How to pick good winter squash

The Basics: I am a lover of winter squashes, and lucky for me, they start cropping up all over the place around this time of year. Squashes are picked throughout the fall and then put into storage, where they keep quite well. Still, I don't condone buying 80 lbs. of squash from that farm stand in Pennsylvania and trying to hide it under your sink. The farmers at the farmer's market will be bringing squash in all through the fall and winter.

What should you look for in squash? Well, regardless of what kind of squash you have, it should be pretty heavy. The stem should be dry and corky. Some squashes (like kabocha and buttercup) have rough barnacles all over them. Some of the darker green squashes have single orange patches on them. Those are both fine, nothing to worry about. Try to keep away from squashes that are bruised, or have cuts in them. The squash rind is a remarkable preserver of the flesh inside, but once there's a way for bacteria to get in, you have to keep an eye on the mold situation. After the frost comes in, keep an eye out for dark frostbite patches, especially on the butternut and spaghetti squashes. Frostbite seems to affect the texture of the squash, as well as its shelflife.

Squash at the farmer's market is usually 75 cents to $1.50 per pound. Buy the market squashes and support local agriculture. At Whole Foods Market, it's $1.50 per pound.

Varieties: There are so many varieties of squash and so many different ways to prepare them. I'm going to list the ones I am familiar with (i.e. the ones sold at Paffenroth Gardens' stand). Squash doesn't have to only mean butternut squash apple soup. All squash can be cooked very simply by cutting the squash in half and baking in a 400 degree oven til soft and yummy.

Butternut The squash workhorse. Slightly fibrous, sweet orange flesh inside a beige rind with a distinctive bell shape. High flesh to seed ratio. My favorite way to peel is to cut it into concentric circles, then slice around the edges of the circles to remove the peel. Butternut squash is delicious cubed and thrown into risotto, cubed and roasted with a little olive oil and fresh sage, or, possibly my favorite treatment, steamed, then sauteed with lots of butter with small, halved brussels sprouts. Delish! Any of the delicious orange fleshed squashes can probably be substituted for butternut in any given recipe, so read on, and try a squash you've never tried before.

Kabocha Sometimes called chestnut squash or green hokkaido squash, kabocha has a barnacled, dark green rind and orange-red flesh with a round boule shape. Comes in a golden color skin and a dark green skin. It is a favorite in Asian cooking, and can be purchased in Japanese markets and often Chinatown throughout the year. The flesh is very sweet and quite starchy for a squash, and the skin is edible (though some people prefer to eat it peeled). The flavor is like a cross between the best sweet potato you've ever had and a chestnut, hence the name. In Japanese cooking, it is often cooked simply in a soy-sugar-kelp broth elixir. Thai people eat it for dessert (if you see it at a store, you can order "fuck-tong," titter all you want and not get slapped in the face). The squash's stem is cut out, the seeds scooped away, and the cavity filled with a coconut egg custard. The cap is then put back on the squash and the whole thing is steamed until the custard is cooked. The squash can then be sliced into wedges that so it looks like an acid-trip watermelon. Because of its drier, sweet fiberless flesh, it makes great pies. Try adding it to to the next Thai curry you make. My favorite treatment, though, is another recipe I got from Yuka, who got it from her cooking friend. Peel, deseed and cube the kabocha. Steam it til it's tender, but not until it's falling apart. In the meantime, toast sliced or chopped almonds until fragrant and golden. Whip a little cream and fold in a little mayonnaise. Add the nuts and toss the squash with the mixture. Totally decadent and delicious! Orange Hokkaido has the same flavor (maybe bred a tad less sweet) with an orange rind before storage.

Buttercup Looks very much like a kabocha except that it has more of a cylindrical shape with a little round button on the bottom. The flesh is also a deep orange but it's a little more moist. Alex Paffenroth thinks it's the sweetest of the squash he grows, but I like the kabocha better. Buttercup can be used in the same way kabocha is.

