Fall Revisited (AKA: Pumpkin Experiment #4)

 

I meant to do this post last November, but as I hadn't done any posts in a couple years, I decided to bring everyone up to speed first. This is the fourth installment of my pumpkin experiment. 

If you haven't followed my previous posts, you won't know what this is. Here's a sum-up. Every other year or so, I purchase several different breeds of pumpkin, bake them, puree them, and make muffins from them. Then I feed them to my friends and have them vote. I take copious notes along the way so that there is record of how the pumpkin smells, looks, tastes, and other details. I plan to keep on doing this until I can't find any more kinds of pumpkin to try. Then I'll do a semi-final and final round (or more, if we have more than 8 contenders) to find the best pumpkin for baking. 

I wanted to record some other things, like judging on the best pumpkin for soups or the best pumpkin for pies, but I haven't done that. I may add those to the final round. 

This year, I chose the pumpkins pictured above. They are: The Turk's Turban (the orange and green one that looks, well, like a turban), The Crystal Star (round white one in the middle), The Flat White Boer, and the Cushaw (technically not a pumpkin, see below).

The Turk's Turban

I've anted to work with this pumpkin for awhile, but hadn't gotten around to it. This year, it was on my short list, so when I went to Ellis Pottery to get one, I was saw to find they had only one left! It was a little later in the season than usual- the first week of November- but, still! So, I'm not sure it this one was the best version of the Turk's Turban out there. 

I roasted it whole. When I did open it up, I found that it had almost no seeds and very little pulp. 

The top of the turban also fell in a bit. 

The meat was not very watery. This pumpkin yielded only 4 cups of puree, but it was rather small. Normally, I take notes on the skin texture, how easy it is to peel, and how it smells. But it appears I dropped the ball that day because I'm missing all that info on my notes. 

I did, however, take a picture after I gutted it. It appears that the flesh does not come away from the skin easily.

Some more water came out when I pureed it- but it still wasn't runny like some pumpkins.

Crystal Star

This is a pretty popular pumpkin for decorating the front steps. It is very round, very white, and not too large or heavy. 

Even after baking, the seeds were very white. There wasn't a lot of flesh and this pumpkin yielded 6 cups of puree. It has a mild smell and the puree was a bit extra watery. I had to scoop the flesh from the skin, which had turned leathery in the oven. 

This was after I syphoned off some water. 

Flat White Boer

This pumpkin is another fun one for decorating, as it stacks. This pumpkin breed originated in South Africa. This pumpkin was HUGE- as you can see by the larger tray on which I baked it.

There was a ton of meat on this (yes, I use flesh and meat interchangeably), it filled 4 huge bowls! The water was dripping from the pumpkin before I even scooped out the flesh. The seeds were large. Tasting the meat, it tested the most "pumpkin-like." The skin peeled off nicely and the center pulp removed very easily. It also pureed easily because of the extra water. 

And last, but not least...

The Cushaw

The Cushaw isn't actually a pumpkin. It is more closely related to the Butternut and Acorn Squash. In Tennessee, it is called the sweet potato squash. This species of squash is one of the oldest cultivated crops in the world! They have found evidence of it as far back as 7000 BC in mesoamerica. It is also rarely found outside the Americas even though many other squash breeds have been cultivated all over the world. 

One of the best things about the Cushaw is that it is hard to kill. This is why is has lasted as long as it has as a cultivated food source. It is resistant to the squash-stem borer or vine borer, a common pest that kills almost all other kinds of squash. The Cushaw grows great in humid climates, does not need a lot of irrigation, and is very heat tolerant. 

Like a butternut squash, the neck is mostly meat! The seeds were large and there wasn't too much pulp. The flesh was stringy, almost like spaghetti squash, yet it pureed up just fine. The flesh was pale white but turned yellowish when pureed. The puree also smelled a bit like matcha as it cooled- very grassy. 

Now for the judging!! I used my crochet group this year as the guinea pigs. I've used Alpha Omega (the fraternity my husband sponsors) and Legacy Academy students (the University-Model school my children attended) as tasters. 

I made my favorite pumpkin muffins and was as careful as possible to do everything the same for each one. Disclaimer: The Crystal Star (#3) was a little different. I forgot to melt the cream cheese and butter before creaming them with the sugar, and these were the only muffins made in the large pan instead of the smaller one. 

Number one was Turk's Turban. Two was the Boer. Three was Crystal Star. And four was the Cushaw. 

