PUMPKINS IN AMERICA: THE MYSTERY
The other day I was enjoying a bit of pumpkin at lunch - Echo makes a nice dish of plain steamed pumpkin cubes with various additions that go great with just about anything-- tasty, sweet, rich in all sorts of noots, long shelf-life etc. While savoring the experience, I got to thinking for about the 9,463rd time why Americans don't eat pumpkins straight as a vegetable, over there in the land of 600lb pumpkins they don't know what to do with other than carve into jack-o-lanterns in the autumn of every year or have biggest-pumpkin-in-the-county contests for the gourd that symbolizes Thanksgiving. Which is admirable enough, but why isn't the pumpkin used as food? Why are pumpkins so looked down upon in America? That splendid squash, standing proud and golden right next to the turkey, symbolizing Thanksgiving for plenty in difficult times! What has happened to that rep ever since?
They do put some pumpkin in cans, to use later for pies at other times of the year, when folks want pumpkin pie, if there really are any such times, but just go and look in any US cookbook for some pumpkin recipes and that’s basically it: pumpkin pie and pumpkin puree, muffins, bread, cookies, which like the few other recipes are basically a way of disguising pumpkins.
Even when I stayed with my frugal aunt and uncle on their country farm where they grew and ate turnips, parsnips, squashes, beets, pumpkins too, even ate turnip greens and rutabagas, but never pumpkin, other than as pie. Strange, no? All that food just tossed... to the pigs of course. Pigs love pumpkins, supreme truffle-finding gourmets that they are.
Here in Japan there is no Thanksgiving day, which is nice because this way we get to eat pumpkin whenever we want, since it's grown all the time because folks here love pumpkin as a food and do not look down upon it as some cultures do without knowing why.
In Japan the main food pumpkin, comparatively less eye-appealing than the shunned US variety, is a smallish, green, rough-skinned pumpkin that is golden inside, much like the US pumpkin, sweet and soft
like any squash when cooked, and I would guess somewhat the same texture and flavor, but there my comparison must go hungry, because I realize that never in the American portion of my life have I eaten any steamed pumpkin!Why should this be? When I first came to Japan back in the early seventies and looked for brown rice, folks were aghast at the idea. Back in feudal Japan, when only aristocrats could afford white rice, and commoners had to eat brown rice, white rice became a status symbol, and so it remained even centuries later, even though brown rice was tastier and more nutritious. Does the US pumpkin historically have a white rice equivalent?
It is a mystery.
6 comments:
My neighbor grew some "american" pumpkins for a JA contest. His only purpose was for fun, and he was throwing away the pumpkins so we jumped at taking them home with visions of pumkin pie pumkin bread (although we have way more Japanese pumkins than we can deal with) and I was going to gather all those huge pumkin seeds for late-night snacks.
Those giant orange pumkins all tasted like crap and the seeds were inedible as well. It all went into the compost. Their sole purpose was to get big. They weren't even grown with the intent of making jack-o-lanterns, just to be big.
I too don't remember ever eating much pumpkin in the US, aside from pie and a creamy sauce with marshmallows and cinnamon on top at thanksgiving (that was actually good). I wonder if the reason is that those pumpkins just don't taste very good...
I wonder why no one in the US ever pursued growing a huge (or even a small, but bountiful), delicious pumpkin! Seems like it would have been worthwhile for hungry folk...
When I had more garden space I used to grow very pumpkin-looking winter squash of the type used to make U.S. strained squash baby food. These were big enough and orange enough to make proud jack-o-lanterns, but a little pointed on the stem end in an un-pumpkin way. They were more delicious than any Hubbard or other winter squash I ever ate.
These days I do save the seeds from the kids Halloween pumpkins, and if you roast them properly, they're great.
As for the why, maybe the subliminal unappetizing idea given off by American pumpkins involves a head, with brains, and a face just waiting to be uncovered with a carving knife...
North American pumpkins are grown for the Hallowe'en Jack o' Lantern market and so the flesh is watery, thin (and therefore easy to carve) but not very good if you try to cook it. Japanese pumpkins are very similar to, though the taste is just a bit less meaty. than the Buttercup squash grown here. Recently, at farmer's markets, there have appeared a small squash-sized orange pumpkin called "pie pumpkins". I haven't tried them yet but they probably are much tastier than their larger decorative cousins.
I enjoyed all the pumpkin I ate in Japan whether steamed, stewed with soy sauce, in tempura, or barbecued. Here we usually bake squash, but we do eat it often.
I think brown rice may be coming back a bit with the younger natural foods crowd there. Japanese organic brown rice is beyond delicious.
Would it taste like steamed sweet potatoes?
Yes-- quite like that, but lighter-- not as sweet, less dense, less fibrous...
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