Who invented spaghetti squash

As with miserable pine nuts, toasting hazelnuts is a perilous ordeal—they will wait until the moment you look away, and then they will immediately burn to a cinder. Drop a hearty handful of hazelnuts into a pan, slide the pan over medium heat, and then stand there and stare at the hazelnuts, occasionally tossing them around in the pan, until they are fragrant, shiny, and a nice warm brown color. Either coarsely chop them on a cutting board or drop them into a Ziploc bag and beat the living hell out of them.

Set your prepped hazelnuts aside for the moment. Screw that. Grab a hunk of good, hard Italian cheese— pecorino romano , parmigiano-reggiano , or grana padano —and grate yourself, say, half a cup or so. Get your grated cheese in a little pile or ramekin or whatever. Done with the prep work. Your spaghetti squash should now be cool enough that you can start working with it without burning off your fingerprints.

Grab a fork and gently dig into the face of your spaghetti squash, methodically pulling away the weird alien fibers and depositing them into a big bowl. Dress your squash with a few glugs of good extra virgin olive oil, then squeeze out one of your lemons all over it. Have a taste. Add salt and more lemon, stirring and tasting as you go, until the squash is mildly salty and pretty damn lemony.

Now, add the other ingredients in the following order : stir in the sage; stir in a pinch of grated cheese; top with the rest of the cheese, the chives, and the hazelnuts.

They have a kind of trees that produce flour, and excellent flour it is for food. These trees are very tall and thick, but have a very thin bark, and inside the bark they are crammed with flour. And I tell you that Messer Marco Polo, who witnessed all this, related how he and his party did sundry times partake of this flour made into bread, and found it excellent. With just a little searching, versions of this text can be found online in 16th century French here and here ; manuscript 14th century French ; more modern French ; Latin and Czech ; different English ; and somewhat different 13th century Italian.

Ramusio adds a more detailed description of how the flour is made, concluding:. There is one term, especially, in Chinese which at once carries conviction as to its Greek origin. This is the term for watermelon. Some Chinese say, on no authority in particular, that it was introduced by the Kitan Tartars; others say that it was introduced by the first Emperor of the so-called Golden Tartars.

It is included in this study with other varieties. The paper is in some ways an update to Sturtevant's entry from seventy years before. As to spaghetti squash, he says p. The correspondent mentioned is Theodore Torrey, Burpee 's director of vegtable research.

The variety they had at Whole Foods the other day, which we had with a mushroom sauce, was from Monty Farms, S. It does not seem to be any particular named hybrid and is just identified by its PLU Sakata and his staff of plant breeders have found China to be a rich source of new vegetables, and after finding Vegetable Spaghetti there decided to produce an improved strain in commercial quantities and offer it worldwide through their wholesale seed division in At first the new vegetable was ignored and although a few seed companies in the USA tested it, none found it sufficiently exciting to offer it to home gardeners.

Sakata was bewildered by the lack of interest, and after many years of struggling to gain acceptance for it, he reintroduced it about A progressive European seed company featured the vegetable in their mail order seed catalog about and promoted it widely through releases and advertising as a low calorie substitute for pasta spaghetti.

Sales were dramatic, and several American seed houses, intrigued by the success of Vegetable Spaghetti in Europe, listed it in their own mail order seed catalogs. According to Jane Grigson p. Although there are still some problems, it is possible to piece together an outline of a timeline:.

Is chilacayote connected to chayote? Pike is alive and well in the names of various roads here in the Washington, DC, area Columbia Pike, Rockville Pike, Leesburg Pike as well as in the phrase come down the pike. Eskimo : Yes, indeed. Good suggestion. I added a link to Trumbull's larger Natick Dictionary where you can see the squash morphology more clearly and some links to the Eskimo debate, which still doesn't seem completely settled. It is odd that two so similar words relate to similar vegetables.

Pike : We've got our Mass Pike up here as well. I suppose pike for turnpike does occur most places where they actually have turnpikes. So maybe the concept and not the word is regional. Off topic, but if you haven't seen this before: "Carrots were originally purple or red, with a thin root. The species did not turn orange until the 's when Dutch agricultural scientists and growers used a mutant yellow carrot seed from North Africa to develop a carrot in the colour of the House of Orange, the Dutch Royal Family.

In an attempt to "nationalize" the country's favourite vegetable they began experiments on improving the pale yellow versions by cross breeding them with red varieties. These varieties contain beta carotene to produce orange-coloured roots This was developed to become the dominant species across the world - wonderful, sweet orange.

It is said, without much historical reference that the orange carrot was developed in Holland as a tribute to William I of Orange during the Dutch fight for independence from Spain in the 16th century.

The orange carrot, not only had a better taste but also had beta carotene making it healthier, and so all other carrots stopped being planted. By the s Holland was considered the leading country in carrot breeding and today's "modern" orange version is directly descended from the Dutch-bred carrots of this time. Successive hybridization intensified the widely recognized "orange" colour of today.

This is the most commonly grown species today. Anonymous, do go on. I'm sure I committed lots of errors. Feel free to discuss here. Enjoyed your squash article. I prefer Spaghetti squash with soy sauce and a touch of dark sesame oil, maybe a little cilantro which are more Chinese seasonings. Also I think Italians quickly took to the squashes of the western hemisphere because they had already built a cooking tradition around cucuzzi.