As you can see, almost everyone preferred the Cushaw! I did note that the Boer made the fluffiest batter. The Turban was the most dense and the Cushaw the lightest after baking. The Cushaw won in every category except "spicy." That was the Crystal Star. Usually, the milder the pumpkin taste, the spicier the muffin is because the spices come through better. 

I had the ladies taste them blind and then told them all about what they had voted on. Every one of them was keen to try to grown Cushaw in their gardens, so I kept some seeds back before roasting all the seeds together. 

Our fall was full of awesome fun! Check out the next post to see what else we did!

Pandemic Pumpkins (AKA Pumpkin Experiment pt. 3)

 If you have been watching my blog (yeah, it doesn't do tricks... it doesn't even get updated often), then you will know that I have a special love for pumpkins and a scientific curiosity about them. There are hundreds of varieties of pumpkin and I have been trying different ones over the years. My first experiment was never completed as I had a baby that fall. But I have done the full experiment 3 times: in 2014, in 2018, and this fall. Look through my archives for the first two installments. Below is number 3.

This year I tried four types of pumpkins. Above you will see the Jarrahdale (in the blue family) and the Porcelain Doll. Both were purchased at Callie's Acre in Gilmer, TX. I also used two White Pie pumpkins and a Marina di Chioggia (in the warty family). 

The steps I take are: select pumpkins of varying types/families, bake them, puree them, roast the seeds, and cook with them. I start by cooking my favorite muffin recipe but throughout the year I also make pies, soups, and other baked items with them. I find that most people use pumpkins for baked goods most often, so I only talk about the muffins in the post. 

Here we go:

Marin di Chioggia

I have only ever baked with one warty pumpkin before now and you can look up my past posts to find it. The Chioggia is flat (as opposed to round), dark green, and has nobs all over it. 

This year, I decided to bake the pumpkins whole instead of gutting and cutting them before baking. I know that if this were a true science experiment, changing the method of baking would disqualify the results. But as a lay person, I am not bothered. Baking the entire pumpkin before gutting made the work easier. You can see how large the Chioggia we chose was- that is an 18 x 26 in baking tray. 

Here are the guts. The seeds were extra large and very white. The Chioggia had a rather earthy smell while baking. It was not a pleasant, "I want to eat that smell." When I cut it open, the meat also smelled a bit earthy and was a deep orange. The skin of the pumpkin turned almost black while baking. 

The meat made a very thick puree and was not watery at all. I pureed the pumpkin while it was still very warm, but did not measure and bag it until it had fully cooled. By that time, the puree had almost hardened and scooped up in chunks. My husband said it reminded him of some of the grosser baby poo we had to deal with a few years ago. The muffin batter was also very thick, but it was a nice consistency for batter- not runny, easy to scoop, a little sticky, and it had a rich pumpkin flavor.

I did not get pictures of the muffins and we donated most of them to the fraternity of which my husband is the sponsor. College boys need muffins a lot more than I do! The Chioggia muffins actually came out a little dark from over baking, but even with that we liked them quite a bit. 

We baked the seeds, as well. They turned out very tasty. Unlike the muffins, we could have baked them a little longer; but they were popping like popcorn, so I took them out.

White Pie 

We bought the White Pie and Chioggia at Ellis Pottery in Longview. That is where I got all the pumpkins in 2014 and I was hoping for another Cheese pumpkin, as that was my favorite. They seemed to be out (although, when I looked at pictures taken by a friend later on, there was ONE in the pumpkin patch where the children were playing). I settled for the Chioggia and the White Pie. I almost bought a Turban pumpkin, as well, but I wanted an even number of types and couldn't find a fourth I wanted. Thus the second trip to Callie's Acre later on. 

The White Pie pumpkin is a lot larger than the orange Pie pumpkins you find in the store. It was smaller than any other pumpkin I have tried, though, so I got two. Even after baking, the guts were much harder to remove than the Chioggia. The inside is almost as white as the outside and had a sweet smell and flavor. It was very mild, rather watery, and made a thin puree. The skin peeled away very easily and was thin as paper. 

The seeds were much smaller, but also rather pale. The puree made a much thinner batter and the muffins had a very mild flavor. If you like the spicy part of Pumpkin Spice but not the pumpkin part, then this is the pumpkin for you. The muffins came out sweeter tasting even though they had the same amount of sugar as the rest. I found it to be meh. And now I have about 12 cups of puree to use somehow. 

