Camille Labro
Jack Davison for M Le Magazine du Monde
GallerySquash’s wide variety is an infinite source of colorful comfort food, at a time when vegetable gardens are depleted.
As the days shorten and the cold sets in, red fruits are but a memory; herbs have blossomed, dried and scattered their seeds, and only the root vegetables still dare to remain firmly underground, while the squash plants spread out, climb, trail and take pride of place glowing audaciously in depleted vegetable gardens.
They began their growth in summer, hidden among the weeds, their tendrils clinging to them and their broad leaves absorbing the light as the fruit became dense, plump, fleshy, tough-skinned and massive.
They are the memory of summer suns, but also the promise of appetizing dishes and comforting feasts. Round or oval, elongated or domed; bright red, golden yellow, creamy white, green and blue; smooth, warty or fluted; monochrome, striped or spotted, squash brighten market stalls and farmers’ fields with their incredible variety.
Emblematic of autumn, the cucurbits are a large botanical family of fruiting vegetables that are not always easy to classify. There are at least 800 varieties, including watermelons, melons, gherkins and cucumbers, as well as the crispy chayote, also known as christophine and choko and the strange, spiky kiwanos or horned melon.
According to the botanist Michel Chauvet, (author of Encyclopédie des plantes culinaires, “Encyclopedia of Culinary Plants”, 2018), the three best-known species are the Cucurbita maxima or pumpkins; Cucurbita pepo, a cultivar from the Cucurbita genus, which includes zucchini or baby marrow, (harvested before maturity), spaghetti squash and pattypan squash, and Cucurbita moschata that includes butternut squash and sucrine du Berry.
The large gourds that are hollowed out and carved to make the jack-o’-lanterns at Halloween are pumpkins, and a winter squash turns into Cinderella’s carriage – even though for the story’s creator, French author Charles Perrault, it was in fact a pumpkin, une citrouille. The difference between the two is that the winter squash is tastier and less stringy than the citrouille and has a more flexible, flared stalk.
The three sisters
Squash is native to the Americas, where it has been cultivated for over 10,000 years. The earliest remains found in Mexico testify to its central role in pre-Columbian societies. Along with corn and beans, it was one of the three sisters, an ancient agricultural technique in which crops help each other. Corn stakes the beans, which fix nitrogen, while the broad squash leaves protect the soil and limit evaporation.
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