A gallery of pumpkins

When it comes to growing pumpkins, I'm happy to leave the cultivation of giant specimens to others. I've grown a few up to spacehopper size in the past, but it never seems to be the tastier varieties which grow really big. Football sized is about right - the green Berrettinas on the bottom shelf here are just a little but larger than that, and bowling ball sized - the green Futsus in the middle - will do just fine as well. 

I've also never got round to growing them on the compost heap, as others swear by, and which can give you highly productive plants as I noticed on my recent visit to Great Dixter. I start my squash seeds in pots and once they have at least two true leaves, plant them out in a bed with lots of organic matter - including kitchen compost - dug in. Before planting, I cover the bed with sheet plastic, and cut holes in it to plant the seedlings through - this keeps the moisture in and the weeds down. I also give the plants a mesh trellis to scramble up, which has two advantages: it keeps the squash plants more or less to the bed you planted them in, rather than rambling all over the allotment, and it means most of the fruits grow off the ground and are less vulnerable to slugs, snails, and rotting where the thin skin is laid on damp grass or soil.

In most years, the foliage starts to die off towards the end of September, and by mid-October, the fruits are laid bare across the bed - sometimes attached to the main plant by a mere thread. The squash will be ready to pick and bring inside then (squash ready for picking will also sound distinctly hollow when tapped). This year, with such a warm autumn, the plants stayed lush and green right through to the middle of October and I lifted them last week when our first frost threatened (frost will turn the pumpkins to mush).

Once safely indoors, they can be stored somewhere bright and warm - by the kitchen window, in my case - to be 'cured'. In warmer climates with longer growing seasons, pumpkins can be cured out in the field, but it's getting a bit chilly for that here in England now. Curing hardens the skins (which helps them to store for longer) and develops the flavour. You should really store the pumpkins for 10-14 days in the warm and then remove the fruits somewhere cooler, ideally at a steady 12 degrees Celsius or so, for storage, but mine stay happily in the kitchen window throughout the winter months. Those still uneaten after Christmas will store right through into the next spring.

Incidentally, I've never been quite sure which types of squash can call themselves pumpkins. Although we traditionally think of pumpkins as orange Hallowe'en lanterns, I would also call the Berrettina Piacentina and Marina di Chioggia here pumpkins, as well as other green varieties like Crown Prince. I've seen it suggested that one thing that distinguishes a pumpkin as a particular type of squash is that its seeds are edible.

Suppliers

Berrettina Piacentina: Franchi Seeds of Italy

Butternut squash: Organic Gardening Catalogue, Kings Seeds, Nicky's Nursery

Futsu: The Organic Gardening Catalogue

Marina di Chioggia: Franchi Seeds of Italy, Organic Gardening Catalogue, Kings Seeds

Quintale: Franchi Seeds of Italy

Spaghetti squash: Franchi Seeds of Italy, Nicky's Nursery, Victoriana Nursery

Pumpkins - up or down?

Squash and pumpkins will expand to fill the available space, I find. If you put them in the garden they will run riot all over the garden. If you put them in the allotment then by September you'll find pumpkin stems and leaves trailing across all your beds.

My preferred solution has always been to train them upwards: to give them a climbing frame such as 10cm plastic mesh secured with bamboo canes. With a little initial encouragement and tying in, the plants soon get the idea and ramble upwards instead of out towards the neighbouring plot. I have indeed seen someone use an actual climbing frame, presumably one the kids had grown out of, for this purpose very successfully, but plastic mesh and bamboo will stand up to the task remarkably well.

Trained upwards, the fruit will hang down from sturdy stems. Off the ground, they stay clean and safe from slug damage.

This year, however, I need the squash to trail along the ground. I'm growing them as the Native Americans traditionally did, alongside climbing beans and sweetcorn in a companion planting partnership known as the Three Sisters. The sweetcorn provides a sturdy stem for the beans to scramble up; the broad-leaved squash will provide ground cover, suppressing weed growth and reducing water loss by evaporation.

Sowing squash seeds, each one sown 2cm deep in well-watered compost. These survived the cat inspection.

Once all the fruit have been harvested from each of the plants, the green matter can be dug back into the soil for the next year's crop. As well as nutrients from the gradually decomposing greenery, the beans will also fix nitrogen from their roots to feed the soil for the following months. 

Left on the ground, the plants will spread outwards and act as a weed suppressant.

Slipping a bathroom tile under the developing fruit will keep them some protection from the bare earth. 

The Three Sisters and other companion planting schemes is the subject of our next Secret Garden Club workshop on Sunday May 27. We'll be explaining how to adapt the traditional Three Sisters planting to the cooler, more unpredictable British climate, and how to grow specific plants together to deter pests. MsMarmiteLover is devising a Cherokee-inspired feast to follow the planting session. Click here for details and how to book tickets.

