Confessions of a Squash Lover
"Visions of Squash that Dance in Your Head"
by Kathryn Matthews
Book review of The Compleat Squash, by Amy Goldman. Artisan Books. 216 pages. Lavishly illustrated with full-color photos by Victor Schrager. $40.
I've always been an armchair gardener at best, happy to admire (and raid) my neighbor's prolific vegetable patch, the first to encourage my husband as he takes trowel and hoe to our modest herb and flower beds, and a curious enough cook to cart home exotic-looking produce from the farmers' market.
But after paging through The Compleat Squash, a visually stunning encyclopedic volume devoted to the cultivation of heirloom squashes (hence, the Old English spelling of "Compleat"), I'm actually considering sowing a few seeds myself. Author Amy Goldman convincingly persuades that the joy and long-term rewards of planting the likes of Blue Banana, Marina di Chioggia and Winter Luxury Pie, among others, far outweigh the effort.
This Rhinebeck resident and psychologist-turned-gardener is a dedicated grower of heirlooms—fruits or vegetables that have been cultivated to reproduce themselves true-to-type from seed—that are passed down from one generation of farmers and gardeners to the next. In the big picture, growing heirlooms and saving seeds preserves our food crop's genetic diversity—an increasingly important issue today as plants with thousands of years of genetic history are being lost to standardized commercial hybrids.
Goldman's book is organized by species and includes "portraits" of 150 varieties of pumpkin, squash and gourd, each containing detailed descriptive information. As an avid home cook, I found it especially helpful that Goldman distinguishes eating varieties from decorative ones. There's also a fascinating section about "hand pollination" (transferring pollen from a male to female flower of the same variety). A small selection of 35 recipes ranges from simple Roasted Vegetables and Pumpkin-Apple Butter, to fancier Foie Gras-Stuffed Jack Be Littles and Pumpkin Palacsinta (Hungarian crepes). The last few pages, however, may be the most valuable: Goldman provides an extensive list of seed sources, complete with contact information.
Goldman explains her motivation for writing this beautiful book, where food, art and gardening intersect: "I want to catalog these marvels before they disappear, to describe my beloved squashes, to make them unforgettable so that visions of them would dance in your head as they do mine."
Indeed, they do.
Winter Luxury Pie
Editors' Note: The recipe that follows is excerpted with permission from Amy Goldman's new book, The Complete Squash. Copyright © 2004 by Amy Goldman. Photographs Copyright © 2004 by Victor Shrager and Amy Goldman.
SIZE: 6 1/2" long by 8" wide
WEIGHT: 1/2 pound
SYNONYMS: Golden Russet, Improved Sugar, Livingston's Pie Squash, Orange Winter Luxury, Queen, Queen Luxury, Standard Pie, Winter Queen.
Winter Luxury Pie is my favorite orange pumpkin, and were she not the finest pie stock in the land, she still would be a knockout. That outrageous trophy fruit stalk is the perfect counterpoint to her modest and petite curvaceous form. Though it breaks my heart to cut one open, I know the flavor will be as fabulous as her appearance.
Winter Luxury Pie was introduced to the general public in 1893 by Johnson & Stokes of Philadelphia. This special strain, apparently developed by an anonymous pumpkin farmer, was similar in many respects (even down to the occasional warts) to the still popular Sugar Pumpkin. By 1917, brothers Ray W. and Edward E. Gill, of the Gill Brothers Seed Company, Portland, Oregon, had bred Winter Luxury Pie up in size. Famed for breeding such wonders as the Golden Delicious squash on their own farmers, Ray and Edward knew a thing or two about pumpkins: "Simply cook [Winter Luxury Pie] done and it is ready for use in making pies."
Winter Luxury Pie makes the smoothest and most velvety pumpkin pie I've ever had. When cut into a wedge on a plate, it holds its shape, color, and flavor long after the competition has keeled over and died. Ray and Edward didn't spell it out for you, so I will. Simply "cook it done" this way:
1. Winter Luxury Pie pumpkin should be baked whole, pierced for a few tiny vent holes, stem trimmed, at 350*F until it "slumps" and softens after an hour or so. If you wish, you can cut a lid, remove the gunk and seeds, and replace the lid loosely before baking (this method yields a drier pie).
2. The cooked pumpkin is hotter than hot potatoes: Be careful when you cut out or removed the lid. Seeds and strings, if left inside, come out easily. Take a large spoon and simply scoop the pumpkin out like ice cream. The flesh peels away from the desiccated rind without a shudder and leaves it flat.
3. Puree the flesh in a blender, adding liquid if needed. A 5-pound pumpkin yields approximately 2 1/2 pounds or 4 cups of pulp, enough for two pies.
4. Insert your favorite pie recipe here.