The Porcelain Doll

If you look at the cover photo, you'll notice the change in color after baking. The Porcelain Doll has a rather pink color before baking but turns very orange. There is a semi-sweet smell while cooking that is quite pleasant. 

You can see that there are quite a lot of seeds. The seeds are small and dark. The center removed nicely but there were a few spots of white in the meat near the center that I also had to remove. They were hard and would not have pureed very well. 

Tiny seeds. They were alright roasted, kind of crunchy. The meat of this pumpkin was very dark in color. The skin was extra thick and difficult to cut before baking. I'm glad I didn't try to cut up the entire pumpkin and baked it whole instead. But I still had to cut venting holes for the steam and that was a difficult job. 

The Porcelain Doll made a very thick puree with almost no water. My submergible blender had a harder time with this one than any of the others. I probably could have baked this pumpkin a bit longer than I did to make it easier to puree, but I was baking it on the same tray as the Jarrahdale, so I took them out at the same time.  

This puree made very good muffins! Both my daughters declared them the favorites of the four this year. My husband liked the muffins of the Chioggia best, although he wasn't a fan of helping with the puree. I liked the Jarrahdale muffins best, I think. 

Jarrahdale

I feel like I have worked with this one before, but as I look back I see that it was the Speckled Hound. These are very different. The Jarrahdale is more round and is lighter before baking. I loved how it turned darker and had waves of brown on it! It looked like one of those porcelain pumpkins you can buy at Hobby Lobby. 

You can see the pool of water on top of the pumpkin. It did sweat a little, but the puree was not super runny like the White Pie.

Cut open you can see that there seems to be a lot of guts, but there is quite a bit of meat on there. Considering it was the second smallest pumpkin we purchased, we still got over 8 cups of puree out of it. The meat smelled earthy but in a pleasant way, not the same as the Chioggia. 

The seeds were also tiny and dark, but with less of a dark line around the outside. They were fine and easy to remove. I collected most of them. 

Even though you could see the pool of water on top of the baked pumpkin, you don't see any in the bowl. The meat scraped away fine from the skin and made a great puree. 

The batter I made from this puree tasted the best! It was just the right pumpkin to sweetness. You can see it is a dark puree and it came out nice and smooth. This also made my favorite of this year's pumpkin choices. In future, I'll pull out the "winners" from each year and pit them against each other, but I still have several types to try before we get to the final round. 

I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog. Even if no one reads it, I like to have a record of my pumpkin adventures. I'd blog more often if we had good internet speeds at our house. As it was, I had to go to the University for which my husband works in order to upload the pics. In future, perhaps I'll be able to update more often. If so, I may begin an apple experiment! As a Michigan girl, apples are passion. We don't get many varieties in the stores down here in Texas. I try to get to MI each fall to pick at our favorite orchard and I make apple sauce, apple butter, apple pie, and apple bread with them. It's an idea for later. In the meantime, happy pumpkin month!

Pumpkin Experiment

As you know, last week the girls and I went to a pumpkin patch with our story club. It was a blast and we brought four pumpkins home with us. When I lived in WA with my husband, we tried this experiment, but I neglected to record the most important part. So, I tried it again with these four pumpkins. The experiment goes like this: I pick several very different types of pumpkins, cook them, puree them, and cook with them. I record info along the way and at the end, discover which kind of pumpkin is best for which kind of food. This means a lot of cooking in small batches, but I'm having fun so far! Here is the photo evidence and data I have recorded so far:

In the background you can see the fourth pumpkin. In the foreground you can see a dolly head.

Cinderella, Red Warty Hubbard, and Muscat de Provence.

The green and orange one is one we tried in WA- Muscat de Provence. I kept calling it "The French One."

This is the Cheese pumpkin because it looks like a wheel of cheese before it is cut up.

The process was messy.

I started with the Cheese pumpkin. I kept calling it the "Tan" pumpkin or "the one the color of butternut squash." It has smooth skin and was rather short like the Muscat. It wasn't too hard to cut- the skin was rather thin. The flesh smelled super sweet- almost like watermelon. The seeds were small and had dark edges, almost like someone traced them and cut out around the trace. The flesh was dark and the guts were very stringy (see picture below). It was almost like scraping out spaghetti squash. It was hard to tell where the center ended and the flesh began. Cook time for the pieces shown was 1 hour. You can see the standing water that rose from the baking process. The flesh was easy to scoop away from the skin and the skin was so thin that I often scraped some off with the flesh. But I think I got all of it off in the end. The flesh was dark, sweet, and pureed very easily. The pumpkin yielded 16 cups of puree. I baked bread with them this time. The batter tasted the sweetest and the bread was my favorite of the four, but the bread smelled the most sour after baking!