Pumpkin pasties and other squashy delicacies

The pumpkins harvested from the allotment in October have been sitting on top of the kitchen cupboards maturing over the autumn and winter. The dark green Futsu is now a rich ochre colour (see picture, left) and the butternut squash have mellowed from a creamy jade skin to buttery yellow.

It's around now that I cast around for ways to cook them, versatile as they are. Pumpkins are often useful at Christmas time as they will easily feed a crowd, and also I think they always feel like a 'special occasion' food.

Smooth pumpkin soup

A straightforward pumpkin soup – this works best with a dense fleshed variety such as Berrettina Piacentina, which tastes like a cross between sweet potato and chestnuts and has a texture not dissimilar to sweet potato as well. Butternut squash is also good here; anything more fibrous than a butternut might require more in the way of pulping and sieving.

Peel and remove the seeds from half a medium-sized pumpkin. Chop the flesh into roughly 3cm cubes. Put on a baking tray, season lightly with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil and roast for 20 mins or so at 200 degrees.

Meanwhile, chop up an onion and two cloves of garlic and sauté them lightly in a splash of olive oil a large pan. They might colour slightly but don't let them brown. When ready, add the squash pieces and enough vegetable stock (eg, Marigold bouillon if none fresh to hand) to cover generously. Simmer for around 15 minutes, then whizz up in the blender.

Taste and adjust seasoning. Divide into bowls for each person and finish with either a swirl of crème faiche, or a dusting of smoked paprika, or a swirl of rose harissa, or a splash of walnut oil, or extravagantly, truffle oil.

For a Thai-flavoured version, add a tablespoonful of red Thai curry paste and some chopped ginger when you mix the roasted pumpkin pieces with the onion and garlic. Stir in a 400ml can of coconut cream with half the amount of stock.

Roast pumpkin slices glazed with soy sauce

Halve a medium-sized pumpkin and remove the seeds. No need to peel. Cut into slimmish wedges and place in a shallow dish. Splash over some olive oil and soy sauce, season and toss the pumpkin pieces until well covered. Leave for 15 mins to an hour, then either tuck the individual pieces around a roasting meat joint, or transfer the whole lot to the oven and roast for around 30 mins at 180 degrees.

Pumpkin pasties

These are mentioned in Harry Potter which might make them tempting to children. On the other hand, it might not, as the pasties served on the Hogwarts Express are clearly meant to be sweet, whereas I can’t bring myself to treat pumpkin as a dessert.

Pastry:

Either – one pack of ready-made shortcrust pastry, or,

225g plain flour

105g butter

Salt

Iced water

1 egg, beaten

Filling:

1-2 shallots

400g flesh from a small butternut squash or similar pumpkin, peeled, seeded and chopped into chunks

125g ricotta cheese

I tbsp Parmesan

1 tbsp chopped fresh mint leaves

Salt

Pepper

Heat the oven to 200 degrees.

First, make the pastry. If you’re making your own, cut the butter into little pieces and whizz with the flour and a pinch of salt in a food processor until it just begins to look like breadcrumbs. Add the water a tablespoon at a time, the then pulse to mix. Stop as soon as the dough looks as though it’s beginning to come together.

Turn out of the processor bowl on to a floured worktop and mould the mixture lightly with your hands until it forms a dough. Wrap in greasproof paper or clingfilm and chill in the fridge for at least half an hour or until needed.

Or, unwrap a sheet of ready-made shortcrust and roll out thinly.

While the pastry is chilling, toss the squash/pumpkin in olive oil, season lightly with salt and pepper and bake/roast, uncovered for around 30 minutes until soft and just beginning to brown at the edges.

Meanwhile, chop the shallots and fry gently in a little olive oil until soft. Pile into a bowl, and add the ricotta and Parmesan. Once the squash chunks are cool enough to handle, chop into 1cm cubes and add to the ricotta mixture. Add the mint leaves and stir well. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Roll out the pastry on a floured worktop until it’s nice and thin. Have the beaten egg and a pastry brush to hand. Up-end a 10cm circular cereal bowl on the pastry to make a template for the pasty and cut around the bowl with a short sharp knife. Put around 1½ tbsp of pumpkin mix in the middle of the pastry cut-out, then brush the outside edge of the circle with beaten egg. Fold the pastry over into a semi-circle and crimp the edges together with your fingers so that they stick together. Place the pasty, crimped edge upwards on a baking sheet and brush the outside all over with more egg. Repeat to make around five more pasties – you may need to roll out the pastry again.

Put the baking tray with the pasties in the oven for 30 mins. They can be eaten hot or cold.

