Winter squash
I've just been bending Dr. Claire's ear about kabocha (winter) squash. While I was in L.A I ate the most divine dish of kabocha squash and chicken broth.
The pumpkin was slightly flourly and yet melted in your mouth. It was heavenly and although I don't believe in heaven, if by chance I get there I hope this dish is served regularly. I also ate some burdock roots dry fried in chillies--a sort of fiery chip in you like. Again it was perfect. Or perhaps that was the unfilleted sake the nearest anyone can get to an alcholic milkshake.
Anyhow you can imagine my glee when I got back from America to fine six huge mottle light green squash in the vegetable garden. The chef told me that part of the secret was a par-boiling the pumpkin before coooking it in the chicken broth and the rest in the curing of the pumpkin. Winter squashes are harvested whilst still growing and ripened by storing them first in a warm place for around 13 days and then for a month or so in a cool place. The warm place converts some of the starch into carbohydrates, the cool place increases the sugar production. From one to three months later the squash are ready (in my case in time for Christmas dinner). You can tell if it is ready as the flesh is bright yellow/orange and the skin is hard (if your thumb nail leaves a mark it has sat long enough) and the stalk withered. Oh I can almost taste it now. It's enough to make me almost forget about the tomatoes.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~41~RS~)
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What about the pumpkin?! Couldn't you do something like you did for the British apple and raise the pumpkin's profile as good to eat? We're fed up of pumpkins only being available in the shops for one week of the year and after 31st October ~ none left for eating. They're very versatile, whether in pumpkin pie, sliced and oiled on the barbecue, roasted with honey in the oven, or as a base for soup, to name just a few ideas.
We want more pumpkins! And you've got the medium for promoting them.
Thanks Alys.
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Hey communiverse
I take it you don't have a patch to grow any? I find that you see a lot of squash in wholefood and box schemes, but not pumpkin. But then there is the whole pumpkin/winter squah debate and where you put the likes of Crown Prince?. So one solution would be to eat more winter squash and just call them pumpkins. Another would be to buy lots of pumpkins (though the carving types tend to be a bit watery) around now and store them as they keeps for months and months.
Or I could attempt a campaign on your behalf and make a t-shirt saying 'pump for pumpkins' . . . actually perhaps not, ha ha.
If you come up with a better slogan I'll think about making the t-shirt.
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