A Series of Attempts at a Post on Pie-Squashes

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Several Attempts to Write a Post Comparing Squashes for Pie

Beware, it has Chipotle powder.

It would be more ideal to write this comparison of pie-squashes after having tried the allegedly perfect variety, Blue Hubbard, but I can't get my hands on one. The squashes thrown indiscriminately into bins outside of the supermarkets in town never include Blue Hubbard. What I have tried will have to do, then, because let's be honest: By the time I find a Blue Hubbard, I won't want to write a comparison anyway. (At this point Blue Hubbard's inaccessibility has me elevating it to some kind of edible angel of pie-baking.)

Thus far this season I've tried Buttercup, Delicata, Pie Pumpkin and Golden Acorn.



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Pumpkin Pie Round 2: Pie Pumpkin vs Golden Acorn

Golden Acorn

• 3 cups cooked squash puree
• 2/3 cup coconut milk
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2/3 cup brown sugar

Pie Pumpkin

• 2 cups cooked pumpkin puree
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons water

The Devourer of Small,
Unsuspecting Creature's almond
flour gingersnap crust (with
molasses)

This week I tried making two other varieties of squash into pie, Pie Pumpkin and Golden Acorn. Why Golden Acorn? Because, sorting through the squash bins at Shop 'N' Kart, its label read "delicious baked, microwaved or in a pie," and none of the others (Green Kuri, Kabocha, Acorn, Carnival, Delicata, Butternut, Buttercup) had anything about pie.



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Let us return to the method I used to favor--asking inappropriately speculative questions of food (although the bananas turned me down) and walking far out onto the limb of looking too hard for profundity. What makes good pumpkin pie? To some it is something that doesn't look like a pumpkin at all, but by virtue of the versatility of the term may be called pumpkin, and comes in a can. To others the orange tone of the fruit's skin is proof of the pie. Still others care only for the pie's taste--whatever tastes best. But what is best? Are we searching for an ideal here, and every good taste is orbiting it? Or is taste as blind as it feels? I could tell you, for instance,



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TDSUC's pie

I found a Green Hubbard (apparently it's "Green" not "Blue" as I once thought), and have taken it home with me. Not that I was looking anymore, but there it was. They are rumored (by one website and by my brother who once made a pie from one he was given as a kind of payment) to be the ideal squash for pie. Therefore my own easily persuaded personal mythology promises that a mountain of delicious pies will be scooped from the flesh of this giant. It is heavy, and not as warty and irregularly formed as I was led to believe they are. I estimate that this one squash could make four small pies.

It seems pointless to omit the Hubbard from my comparison of pie-squashes, so I will have to delay until I bake it into pies.

Left: Pie Pumpkin, Right: Golden Acorn

Pie Pumpkin Pie

Golden Acorn Pie

rolled oats, butter, brown sugar, cinnamon

Golden Acorn filling