Beware – Novice soup chef at work

I have never been a great fan of Squash, beyond Butternut Squash, not having taken the time to really try it. Last season I grew a few Butternut squash plants in containers at home from self-sown seeds in my compost. They were rather small, probably with too little by way of nutrients and watering. This year I repeated with seed I had saved, slightly better looked after, and larger results.

But we had a bumper crop of a variety of squash at TOPS this year. It seemed churlish not to try.

Squash harvest from TOP Community Allotment

On the left are 5 Crown Prince squashes (the bluey green ones). A single Turks Head squash (Orange – middle left, with fetching stripes down it, but rather smaller than the one I recall we grew years ago), a couple of small yellow butternut squashes, a big dark green one (not sure what that is), and the 5 mottled green ‘Sharks Fin Melon’ squashes. There are three eating apples there too – probably to avoid them being trampled.

So I took one of the Crown Prince squashes, the smallest, with no great plan. And it sat on the kitchen worksurface for -ooh, the best part of 2 months. When I eventually got around to it,I found it had a lovely firm orange flesh, very similar to butternut. I located a recipie for pumpkin soup in a recipie book (which I cannot now locate – too many books), and adapted it a bit. Onions, some potatoes, chicken stock. The main masterstroke was to hold back some of the squash, fry it in olive oil to soften, and put it in towards the end of the cooking. This gave a lovely extra texture to the soup, which was nutty, thick and warming. The second half of the squash got used in roasted chunks. Also yummy. I tried toasting the seeds (and saved some for sowing), but these seemed pretty tasteless and chewy.

Crown Prince Squash and Soup

We grew the Sharks fin Melon (also known as spagetti squash), because Gary had seen an oriental gardner on the main patch growing them. and thought it would be a novelty. Sadly everyone has been a bit shy to try it, and these have lurked in the shed on the allotment rather than be claimed by any of the TOP gardeners. With the extreme cold weather, some succummed to softening, and have gone to the compost heap. about 5 were still OK, and I posted some possible internet recipies to the group, but then thought I really should try one myself. Besides, there was finally some worktop free to sit it on.

Within a week, having been brought into the warm, the skin of the melon has developed a mould bloom, so spurred into ‘sort it or compost it’ action, I cut the squash open, scooped out the flesh (articles online speak of difficulties extracting seeds, but I found that OK), and went for it. A couple of the smaller seeds I missed floated to the surface of the broth, so were easy to scoop out.

Sharksfish Melon Excavations

Once open, it was obvious both why this squash got its names. Sharksfish – the flesh feels and looks a bit like white fishmeat, and the smell was strongly of melon. Spagetti squash is not so clear at this stage, but once cooked, the similarity with spagetti, or actually with noodles, was very apparent.

One of the recipies I looked at had crabsticks and freshly peeled prawns in it. I had neither, but lurking in the bottom of the freezer were the remnants of a bag of prepared shellfish, so I chucked this in. And that fish probably gave the soup most of its taste, with the squash adding the texture of noodles. The soup was certainly not unpleasant, I wasn’t the only one going for seconds.

Sharksfin Soup in the pan

I would be keen to grow the Crown Prince squash again, this had excellent keeping qualities even when abused by sitting in my kitchen for too long. Not so sure about the Sharksfin, though I would cook it again if we do try. They produced very different soups, both of them good.

Of course I should have produced the soups for a workday and taken them back to the patch to be consumed and compared. But that would require too much organisation. Am afraid the pictures will have to do.

Andy Hadley – Jan 2011