Squash Tasting

RantWoman is SO glad she does not have to subsist on the results of her own tomato-growing attempts this year. RantWoman is so glad instead she can go hear gardening adventures at her dining buddies', The Weed Whackin Wenches .


This month's milestones:

--Curmudgeon heard weather reports of impending windstorms and decided to harvest all the green grape tomatoes even though Seattle temps have not yet dipped below the mid-40's. Some of the tomatoes are ripening fine indoors; others are destined for green tomato jam.


--WingNut regaled us with stories of a fantastically successful Bat day at Skye nursery. RantWoman would have to borrow the World's most Irrepressible Nephew and it might be too far for a nephew excursion on the bus, but really, really fun to hear about it.

--The Wenches still have a whole bunch of eggplants on the plants. For an appetizer, they served RantWoman a lovely cold eggplant and tomato spread featuring only olive oil in addition to eggplant, tomatoes, garlic and herbs grown from their garden.

--RantWoman asked whether the Wenches have gone nuts with their new ice cream maker. Their freezer is too full of garden bounty right now even to chill the freezer bowl. What a problem to have!

--The Wenches reported decent success with zucchini but too much trouble with rodents wanting to share their other winter squash. So the theme ingredient came from local markets. RantWoman knows the Wenches darn well deserve to benefit from the sweat of their own brows. However, Montana girl that RantWoman is, she somehow does not mind reminders that we are always on the edge of the wild, even if the wild here is only urban rats, or the little worms that ate the Wenches' radishes and something else.

--RantWoman came home with what judging by the Wenches' review could be a whole winter's supply of malagueta peppers, an inch long, red or green, long and slender. RantWoman has in mind a couple people she will share with which is why she came home with that many anyway. The Wenches were also handing out recipes for Piri Piri Sauce and Shrimp Piri Piri in case RantWoman cannot come up with use ideas on her own.

But first, the theme dining experience, a squash tasting. The Wenches baked up acorn, delicata, and potimarron. They served them in generous-sized gourd segments alongside wonderful wild rice pilaf and roast meat.

Potimarron?

Curmudgeon writes: The French call it potimarron which is a combination of potiron = pumpkin and marron = chestnut. It's also known as Hokkaido squash. The link is to Chocolate & Zucchini''s potimarron page with several recipes at the bottom.

http://chocolateandzucchini.com/archives/2005/01/hello_gorgeous.php

But RantWoman is getting ahead of herself. The squash segments were array in elegant and vividly contrasting simplicity on our plates, the intense orange of the potimarron, the tan delicata, a pale yellow-fleshed acorn. Pilaf was served on the side, much to RantWoman's delight.

RantWoman knows it is fashionable to stuff squash with pilaf, lentils, nut stuffing. Honestly, RantWoman always finds it hard to eat squash stuffed this way. For instance sometimes RantWoman wants to eat the squash before the stuffing and she finds the clear chunks against the dinner plate so much more accessible.

As to actually eating the squash, bless acorn's heart: sometimes stringy, sometimes watery, it defined squash-themed comfort food in RantWoman's childhood and is the perfect grounding next to its more sublime companions. The delicata was the sweetest, least dense. The potimarron was smooth, dense, the most filling and by far brightest orange of any of them. So simple. So elegant, and finished with pumpkin beer, lightly spiced and brewed over pumpkin seeds, from Elysian brewery. It all just worked.