Acorn I hate acorn squash. I think it's the least flavorful, most personality-less squash available. It comes in white, golden, and green but it still sucks. When there are so many delicious squashes available, why choose the one that can't be peeled, the one that has no versatility, the one that is fibrous and pale and BLAH? I saw one cool thing where scooped out acorn squash had their little tails lopped off and were used as bowls for squash soup. But please note that, as a total slap in the face, the soup itself didn't use acorn squash, it used another kind of squash. Vegetarian recipes call for acorn squash a lot. Hello, if you don't even have the flavor powerhouses of meat and fish in your diet, do yourself a favor and at least eat a more flavorful squash.

Spaghetti Spaghetti squash is a little different from the others. Its tender, yellow-white flesh is watery with long spaghetti-like fiber strands. The bigger the squash, the longer and larger the strand. The best way to cook it is to poke it full of holes with a fork and put the whole thing into a 400 degree oven, cook for about an hour or until you can squeeze the squash and it feels soft. Don't bother cutting it in half and baking it with water in the pan -- all you get is wet squash. Some people call it the dieter's pasta, but don't shy away from it just because anorexics are into it. The squash strands make a delicious gratin. My guilty pleasure is mixing the cooked squash with Barilla Green & Black olive -- the squash is the only thing that balances out the super saltiness of the jarred sauce.

Blue Hubbard Fun fact: Blue hubbard squash is the squash used in those cans of "pumpkin" for pie. It has less fiber than regular pumpkins. Apparently sometimes vegetarians bake them instead of turkeys for Thanksgiving because of their vaguely turkey-like size and shape. (Being a vegetarian doesn't seem like much fun. I wonder what kind of treats vegetarian kids get in their Christmas stockings. Tea tree oil flavored toothpicks if they've been good?) Truth be told, I've never actually cooked one of these. But they look cool, with their pretty pale blue rinds.

Delicata Delicata squash have mildly sweet, slightly fibrous golden flesh with a distinctive salami shape with lengthwise ridges and stripes. At City Bakery, the squashes are cut in half lengthwise, the seeds scooped out, the halves sliced into half-rings and roasted skin-on until they're sweet and caramelized. They're pretty good, not my favorite, but they are very interesting looking. Go for the savory roast.

Carnival Tastes like a delicata, shape of an acorn with delicata coloring. That's because it's a cross between delicata and acorn. But don't hold that against it. They're still pretty good, much better than those acorn buggers.

Banana These are huge monster squash, long and phallic with a pale orange rind. Chef Ilene Rosen of City Bakery used to buy them -- she said they were fiberless. Because it's so big, it's good for feeding a lot of people and you can generally get a better price per pound because of the size. I've never cooked with them. When you're in Latino neighborhoods, it's usually banana squash that has been cut into large hunks and shrink wrapped with a "calabaza" sticker on it (calabaza being the word for squash).

Sweet Dumpling Hm. I had one of these the other day, just cut in half and roasted in the oven. It wasn't that sweet. It was kind of like an acorn squash. a little fibrous, not sweet, yellow-orange flesh, mild and medium dry. Because of the awkward acorn-like ridges, it's not a good squash for peeling and cooking with. Not so interesting.

Pumpkins Lumina pumpkins are the white pumpkins which are supposed to be good. Sugar pumpkins are the small orange guys which are supposed to be good for pie. Cheese pumpkins are the other pumpkins generally used for cooking with the beige rind and the flattened disc shape. The large pumpkins are good for jack o lanterns. Don't bother cooking them or you'll be pushing puree through a strainer for hours.

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I love that the kids at Hogwarts drink pumpkin juice at dinner. Doesn't that sound yummy? I remember one year Colin Alevras of the Tasting Room took Cheese and Lumina pumpkins, juiced them, and added Wondra flour for a sauce to accompany his Buddhist-raised Chinatown rabbits. (Am I revealing your secrets, Colin? Sorry!)

Also, does anyone know how to roast those pumpkin seeds? It always seems like such a waste to throw the seeds out. My earliest memory is of being in nursery school where we were being taught to roast pumpkin seeds and eat them. I swear, all of my memories are related to food.