9
That's a cue ball zucchini.
It's similar to a one ball zucchini (yellow), and an eight ball zucchini (dark green, almost black). All of them are round and great squashes to stuff and roast. Hope you enjoyed it!
9
It is easy to create a little oven on your range top in a pan with a lid.
simply cook on low heat with a well-fitting lid on the pan (I use a glass lid so I can see the food).
if you want to steam the food for part or all of the cook, just add a little water to the pan
for the ultimate stove-top oven, put your food on a small rack to raise it off the pan'...
7
To me, it looks a bit like a birdhouse gourd, albeit a different variegation. Or perhaps a kabocha squash, which to me has a rather mild and mediocre taste and texture.
I guess you've ended up with some wacky gourd hybrid, resulting from open pollination of your desirable (F1?) hybrid. As is the nature of hybrids, the result could be caused by pollination ...
6
The fruit from the Cucurbit family (pumpkins, squash, zucchini, melons, gourds etc) are all very good at cross pollinating. This will create some very strange fruits.
I have accidentally grown all kinds of odd things. I would imagine that they are more common at markets & places where people sell produce grown on smaller (than commercial scale ...
6
Two factors affect the storage of butternut and other winter squash, temperature and humidity. From Bonnie Plants :
You’ll see best storage results when you stash squash in a cool, dry spot. For most winter squash, store at 50º to 55º F with relative humidity of 60 to 70 percent.
Obviously, the temperature in our refrigerators is much lower than 50°F - ...
6
Admittedly our carving pumpkins in the UK are smaller than yours, which may affect the texture, but this year and last I made:
three been and pumpkin chilli
pumpkin tagine
pumpkin spice cupcakes
pumpkin curry
pumpkin, pepper and mushroom fajitas
All of these get most of their flavour from other ingredients. All were successful.
The chilli, curry, and ...
5
Okay happened to me too. I did notice a clear gel like substance coming from the squash when I chopped and peeled it, I read that's a natural substance to "protect" itself from damage, like sealing up a cut or wound. I cut up 4 of them, only the first one had this. So may be from varying ripeness. I washed my hands after cutting them all up,(since they were ...
5
It looks to me like you need umami. One easy, healthy thing you can add is powdered dried shiitake or porcini mushrooms. I just throw the dried mushrooms into a spice grinder, it's a powerful punch.
EDIT: (SAJ14SAJ refers to the same concept, glutamates, in his answer)
5
If you want something storebought, just get pumpkin puree - it is squash puree, not really even a substitute. Pumpkins are squash, and "pumpkin" is a pretty broad term, covering a lot of winter squash. In fact canned pumpkin is often made with things more similar to butternut squash than what you'd think of as pumpkin (jack-o'-lanterns and all). Just make ...
5
In the US, Jack-o-lanterns are typically common field pumpkins and many of the larger and specialty ones are actually gourds. I cannot talk to some of the gourds, so if you are looking at some of the white ghost pumpkins and they very warty ones, use may vary. But the common field pumpkin is certainly edible, but not usually be best choice. The are hard, ...
5
Peel is still inedible after roasting.
It's a lot easier to get off after cooking.
I usually cut squash in half, deseed, cook for an hour, then cut into pieces if I want to. You'll have to let it cool a bit before pulling the skin off the pieces.
Why even do that. I've served squash with skin for decades, and mo one ever complains. It lets people know that ...
4
While I agree with some of the other answers that glutamates and nucleotides will help enhance the flavor of your dish, I don't think that's where you need to start.
As is, your "health mash" barely has any flavor to enhance. I'd start instead by adding some aromatics. You'd be amazed how much more flavor you'll get if you just add some sauteed or ...
4
This can be one of two things:
1) If you bought this from a store the squash is a bit old. It own't hurt you as mentioned in one of the comments above it just isn't pretty.
2) If this is a fresh squash, if you had a heavy rain storm or a higher than normal concentration of smoke in the area (like forest fires) then it is possible for excess minerals to be ...
4
No, pumpkin will not shred the way spaghetti squash does. That's pretty much distinctive to the spaghetti squash, and I don't know of any substitute.
The flavor is generically squashy, so if you were to serve a sauce on top of a slice of pumpkin or cubed pumpkin it would taste just fine. Not the same, but similar enough to be edible. The texture will be ...
4
You will not be able to follow a real spaghetti squashh recipe with pumpkin. If you try to gouge it with a fork, you will get grooved pumpkin.
My suggestion would be to use a spiralizer. Cut the raw pumpkin into pieces which are suitable for your spiralizer, and make pumpkin-spaghetti out of it. Then steam them. The taste should be pretty comparable to ...
