Exotic Squash Part One: the Turban Squash.

Exotic Squash Part 1: Turban squash

A turban squash is a thick skinned Winter squash most often used for soups because its shape works well for a bowl. It is most often topped (the turban part) and the bottom half scraped and used as the bowl with the flesh cooked various ways and then pure'ed (or soupified as I call it). The base of the turban will also have these bumps that are in fact sugar storage for the plant, and these are common on many winter squash. If you just want to eat or use the flesh and not use it as a bowl I recommend you by a hefty meat cleaver and a rubber mallet to open the gourd. Most of the seeds are in the turban part and are quite thick and tasty so save them; but there is still some good flesh in the top.

Put the cleaver in the cleft and smack it with the hammer! You will have to (unless you bought the worlds largest leaver, or you are using a Clay-more), move the cleaver back and hit it again a couple of times to split the squash open.I quarter this thick skinned squash because I can and it involves hammers and tools.

Ok, now you can scoop out the squash guts found in the "top turban" part of the squash. If you don't get all the stringy parts out, don't sweat it, there is a real cool way to remove them later. Now I put the pieces on a cookie sheet and bake it for about 30 minutes in a convection oven at 350F (175C). I then pull it out and let it cool so I can handle it. One of the nice things about thick skinned squash is that the skin is so tough, (how tough is it?...) It's so tough that you can just peel the flesh from the shell (that's not very funny...).

You'll also note that the long stringy unappetizing parts of the gourd just peel off the good stuff. Now you can use the still warm squash stuff for what ever you want. This is a moderately strong flavored squash so minimal spicing is needed. I recommend you use it in dishes like curries and or tangenes or just some salt pepper and olive oil, and some other recipes to be later determined. Enjoy and let me know your ideas!. V-Man!
Next up: OK I now have a couple pounds of turban squash, what do I do with it?