Floral treats

I’ve always know that courgette flowers were edible but never been quite sure what to do with them. However, following the success of the artichoke fritters (link), and an allotment full of flowering squash, I thought it was high time to make more use of more of the plants. Sifting through various recipe sources, a few golden rules became clear. A stuffing for the flowers shouldn’t be overpowering in flavour, and also needs to cook through quickly – the flowers themselves will deep-fry in one to two minutes. The flowers shouldn’t be overstuffed – they’re fragile and you don’t want them bursting open in the pan. In the end I decided on a herby ricotta mixture and added lemon zest for fragrance. With a delicate combination for the flowers themselves I thought the dish could take a more punchy accompaniment and chopped up a fresh salsa with mint leaves added.

The batter used to coat the stuffed flowers varied quite a bit but all of them leaned towards a tempura-style batter so I decided to use my default tempura batter mix.

The resulting dish was pronounced delicious by everyone. It’s particularly pleasing for the cook as it has that indefinable air of showiness about it, as though you’ve done something very clever. Yet it’s simplicity itself and also given that the flowers are picked more as a by-product of the courgette plants, I get the satisfying feeling that somehow it is food for free.

Deep-fried courgette flowers with fresh minty salsa

Serves 4

8 courgette or squash flowers

Vegetable oil for deep frying

For the stuffing:

250g ricotta

Zest of two lemons

1 tbsp marjoram leaves

2 teasps thyme leaves

Salt

Pepper

For the batter:

125g self-raising flour

100g cornflour

1 teasp vegetable oil

Chilled (ie, from the fridge) sparkling mineral water

Salt

For the salsa:

2 large tomatoes

1 sweet Spanish onion

½ teasp salt

Handful mint leaves, chopped fine

Lime juice to taste

Pick flowers that have fully opened and are in perfect condition. You also want to use them as fresh as possible, ideally straight after picking, but they can be stored in the fridge in a sealed container for a day or so.

Carefully clip out the stamens in the centre of the flower (I use a pair of manicure scissors with slightly curved blades) and trim the stalk to about an inch or so.

To make the salsa, chop the tomatoes into evenly sized dice. Chop the onion finely. Toss in a bowl with the sweet onion, and mint add the salt and lime juice to taste. Leave for half an hour for the flavours to mingle.

To make the stuffing, finely grate the zest from two lemons and add to the ricotta in a bowl. Strip the thyme leaves from their stalks. Chop the marjoram leaves finely and add both herbs to the ricotta. Mash the ricotta, lemon and herb until it’s smooth and creamy and add a little salt and pepper to taste.

Spoon about a dessertspoon of stuffing into each courgette flower. The amount will vary according to the size of each flower, but you don’t want to overstuff them or they will burst. Gently close the petals over the ricotta mix to make a little parcel out of each one.

To make the batter, put the flour into a large bowl, add a generous pinch of  salt and the vegetable oil, then pour a little sparkling water in a whisk lightly with a fork. Keep pouring and whisking until the batter has the consistency of double cream (not the extra thick kind). At a guess it’s about 200ml of sparkling water. It doesn’t matter if there are a few floury lumps in the mixture.

Pour the vegetable oil into a deep-sided pan and heat to 180 degrees Celsius – ideally using a thermometer. When the right temperature is reached, turn the heat down, and holding the courgette flowers by the stalk, dip and twirl them in the batter one at a time. Then drop into the pan and deep fry each one for about 2-3 minutes until the batter begins to turn golden at the edges. Lift out of the oil with tongs or a slotted spoon and rest on kitchen paper to drain off any excess oil. It’s easiest to fry on batches.

Serve two deep-fried courgette flowers per person, along with the salsa.

A squash and a squeeze

I’ve gone mad with the squash and pumpkins again. Every year, I get tempted by new varieties and end up trying to grow around 20 squash plants in a  bed  whose dimensions are better suited to a dozen plants at most. I have my regulars: the green-skinned organge fleshed Berrettina Piacentina and Marina di Chioggia, both of which have dense flesh and a taste definitely reminiscent of sweet potato. They make wonderfully silky mash, roast to a lovely brown savouriness, and keep their shape well  when baked. They don't exude water either. Completely differently textured are the spaghetti squash, which can be baked then forked into strands and tossed in a pasta-style sauce – spaghetti squash carbonara and spaghetti squash arrabiatta are both delicious. Then there are the butternuts which tend to be smaller and so are useful as a sort of everyday squash: often cut into wedges and tucked beneath a Sunday roast.

They should be enough but my head has been turned this year by Black Futsu, the seeds for which I bought from Plants Of Distinction. This has knobbly skin like the Marina di Chioggia but is – supposedly – more compact in its habit than other varieties. Next up is the Connecticut squash from Pennard Plants, a heritage variety which is billed on the website as the ‘perfect Halloween pumpkin’and also the variety which greeted the Pilgrims when they arrived in north America from England. This year I’m also trying Crown Prince for the first time – I know everyone raves about the flavour so I thought it was time to see what the fuss was about – and an Atlantic Giant so that I can hold my own on the allotment next to all the other monster pumpkin growers. Quite often in the past my plot neighbours have peered at my pumpkin patch and said, “Yes, but they’re not very big, are they?”.