From Jeff Cox

Squash is one of the New World’s great gifts to the Old. The name “squash” is an abbreviation of the Narragansett Indian word asquutasquash, with the prefix asq meaning uncooked or raw. Along with corn and beans, it is one of the Native Americans’ Three Sisters, three vegetables that were often grown together, and which together formed a staple diet complete in all necessary proteins.

Winter Squash (Cucurbita moschata and Cucurbita maxima)

Nutrition
Winter squash are intensely rich in vitamin A—1 cup provides 150 percent of our daily needs, plus 30 percent of our need for vitamin C, 25 percent of our potassium, much of our manganese and folate, and good amounts of many other trace elements.

Types
The types of winter squash seem endless. There are acorn, buttercup, butternut, hubbard, kabocha, spaghetti, pumpkin, and more.

Seasonality
The season for winter squash runs from late August through March, but the very finest squashes are found from October through January—the heart of this season.

What To Look For
During those years when I don’t plant butternut squash in my garden (giving a crop a rest every third year helps deter the buildup of pests), I buy them from the local farmers’ markets. They start appearing in August and are offered for sale until the market shuts down for the winter. I make sure to ask the seller if the butternut is a bush type or is grown on a long vining plant. If she says she doesn’t know, then I know she didn’t grow the squash herself, and I’ll ask more questions to see if she’s a purveyor. If she says they were grown on a bush-type plant, then I thank her and maybe consider buying some. But if she says, “These were grown on big, rambling vines that just about smothered my carrots,” I know she’s got the real goods. Now I ask if these are the Waltham strain. If she says yes, I can be sure I’m bringing home not only my favorite winter squash, but also the very best variety of that squash.

On one of my last trips to the farmers’ market before it folds its tent up for the winter, I buy some butternuts to store for the wintertime. If a squash is going to be cooked right away, there’s no reason to watch out for nicks, but if they’re meant for winter storage, I make sure that each squash is firm and sound, with its tough dried stem intact and its skin totally uncut.

Storage and Preparation
Winter squash can be baked whole —just remember to poke them with a knife in a few places so the squash doesn’t explode. You can also cut them in half and empty out the seeds and fibers before baking. If you are going to cut the squash into chunks to steam it, peel it first.

Butternuts store perfectly well for the winter on newspapers spread on the floor of my garage, where it doesn’t freeze. You might wonder why I store some myself, rather than just buying butternuts from the supermarket during the winter. The main reason is to make sure my squash are organically grown. Another reason is because when they’re stored in a cool, dry place, they tend to sweeten up as the cold weather comes on, reaching peak of sweetness about November and then keeping that quality or even improving it over the duration of the winter. Who knows what conditions supermarket butternuts have endured? My home-stored organic Waltham butternuts are far sweeter and tastier than any I’ve found at the chain stores.

Uses
Even the richest-flavored of the winter squashes is still mild compared to highly-flavored vegetables like garlic or tomatoes. That means that squash can successfully absorb a wide range of other flavors. Think of squash flavored with cheeses like Cheddar and fontina, or with ginger, or leeks, oranges, sage and thyme, maple syrup, sherry, curry powder—the list can go on; squash’s forgiving flavors can work so many different ways.

The classic way to treat winter squash is to roast it. Just cut the squash in half. Scoop out the seeds and place them cut side up in a shallow pan of water. If it’s a less sweet variety like the acorn squash, plop on a bit of butter and some maple syrup in the holes where the seeds had been—sweeter squash like butternut don’t need anything. Then roast at 400 degrees F for 1 hour. That’s it.
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Keep An Eye Out For Delicata And Sweet Dumpling
If any winter squash can challenge butternut for top quality honors, it’s delicata. This heirloom variety makes a loaf-shaped squash about 7 to 9 inches long and 3 to 4 inches wide. It’s a pretty thing, with a light creamy white to yellowish background and dark green stripes and flecks down its ribbed surface. Its flesh is very finely textured, light orange, and nutty-sweet with a hint of caramel in the flavor when baked just a tad past done so the surface browns up a bit.

