Le Gigot de novembre : suite et fin

Here's what I had left of the lamb yesterday morning. I was hesitating between making a French navarin lamb stew with it (but I didn't have any turnips), or making Kentucky-style lamb barbecue for sandwiches. The spiciness of the barbecue sauce made me think of making a Moroccan-style braised tajine instead. That would be good on a cold day. That's what I made.

Down in the cellar had a package of the Moroccan spice mixture called raz-eh-hanout. You can read the list of spices included on the label. The first step was to sauté some sliced onions, and then put the meat in the pan with the spice mixture and let it brown. After browning, the lamb needed to cook slowly for about 90 minutes.

Meanwhile, Walt went out to the vegetable garden plot and brought in another sucrine du Berry winter squash. We cut it into cubes and and then peeled the cubes that had some of the peel on them. We also had some prunes in the cellar, so in they went too. The squash cubes and prunes didn't go into the wok until close to the end of the cooking time. They cook fast. It was ready.

We made a batch of couscous, which takes all of five minutes. The tajine stayed on the heat. When the couscous was fluffy, we had lunch, with a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau red wine. Another year's lamb was finished, except the half a dish of moussaka we have in the fridge. In all, we will have had six six lamb meals in six days, for 60 euros worth of lamb.

Hors sujet : here is a link to several tajine recipes.

Tajine de potiron et de dinde

We've been processing, preserving, cooking, and eating pumpkin every day for at least a week now. Walt grew pumpkins in our 2020 vegetable garden and we harvested a big crop of jumbo specimens — pumpkins are potirons in French. We gave two of them to some American friends who live five miles upriver from us, and another to our part-time neighbors who live in Blois. Just a day or two ago I gave one to some new neighbors who recently came to live in our hamlet.

With the pumpkins we've kept — and there is still one ripening that we haven't even cut into yet — we've made a few pints of pumpkin-tomato enchilada sauce with chili powder, onions, and garlic; a few pints of pumpkin-tomato sauce for pizzas and pasta, with oregano, garlic, and onion; and a savory pumpkin cake with bacon, spices, and cheese. We've also cooked some as one of the vegetables in a couscous, along with turnips, carrots, green beans, bell peppers, and artichoke hearts. Yesterday I decided to make a Moroccan-style tajine with pumpkin, onions, spices, dried apricots and prunes, and chunks of turkey breast meat. Here's a slideshow made up of nine pictures of that process.

Here's how you make it: Put 8 or 10 dried apricots and, optionally, a few prunes in warm water to plump them up. Then cut the turkey breast into cubes and dredge them in 3 or 4 tablespoons of tajine spices (see below). Sauté the turkey cubes in olive oil and then take them out of the pan (a wok is good, or a big skillet) and put them in a warm oven while you slice and cook a couple of onions in the pan that still has a little olive oil and some of the spices in it — add more oil or spices if you want, and add in a couple of tablespoons of honey. (You can make this with chicken too, of course.)

Add the re-hydrated apricots and prunes to the sautéed onions and pour a cup or so of water into the pan. Let all that cook together, covered, for a few minutes and then add the sautéed turkey plus some more water — just enough to barely cover the cubes of turkey meat. Reduce the heat to low and let the turkey, onions, and fruit simmer for 30 or 40 minutes. Toward the end of that cooking time, add a cup or so of cooked (canned) chickpeas.

Meanwhile, peel a big wedge piece of pumpkin (or abutternut or other winter squash) and cut the flesh into cubes. Melt some butter in a non-stick frying pan and sauté the cubes of pumpkin until they start to brown a little. When the turkey and onions are braised and tender, add the pumpkin cubes and let them cook for 15 minutes or until they're completely tender too. Stir everything together gently and serve hot with steamed rice, millet, or couscous "grain" (which is actually a form of pasta).

