Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
improve in both sweetness and general flavor with at least a couple of weeks of storage.
They all tend to have golden yellow to buttery orange flesh. On a purely subjective basis,
they are almost uniformly beautiful, with rich colors and textures that make them look like
elaborately shaped pieces of rustic pottery. But beyond those few similarities, pretty much
anything goes.
How do you make sense of it all? The good news is that when you get right down to
it, it's not so hard to pick a winter squash because, quite frankly, you can ignore most of
the varieties. Beautiful as they are visually, most were traditionally prized more for their
keeping qualities than for any outstanding culinary characteristics. To my taste, there is no
better example of that than the hallowed pumpkin, which, in most cases, is a singularly
stringy, watery, vegetal-tasting mess. (The squash variety grown for commercial pumpkin
pie filling is actually closer to a butternut squash than anything you might recognize as a
pumpkin.) So unless you are a cucurbit completist, you should focus on a handful of the
best varieties that are commonly available in your area. Several excellent squash may be
offered on a very limited basis, such as Hubbard, red kuri and buttercup. And if someone
whose taste you trust recommends another variety, by all means give it a shot. In general,
however, I suggest the following four varieties, which are both delicious and easily found.
(Winter squash seem to be defined by two variables: texture - from stringy to smooth - and
flavor - from a nutty sweetness to a kind of green vegetal flavor I'll call "squashiness" for
lack of a better term.)
• Acorn. Probably the most familiar winter squash after the pumpkin, it's certainly the
most familiar delicious one. The acorn is a middle-of-the-road squash. The skin is dark
green with occasional blushes of saturated orange, the flesh is pale to medium orange,
the texture is semismooth and rich and the flavor is moderately sweet and moderately
squashy. Table Queen is an especially good type of acorn.
• Butternut. If I were forced to choose a single readily available winter squash variety
for cooking, this would be it. Butternut is shaped like a long cylinder with a slight bulb on
one end. You're usually best off choosing one with the fattest neck and the smallest bulb
because it will have the smallest seed cavity and the most meat. The skin is fairly thin and
golden tan in color, the flesh is dark orange and semifibrous and the flavor is very sweet
and nutty, with just a hint of green squashiness.
• Carnival. This one looks like a harlequin acorn squash, with beautiful patchwork
dark green and bright orange skin. The flesh is dark orange and slightly fibrous, and the
flavor is complex, rich and sweet, with an intriguing earthy note.