Another squash to look out for is the Sweet Dumpling, which is about 3 to 4 inches wide and about 3 inches high and weighs about 8 ounces. It has the same pretty white and green striping as the delicata, but the inside is hardly more than a morsel by the time the seeds are scraped out and the top discarded.

A roasted Sweet Dumpling, however, is great for serving a hot dish in an eye-catching container for special occasions. If a knife is inserted near the stem at an angle slanting inward, and then cuts a circle so the top comes off like a lid, the top can be replaced on the squash without if falling into the interior. Save the top, scrape out as much of the seeds and flesh as you can so the little squash becomes a container, then add filling and set the top snugly back on. A hot squash soup or a medley of baked squash chunks with diced ham and potatoes make good fillings, but my favorite filling for little Sweet Dumplings is a hot Crab and Squash Soup (see below).
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My Favorite Squash
One summer when I lived in Pennsylvania, I would pass a large field every day as I drove to work. It wasn’t until the leaves died away in September that I could see the big, round, bumpy, red-orange skins of winter squashes. It seemed funny, because I’d never seen that kind in the markets around there and wondered what they were used for. I got my answer a few days later. They were being loaded onto a truck painted with a large sign that read, “Mrs. Smith’s Pies.” Mrs. Smith’s pie factory was located in nearby Pottstown, so it didn’t surprise me that local farmers were growing crops for her pies—but what kind of pie would she make from big old red squash? I stopped and asked the foreman about it. “These here are Golden Hubbards,” he said. “We make pumpkin pies out of them.”

“Yeah?” I said. “Why don’t you use pumpkins?”

“Pumpkins don’t make very good pies. These are much better,” he said. I told him I’d like to try that, and cadged a small Hubbard from him. Hacked in two on my kitchen counter, it showed good color—not quite as rich as butternut but an inviting yellow orange. After baking, the flesh was sweet, though a bit coarser and stringier than butternut. Then I got out my mom’s old pumpkin pie recipe, and made me a pie. It was luscious—certainly better than any I’d made from the kind of pumpkins they sell for jack-o’-lanterns at Halloween. But it got me thinking. If Mrs. Smith made good pumpkin pies from Hubbards, why couldn’t I make brilliantly wonderful pumpkin pies from Waltham butternuts? That Halloween I tried it, and we’ve been making our pumpkin pies with the Waltham variety of butternut squash ever since (recipe below).
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“Pumpkin” Pie Made With Organic Butternut Squash Recipe

Makes one 9-inch pie

Because pumpkin pie filling is so wet, it’s a good idea to prebake the pie crust before filling it.

1 large or 2 small organic butternut squash (about 4 pounds)
Single Crust for a 9-inch Pie (recipe follows)
3 organic eggs, separated
1½ cups heavy cream
6 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons white sugar
½ cup organic dark corn syrup (not HFCS, a chemical)
2 tablespoons blackstrap molasses
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon salt

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cut the squash in half. Remove the seeds. Place the halves cut side up in a baking pan with 1 inch of water in the bottom, and lightly place aluminum foil over the squash. Bake for 1½ hours or until the squash is soft and falling apart. While the squash is baking, prepare the dough for the pie crust and refrigerate for 1 hour.

2. Remove the squash from the oven and raise the temperature to 425°F. When the squash is cool enough to handle, remove any tough browned or burnt skin that may have formed on the surface, spoon out 2 cups of the soft meat and reserve (save the rest for another use).

3. Roll the dough into a circle about one-eighth inch thick and 12 inches in diameter. Transfer to a 9-inch pie pan. Trim the edges ½ inch larger than the edge of the pan and crimp with the back of a fork. Poke holes here and there with a fork. Line the dough with wax paper, then fill with pie weights or dry beans to weight down the dough. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove the weights and wax paper, return the crust to the oven and bake for 3 or 4 minutes, until the crust is a golden brown.

4. While the crust is baking, prepare the filling. In a large bowl, combine the 2 cups squash, the 3 egg yolks, cream, brown and white sugars, corn syrup, molasses, spices, vanilla, and salt and mix well with a whisk.