Stringy center of the Cheese pumpkin.

Standing water on baked pieces.

The pumpkin sweated a lot.

The skin was thin as paper.

Look at all the water in the bottom of that pot!

This was after I used a baster to remove most of the water!

The second pumpkin I cooked was the knobbly looking one- the Red Warty Hubbard. Fitting name. This one was very hard to cut into. Next time I'll use a hatchet or ax. The middle was spongy and the seeds were very white and fat. It has a very light scent, thick flesh, and cooked a lot dryer than the others. I baked it for 70 minutes. When I pureed it, all the water came out and made for a thinner puree. The flavor was just OK. It yielded 18 cups. The bread smelled less sweet than the Cinderella pumpkin bread.

More empty space in the middle than the Cheese pumpkin.

Very white, fat seeds.

Skin was thicker than the Cheese pumpkin. Flesh cooked drier.

The third pumpkin I tried was the Muscat de Provence. It was squashed in the center and formed a very curved chunk. The stem was indented. The center was very similar to the Hubbard, spongy with hollow parts. The seeds were large but there were not as many as the others. Again, hard to tell when the core ended and the flesh began. Not hard to cut, not as much flesh as the Cheese, not very much scent but smelled sour when you got close. Baked 1 hour. Smooth and dark puree. Yielded 11 cups. Tasted pretty good by itself. The batter had the best taste of them all. But the bread tasted almost exactly the same as the Cinderella pumpkin!

Large seeds.

It has these strange "dry" stringy bits. I just pulled them out with my fingers.

The seeds popped out like candy from a wrapper. Also, note my Candy Corn Jamberry nail wraps!

The last pumpkin was the Cinderella pumpkin. It was super easy to cut, had lots of hollowness. It was lighter than the others even though it was the largest. The smell was not unpleasant and was stronger than the others, but not very sweet. The center was spongy. Cooking time was 1 hour. Yield was 13 cups. It was a little harder to puree, but that may have been because I put it in the fridge over night. I squished it with my hands first, which helped. The puree was light and runny. The bread tasted exactly like the Muscat but smelled the sweetest.

Center: spongy and lots of it.

Large seeds that looked exactly like the Muscat.

Comparison. The Cheese chunk was already cooked.

Four seeds (left to right): Cheese, Red Warty Hubbard, Muscat de Provence, and Cinderella.

I have a ton of seeds to toast!

I was baking for a long, long time! I began cutting the first pumpkin at 11am and stopped baking at 12:15am the next day!!

Purees and batter (left to right): Muscat de Provence, Cinderella, Red Warty Hubbard, and Cheese.

The recipe I chose to use was called Golden Pumpkin-Walnut Loaf. I got it from Myrecipes.com. I did not use the golden raisins (I was out and has very few regular raisins left) or the walnuts (I would be serving it to some who were allergic to nuts). The unique thing about this recipe was that it did not call for cinnamon or nutmeg! Instead it has cardamom and mace! I used cardamom and ginger from Penzy's Spice (BEST GROUND GINGER ANYWHERE!!!) and mace from McCormick.

Note the different colors and consistencies of the purees! Left to Right: Cheese, Hubbard, Cinderella, Muscat.

This is after I scooped a cup out of each container. You can see the water in 2 of them.

The batters were different shades like the purees.

Finished product (from left to right): Cheese, Red Warty Hubbard, Cinderella, Muscat de Provence.

The Muscat was in a glass dish and rose better. They were in the oven just like this.

All four breads came out rather nice in consistency. The dough was made with white flour, wheat flour, and corn meal. The Cinderella was just a little spongier than the others. I served them to my family and three guests. My husband had a horrible allergy issue and could not taste or smell any difference. My daughters are 3 and 1, so they had no opinion other than that it was good. The guests chose either the Muscat (although I thought it tasted exactly like the Cinderella) or the Cheese. The Cheese was my favorite.

Next time I'll make something else. I plan to do smoothies, at least one kind of soup, and pie. I'll also bake up the seeds. I hope to record all the info, so expect further installments. And feel free to stop by for some bread!