P.S. In the past I've posted about tajines many times. See those posts by clicking on this link and scrolling down. I also once posted a recipe for making your own tajine blend of powdered spices, known as ras-el-hanout ("the cook's blend"), which I found in the Joy of Cooking. Here it is again:

• 2 Tbsp. ground ginger
• 2 tsp. each black pepper, allspice, nutmeg, cardamom, cinnamon, and turmeric
• 1 tsp. coriander seeds
• ¼ tsp. each cloves and powdered cayenne pepper (or more)

Tajine de potimarron, pois chiches, et abricots secs

A tajine is a Moroccan stew and also the name of the dish it is cooked in — the same way that the French word terrine means both the dish and the food cooked in it. There can be meat and vegetables in a tajine or just vegetables. And fruit (raisins, prunes, dried apricots, almonds) which goes well with the spice blend typically used in Morocco: it's called ras-el-hanout (meaning "the chef's special blend" I think). It can contain cumin, turmeric, ginger, nutmeg, coriander seeds, cardamom, pepper, sweet or spicy paprika, fennel, fenugreek... as many as two dozen spices.

So you can blend together whatever spices you want, really, within those guidelines. Personalize your cooking. But don't go wild. Pumpkin, or whatever winter squash, is really good in tajines because it cooks quickly, has sweetness, and is complemented by the Moroccan spices. Think pumpkin pie spices, but with some heat and less sugar. Even so, tajines are often sucré-salé-épicé dishes.

The first step in making this pumpkin or—why not? — sweet potato tajine is to sauté some onion (and garlic if you want) in a pan in olive oil. Add salt and pepper. And as the onions cook, add a drizzle — one or two tablespoons, to taste — of honey to the mix Let the onions "sweat" or cook on low heat for 10 or 15 minutes until they are lightly caramelized by the honey. Oh, the other ingredient here is dried apricots, which have been soaked briefly and then get slow-cooked with the onions and honey. (You could put in raisins instead.)

The other thing I like to add to a pumpkin or sweet potato tajine, for flavor and texture, is some chickpeas. I buy them in cans (tins), and they're very good. Chickpeas (garbanzo beans) and other beans are vegetables that are not really altered by the canning process. Add the spice blend you like and the quantity you like, and then let the canned chickpeas and the pumpkin cook together for 30 minutes or so, until both vegetables are just tender. One recipe I've found uses dried ginger and turmeric as the only spices.

We had chicken rubbed with spices and slow-cooked on the barbecue grill to accompany the pumpkin tajine. It would be good with lamb as well. Somewhere I found a recipe for an "Arabic spice blend" that we like. The blend is:

2 Tbsp. black pepper

2 Tbsp. paprika

2 Tbsp. ground cumin

1 Tbsp. ground coriander

1 Tbsp. ground cloves

1 tsp. ground nutmeg

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

½ tsp. ground cardamom

Walt makes couscous "grain" (semoule in French) with raisins to have with tajines like this one. The raisins are soaked briefly, and then the semoule gets soaked briefly in boiling water with a little bit of vegetable oil. That's enough to cook it, and he finishes it with a knob of butter that melts into the blend. It tastes really good.

So there it is. Tajine de potimarron et pois chiches avec oignons, miel, et abricots secs; couscous aux raisins; et cuisses de poulet cuites au barbecue. We have some eight or ten potimarrons (small pumpkins) out in the vegetable garden so we'll be making dishes like this through the end of the year, I'm sure. Along with pumpkin cakes and pumpkin pies. The holidays are coming.

The tajine of lamb and pumpkin recipe

Tajine of Lamb and Honey-Glazed Pumpkin

1½ lbs. lamb shoulder or leg meat, cut into cubes

1½ lbs. pumpkin, cut into cubes or thick slices

2 or 3 medium onions

1 or 2 cloves garlic

½ cup raisins

3 or 4 Tbsp. olive oil

1 Tbsp. ras el hanout spice mix (or more to taste)

2 or 3 Tbsp. butter

2 Tbsp. honey

1 small can chickpeas
salt and pepper to taste

fresh herbs (cilantro, parsley...)

