Another Damn Glut

Quinces, apples, courgettes, beetroot, lettuce... and the latest in the line of our gluts is pumpkins. Not the ginormous ones really only good for carving at Halloween, and maybe for feeding the five thousand, but Uchiki Kuri, Turk's Turban and another whose name escapes me, though it may be Tom Thumb. The Uchiki Kuri in particular is just the right size, providing enough sunburst flesh for a dish for two to four people.

As with the other gluts, there's great pleasure to be had in making the best of the plenty while it lasts, though with pumpkins - for accuracy I should be saying 'winter squash' - they keep very well if dry and clean, lasting into the spring.

Their iron skin (especially Turk's Turban, which has all the give of a battle tank) is doubtless what keeps them from going off, but can be a hard slog to cut through to get at the good stuff inside. The cooked flesh, by way of contrast, is melting and delicate. Thus far into pumpkin season we have had pumpkin in soup, risotto, mixed roast vegetables, and tea bread with walnuts.

No repetition needed in the next few assaults on the orange stockpile, either, as I've made pumpkin curry and (an HF-W idea) pumpkin-centric salad in the past, and in the dim and distant pumpkin pie (which was delicious).

I can't help feeling virtuous when eating them, as they are chock full of fibre, beta carotene, and a spread of vitamins. But I trust that health remains a secondary, if important, consideration in my cookery. They are above all tasty. Sternest Critic, when visited at our flat in Trearddur last week, cooked us an absolutely superb mushroom and pumpkin risotto, roasting slices of an Uchiki Kuri we had taken with us, then cooking the flesh stripped from the skin down further in the rice until it was almost part of the stock, but not quite. The flavour was wonderful, and the mouthfeel very satisfying and sensuous. Healthy can be delicious.

A side-note here: much though I love mushrooms, I find their colour - that flat grey - somewhat dispiriting to look at. The pumpkin-flesh orange in that risotto, not in your face but a background to the dish, was far more pleasing. And given we're now being told to have a rainbow on our plates (will the gold at the end be a problem?) it covers the 'of' bit of the old spectrum jingle nicely.

I just counted up our resources, and there are 16 of the things left. Writing this has made me think I really need to cook another one tonight. At this time of year, and pretty much only this time, you don't need to grow your own to enjoy pumpkin. In Morrison's the other day they had bowls wood sized ones (so manageable) for, I think, £0.70p, which if they're anything like as good as ours is a bargain.