Our lovely friend Darie is visiting from Switzerland, and she brought me a new ingredient (the fact that Darie knew that bringing me something to cook with would be well received is one of the things that makes her so lovely).
She brought me a potimarron.
I knew it was a squash, at least! The name ‘potimarron’ apparently is a portmanteau derived from the European French word for pumpkin, ‘potiron,’ and ‘marron,’ which means chestnut.
I used it in an Indian ratatouille (recipe from the Moosewood collection, naturally) that also features eggplant and orange juice, flavoured with coriander and cumin. The recipe calls for zucchini or yellow squash, and I have made it more than once with my favourite squash, butternut. The potimarron was an interesting switch – I didn’t peel it, as per Darie’s instructions, but the peel was tender and unresistant. The flesh was slightly nutty, and definitely reminiscent of pumpkin, so clearly the potimarron is well-named.