Eat Seasonal Food - Winter Squash

Like every aspiring food producer in town [ed. and out?], I'm pitching video projects at local food celebrity MikeG. While at lunch yesterday, the Sky Full of Bacon auteur confessed that he does not use winter squash in his repertoire. He blames it on Home Grown Wisconsin having sold out of their CSA shares. "If I was forced to use it, via my CSA, I'd use it," he says. Or was it just not porky enough Mr. G.

The world of winter squash is indeed a bit daunting. Besides the whole, bake long enough just to get it soft enough to slice in half so you can bake long enough to peel issues, there are other issues associated with winter squash. Namely, what the heck will they taste like after all that trouble. See, although we call a lot of products winter squash, inside they are really three different veg. As today's NYTimes notes, even experts do not always agree on the profiles of various squash. Still, the article gives it a try.

Winter squash are one of the best things to have in a local house as they last nearly forever, with little effort needed in food preservation. Surprisingly enough, for a product associated with winter and cold and storage and such, I find that Sephardic Jewish--it seems that pumpkin's an especially Jewish veg in some parts of the world, Italian, and North African cookbooks are great sources for zucca recipes. There you go MikeG, instead of cooking something as mundane as winter squash, how 'bout you try something exotic like zucca.