IF ANY WINTER SQUASH can challenge butternut for top quality honors, it’s delicata. This heirloom variety makes a loaf-shaped squash about 7 to 9 inches long and 3 to 4 inches wide. It’s a pretty thing, with a light creamy white to yellowish background and dark green stripes and flecks down its ribbed surface. Its flesh is very finely textured, light orange, and nutty-sweet with a hint of caramel in the flavor when baked just a tad past done so the surface browns up a bit.
Another squash to look out for is the Sweet Dumpling, which is about 3 to 4 inches wide and about 3 inches high and weighs about 8 ounces. It has the same pretty white and green striping as the delicata, but the inside is hardly more than a morsel by the time the seeds are scraped out and the top discarded.
A roasted Sweet Dumpling, however, is great for serving a hot dish in an eye-catching container for special occasions. If a knife is inserted near the stem at an angle slanting inward, and then cuts a circle so the top comes off like a lid, the top can be replaced on the squash without it falling into the interior. Save the top, scrape out as much of the seeds and flesh as you can so the little squash becomes a container, then add filling and set the top snugly back on. A hot squash soup or a medley of baked squash chunks with diced ham and potatoes make good fillings, but my favorite filling for little Sweet Dumplings is a hot Crab and Squash Soup.
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