Pumpkin, the Jack of All Gourds
Pity the pumpkin. Each fall it risks getting carved up, stuffed with a candle and dumped unceremoniously on someone’s porch only to be forsaken after Halloween. When this thick-skinned winter squash does make it to the dinner table, it’s relegated to the end of the meal, to a time when most diners are too satiated to indulge in or even appreciate its rich, earthy taste. I, too, once had little regard for the poor pumpkin. It was neither a seasonal decoration nor a fragile cannonball but the main ingredient in my mother’s Thanksgiving pies or aunt’s sweet pumpkin squares and breads. Spiced with ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg, it concluded the holiday dinner then quickly disappeared from our menus, replaced by cranberry cobblers, mince pies and fruitcakes. Now, though, the low-fat and low-calorie pumpkin sticks around long past Thanksgiving, playing a starring role in both my dinners and desserts. Much of the world uses pumpkin in savory as well as sweet dishes. The French use it in soups and in bread, pain de courge, which is …