frozen. That is, you should start with your bowl of veggies and this:
...and, after adding the pretzel pieces to the mix and engaging in a brief session of stirring and mashing, you finish you should have something resembling the picture on the left. Depending upon the texture of the pretzels -- ideally, they'll be fairly soggy by this point -- you may want to add a little water and put the bowl into the microwave for 30 seconds or so, but you shouldn't have any problems here if you used frozen or canned veggies. Also, if you want, you can add a little salt and pepper at this time!
See, salt and pepper. And remember those ingredients you'd set aside -- the seafood and french fried onions (and/or other assorted fixins)? Now's the time to toss them in. You can mix them in now or later, but I prefer to do it later, as the mix will be more pliant following yet another nuking session. The onions will get all soggy, the seafood will be all soft and warm... it's a good thing. Besides, you're going to have to mix it again anyway, so why add the extra step? Top off your bowl with whatever you like and you're almost set!
And before microwaving your meal one last time, you'll want to add a slice (or two) of American cheese to the top. Don't worry about mixing it in either at this point -- you'll want to wait until it's all hot and melty so you can get it nice and spread throughout the medley. So microwave the bugger (I'd say for about 45 to 70 seconds) and do that. You should be using a fork or a spoon for mixing this, by the way -- nothing fancy required. This is a Scary-Crayon recipe, people. Although, admittedly, putting this in a blender and making a drink out of it would be rather interesting. But who would want to clean the blender afterwards? That thing would be gross.
But while you might be thinking the same thing about the dish itself -- that it looks gross -- it's truly delish! Yes, it has a very odd appearance, and yes, its ingredients are, well, a little unconventional, but it tastes like... it tastes like... something really, really tasty and great and stuff. Hard to describe. Almost like one would expect seafood and vegetable lasagna (do they even make that?) to taste, except without the tomato sauce and with an extra something due to the different ingredients -- American cheese instead of ricotta and parmesan; pretzels instead of noodles. You get the idea.
Aaand you're finished! Assuming you did everything correctly, you now have a bowl full of weird, hot, delicious Twisted Pretzel Squash Seafood Medley with french fried onions and American cheese or whatever different ingredients you decided to use instead. I hope yours turned out to be as tasty as our version did! If it did, feel free to e-mail us to praise us for this culinary contribution... and also feel free to e-mail us if it didn't, if only to curse us to our graves for encouraging you to defile your bowl and microwave with this foul concoction. At any rate, HAPPY EATIN'!!! :D