5. Using an electric mixer, beat the whites until they form soft peaks. Fold them into the squash mixture. Fill the prebaked crust to within ½ inch of the top of the crust. If any pie filling is left over, pour it into a ramekin and bake it alongside the pie.

Bake the pie for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until a butter knife inserted in the center of the pie comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool.
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Single Crust for a 9-inch Pie

Makes one crust for a 9-inch pie

1 cup organic all-purpose or pastry flour
¼ teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons organic butter, chilled
2 tablespoons canola oil, chilled
¼ cup cold water

1. Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl. Cut the butter into 4 pieces and add them into the flour along with the 2 tablespoons of canola oil. Using 2 knives or a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the flour until the pieces of butter are smaller than peas and the mixture resembles coarse meal.

2. Add 3 tablespoons of water and toss the mixture lightly using two forks. Add more water if needed so that you can press the mixture together into a ball that retains its shape. Refrigerate for at least a half hour before rolling.
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Crab and Squash Soup Recipe

Serves 4

This recipe involves serving a sweet-tasting Delicata squash soup in cute little containers made from Sweet Dumpling squash (of course you can also use bowls if you can’t find the squash).

If you’re up to cooking crab (which isn’t hard to do, and picking out the meat is fun), I suggest using Eastern blue crab, western Dungeness crab, or Alaskan king crab (in that order), or you can go with high-quality store-bought lump crab meat.

The soup itself doesn’t take long to assemble. First cook the crab. Then while the squash is cooking, pick the crabmeat and prepare the containers.

1 or 2 blue crabs, 1 Dungeness crab, 1 king crab leg, or 2/3 cup cooked lump crabmeat
1 9- to 10-inch Delicata or other fine-fleshed squash
6 Sweet Dumpling squashes, or other small squash that will hold a 1 cup serving or soup
5 cups fish or chicken stock
2 egg yolks
1 cup half-and-half
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. If preparing the crab at home, ask your fishmonger to clean and crack blue or Dungeness crabs. Blue crabs should be cooked in a steamer, covered, with 2 to 4 cups water for about 5 minutes until opaque and cooked through, then picked and refrigerated until needed. Dungeness and king crab generally come precooked, so simply need to be picked. Refrigerate crab until needed later.

2. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Cut the Delicata squash in half, place in a baking pan with 1 inch of water in the bottom, and cover with aluminum foil. Bake the halves for 1 hour or until the squash is soft and falling apart.

3. While the Delicata squash is cooking, pick out 2/3 cup of crabmeat if you are preparing it at home.

4. Cut off the tops of the Sweet Dumpling squash with the knife angled in so the tops will stay on when they’re put back. Using a tablespoon, scrape out as much of the seeds and stringy interior as possible. Set the containers and tops aside.

5. When the Delicata squash is done, spoon the squash meat into a blender and puree, adding a little of the stock to make it blend. Reserve the pureed squash.

6. In a small bowl, blend the egg yolks well with the half-and-half.

7. Melt the butter in a saucepan, remove from heat and stir in the flour. Return to medium heat and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture is golden, about 3 to 5 minutes; this is a roux. Remove the roux from the heat and add the stock (the mixture will bubble up), stirring constantly to combine the stock and roux. Return the pan to the heat and cook until the roux is entirely dissolved and the mixture thickens, about 3 minutes.

8. Again remove the soup from the heat and add the pureed squash and the egg yolk—half-and-half mixture. Return to medium-low heat and cook for 3 to 4 minutes until lightly bubbling. Adjust the seasoning. Add the crab and immediately spoon the soup into the Sweet Dumpling squash containers. Put on their tops and serve immediately on individual plates.
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See also Rosalind’s Organic Winter Squash - The Cook’s Friend
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Jeff Cox is author of The Organic Cook’s Bible and The Organic Food Shopper’s Guide, and numerous other cooking, gardening, and wine books, and lives in Sonoma County, California.
Images Credit: Winter Squash © Susan Mckenzie | Dreamstime.com, Sweet Dumpling Squash © Cenorman | Dreamstime.com
OrganicToBe.org | OrganicToGo.com
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