This was just awesome! Many thanks for a terrific piece that clarified many of the questions I had about the history of this particular squash.

Now, if you just knew something about the other varieties I'm listing! Many thanks. What a fabulous article!! Our family USA came to know and love the spaghetti squash last year, and we've incorporated it into much of our Italian cooking, however I'd LOVE to try it with more traditional Chinese seasonings.

Your research and references are impeccable and I can tell the amount of time you've put into ensuring your information is both accurate and thought out. Thank you so very much for the history of this fabulous vegetable! We wanted to dig into the theoretical Asian history of spaghetti squash to find some more ways to cook the stuff that comes from our CSA. You gave us everything we could want, and so much more!

As word geeks, the insane pursuit of both "spaghetti" and "squash" was over the top delightful. The time line at the end was perfect. Thank you! And Eliot's double-o ligature was added to Unicode in version 5. Post a Comment. Grazing through the world of words. Monday, April 30, Spaghetti Squash. A Washington Post article on it from last summer, which opens with a complaint about pretend foods — and here I will admit that I enjoy some of the things it condemns, like Tofurky or soy burgers, more in their own right than as substitutes for things I don't even remember, and even more so the fascinating textures of the vegan mock meats I mentioned before — says: The spaghetti squash is a New World plant that originated somewhere in the Americas.

No one knows how or why it evolved into an imitation of an Old World vehicle for red sauce. Read More. One of the inmates of the fourth bolgia of the eighth circle of Dante's Inferno is a cobbler turned soothsayer, of whom it says XX : Vedi Guido Bonatti; vedi Asdente, ch'avere inteso al cuoio e a lo spago ora vorrebbe, ma tardi si pente. But not many Italian load-words have got into American, probably because the great majority of Italian immigrants have been poor folk, keeping much to themselves.

I can think of chianti more generally known as dago-red , ravioli , minestrone , mafia and black-hand from mano negra , and that is about all. Even the argot of roguery had been but little enriched by Italian words, though there have been many eminent Italian gunmen. The script also gives Groucho a couple of classic spaghetti gags: Driftwood : All right, we'll talk business.

Claypool : No. Claypool : Yes. Interestingly, Wycliffe 's Middle English Bible uses gourd for cucumeres here are early and late translations side-by-side : We recorden of the fisshes that we eten in Egipte gladly; into mynde come to vs the goordis, and the peponys, and the leeke, and the vniowns, and the garlekes; We thenken on the fischis whiche we eten in Egipt freli; gourdis, and melouns, and lekis, and oyniouns, and garlekis comen in to mynde to vs; An anonymous i.

To which there is a footnote: It may also be mentioned as characteristic of the English tendency towards monosyllabism that the long Narragansett Indian name of a kind of gourd asquutasquash has been adopted in the short form squash. Depending upon variety, this squash can be pale to vibrant yellow.

Presence of any green on the squash indicates under-ripeness or immaturity. When selecting your spaghetti squash, choose those that are of uniform color and have a hard skin free of bruising, cuts, or soft spots. The squash should feel dense and heavy for its size. Preferably, there should be 1 to 2 inches of brown, dried stem still attached. Never store whole squash in the refrigerator. Once you cut the squash, wrap and store it in the refrigerator to be used within two days.

When ready to eat, wash the squash under cool running water while rubbing the entire surface especially around the stem end to remove any dirt or debris. Top with basil. Wendie Donabie. April 25, at am. THanks for these great recipes. These all sound delicious. Spaghetti squash also makes a great side dish.

I especially like the recipes with the breadcrumbs with garlic and the pine nuts with tarragon for that. Thanks Wendie. There is a print icon button towards the bottom of the post under the ad. The line says Share This. A print friendly icon is at the end of the share buttons.

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Thank you so much for being a reader of this blog. Spaghetti Squash April 25, Purchasing Squash Spaghetti Squash is available year round in most large supermarkets. Microwave 6 to 8 minutes let stand for a few minutes afterwards Boil 20 minutes or so.

Boil for half an hour. Spaghetti Squash Storage Tip Like pumpkin and other squashes, whole uncooked spaghetti squash is best stored between 50 to 60 degrees and will last up to six months this way. How To Serve Spaghetti Squash A meat sauce made of ground meat of choice, tomatoes, mushrooms and garlic can be mixed with spaghetti squash and topped with Italian cheeses. Spaghetti Squash with Tomatoes and Herbs Ingredients: 1 medium spaghetti squash 2 cloves garlic, minced 2 teaspoons olive oil 1 can Spaghetti Squash With Garlic, Parsley and Breadcrumbs Serves 4 Ingredients: 1 spaghetti squash, about 3 pounds 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 3 to 4 large garlic cloves, green shoots removed, minced 2 tablespoons breadcrumbs 2 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste Freshly grated Parmesan cheese Directions: Preheat the oven to degrees.

Spaghetti Squash Bake Serves 4 to 6. Related articles Spaghetti vs Spaghetti squash roigragefitness. Like this: Like Loading Leave a Reply Cancel reply. Where to Find the Print Buttons There is a print icon button towards the bottom of the post under the ad. Search Site. Follow Blog via Email Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

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