CSA Week 19: What kind of squash are you again?

The surprise this week was a strange creature of unknown provenance. It was listed on the pickup sheet as “red cory squash.” As that list is frequently rife with creative spellings, Red began Googling “red curry squash,” which netted us a million recipes but little clue as to what kind of squash-pumpkin-thing we had sitting on our counter. Eventually he discovered that what we had was a red kuri squash, and, as you see, it looks very like a small reddish pumpkin:


Whew, mystery solved. Then, he tried to slice and peel it, which was easier said than done. For your reference, red kuri squash has the hide of an elephant. Don’t try to peel this mother. Whack it in half by whatever means you need to (big knife, circular saw), scoop out the seeds, and roast it like you would an acorn squash. The flavor is definitely squash-like, but with a texture that’s the slightest bit reminiscent of potato. So as not to let the oven feel neglected, we roasted our sweet potatoes and Week 18’s butternut squash at the same time and had a roasted fall vegetable supper.


More cilantro! Guess where it went? The freezer.

We got a rather hefty cabbage, much larger than the petite cabbage from Week 17. As nice as it was, we decided to share the wealth and gave it to Red’s grandma. She was really pleased. So were we, even though she planned to cook it with ham.

The interpretive-spelling trend continued with a leafy green described only as “scarole.” Obviously, this was escarole, a vegetable that (unlike red kuri squash) we had actually heard of. It looks like lettuce. We used it in Veganomicon’s Escarole with Capers and White Beans. This one was kind of strange. We ate it over pasta, and it was fine, but something kept it from being super-duper-delicious. The textural clash of capers and beans? I don’t know. It didn’t sour me on escarole, but I was less than enthusiastic about the end result. I look forward to trying escarole again in another type of dish.


Last but not least, we had baby eggplants and spinach. Curry time! I hacked Vegan with a Vengeance’s Chickpea and Spinach Curry, subbing the seared eggplant for the chickpeas. This dish has a crazy amount of spices, but it’s delicious.


Almost to Week 20! I can’t believe we’ve been doing this since June.