4
Pumpkin pie where I come from (USA) is made with these big round orange squashes (we call them "pumpkins", but I believe that term is used for different things in some other countries). Unlike butternut squash, or other members of the squash family, our pumpkins aren't considered to be delicious cooked by themselves, and so people here pretty much only use ...
4
Some ideas:
I like to do do pumpkin gnocchi. The dryer the pumpkin, the better, since you will need to add less flour and get a lighter result. It has a lovely sweet taste compared to potato gnocchi and goes really well with sage and butter or blue cheese sauce. The recipe in the link is just suggestive. My approach is to add an egg yolk and to keep adding ...
4
In Mediterranean cuisine there is a dessert made with pumpkins. You cut the pumpkin into large cubes, add sugar to them and wait overnight. They will release some liquid, and the next day you can cook them until they're soft and no liquid is left. Then you can add shredded coconut and/or walnuts and/or tahini to serve, depending on your taste. Lots of fiber ...
4
Most winter squash is fairly interchangeable when cooking.
Obviously, there are differences in them (sweetness, density, size, flesh color), but if you're cutting it up and roasting it, then it's fairly universal (but you might need to cut up denser ones into smaller bits).
Tozer Seeds describes it as:
a combination of sweetness, flaky texture and depth of ...
3
First, as a gardener who's grown these, I can tell you that acorn squash — like all winter squash — need to be left on the vine to ripen. After picking, they will get a little sweeter as they sit for a couple weeks, but if picked too early, they won't actually continue to ripen.
That said, there's no great trick to picking a good one. If you see some some ...
3
I've roasted vegetables to address the same issue; it definitely works for eggplant and squash. All you have to do is spread them out over a baking sheet or two (if they're piled up the moisture won't escape as well) and roast at say 425F until they're mostly cooked, a bit shrunken down, and obviously not as wet.
Your idea of grilling should work fine too, ...
3
There are three main things that are going to add or enhance the flavor of food. Salt, sugar, and glutimates.
This is why the restaurant trio of salt, butter, and bacon is so effective at making things taste good. Cheese is another ingredient that brings most of these factors to the table, especially hard aged cheeses like Parmesan. Tomatoes also help ...
3
I've actually found that if I cook my squash cut side down it ends up a LOT more watery. I would assume that it's because the water that should be draining turns to steam and becomes trapped by the peel. I don't usually have a problem if I bake it cut side up.
3
It sounds like what you have is a Yellow Round Zucchini F2, potentially crossed with something your neighbors grew.
If they came from Yellow Round Zucchini F1 seeds, as you said, they're not another variety you'll find anywhere else. It's your own unique unstabilized breed.
Contrary to what sometimes seems to be a popular belief, hybrids never revert ...
3
Prior to the pic, I was thinking green tiger/Italian striped zucchini (example: http://www.burpee.com/vegetables/squash/summer/zucchini/squash-summer-green-tiger-zucchini-hybrid-prod000907.html) which I recently picked up at my local farmers market.
After seeing the pic, I'm leaning towards a Cushaw squash (example: http://www.slowfoodusa.org/ark-item/green-...
3
I suspect the problem was the 1/2 inch of water, which would have absorbed a goodly amount of the microwave energy, preventing it from heating the flesh of the squash.
For very slightly more detailed instructions, which are not too far off from what you have tried, you might try this recipe from the Food Network, which recommends 5-7 minutes for 1/2 of a ...
3
Most Japanese varieties of pumpkin do not need to be peeled. More precisely, most Japanese are content to eat most Japanese varieties of squash unpeeled (maybe rough peeled where knobs are present). I can't really recall treating red kuri any differently, but I don't find it very often, so I can only speak from limited experience.
The typical preparation of ...
3
Hi there I came across this post looking for something else and thought I would add my two cents as a farmer: the brown ring is a result of irregular watering as explained above, we have seen a lot of it this year in the South with our drought! The plants draws water up quickly after a period of dry weather and deposits minerals from the soil in the growth ...
3
Well it's possible they are over ripe. Acorn squash should be dark green or mostly so when it's ready to eat. It turns orange when it's ripe, but just like many circubits and cucirbits (squashes and melons(including cucumber)) you don't want to eat them when they are ripe, you eat them before they start to ripen.
How you store them makes a difference in the ...
3
Probably the same reason why garlic turns blue sometimes when you cook it.
http://www.foodsafetysite.com/consumers/faq/?m_knowledgebase_article=14
its a reaction with sulfur + copper which can naturally occur in foods.
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