Preheat the oven to 160ºC (325ºF). Cut the lamb into 1-inch cubes. Peel and slice the onions and garlic. Cut the pumpkin into thick slices and peel them. Optionally, cut the slices into 1-in cubes.

Put the lamb cubes into a bowl and season them with the ras el hanout spices and salt. In a frying pan, sauté the lamb cubes in olive oil until they are well browned. Take them out of the pan and set them aside. Sauté the onion, garlic, and raisins in the same pan, adding more olive oil as needed.

Combine the browned lamb cubes and sautéed onion mixture together in an oven-proof dish with a lid. Pour in enough water to barely cover the lamb and onions. Put the dish in the oven, covered, and let it cook for an hour. Add more water as needed during the cooking process.

In a clean frying pan, melt the butter. Brown the pumpkin cubes or slices on medium-high heat, turning them carefully to brown them on all sides, as possible. Spoon the honey over the pumpkin and give it a few minutes on the heat to thicken and caramelize.

Put the glazed pumpkin on top of the lamb mixture in the baking dish and put the cover back on. Add the chickpeas. Let everything cook for another 15 or 20 minutes on low heat.

Serve with chopped fresh herbs and either rice, millet, or couscous grain.

How to make — and cook with — the tajine spice blend

I found a post on Epicurious this morning that explains how you can make your own version of the North African spice blend called ras el hanout. Here's a link. The ingredients are all standard spices you can find nearly anywhere: cumin, ground ginger, salt, black pepper, cinnamon, ground coriander seeds, cayenne pepper, ground allspice, and ground cloves. You can customize the list and the blend as you see fit.

For the lamb and pumpkin tajine I made recently, the first step was to "marinate" the chunks of lamb in the spices. (By the way, I noticed a jar of ras el hanout among the spices at our local SuperU store the other day.) Use the spices as a dry rub on the meat before you brown it in olive oil in a hot frying pan or wok.

Then take the meat out of the pan, set it aside, and sauté some sliced onions and garlic in the same pan, along with a handful of raisins, in a little more oil as needed. When the onions have softened, put the meat back into the pan (or transfer everything to a tajine or other oven-proof dish). Add a cup or two of water or broth — just enough to barely cover the meat — and put the dish in a slow oven (160ºC or 325ºF) for an hour.

All that's left to do, after the pumpkin is glazed and the meat is cooked, is to put the pumpkin on top of the meat, put the lid back on, and let it all cook slowly for 15 or 20 more minutes. Stir it only gently so that you don't mush up the pumpkin too much.

This kind of recipe is infinitely adaptable. Use chunks of chicken or turkey or even veal instead of lamb. Soak some prunes or dried apricots in water while the meat is cooking and put them in the tajine in the place of the glazed pumpkin. (Turkey, duck, or veal will work very well with prunes.) Vary the spice blend. Add as much cayenne or other hot pepper as you like. Serve the tajine with couscous grain, rice, or millet.

This was the third in an uninterrupted series on the lamb and pumpkin tajine.

Potiron caramélisé

The lamb and pumpkin tajine I've been writing about calls for caramelized cubes of pumpkin. In other words, it's a sweet-and-savory dish. The lamb is cooked with Moroccan spices including cinnamon, nutmeg, cumin, and cayenne pepper, and with onions.

For the caramelized pumpkin (or other winter squash like butternut), you cut the pumpkin in half or quarters, remove the pulp and seeds from the center, and then cut thick slices that you can peel with a knife or vegetable peeler. You can cut the thick slices into cubes, the way I did, or you can caramelize the thick slices themselves, whole.

Melt plenty of butter in a non-stick frying pan. Put the chunks or slices in the pan and let them brown on one side. It takes a few minutes. Then carefully turn all the pieces of pumpkin over, or toss them around in the pan, to try to get them brown on another side. It can be a fairly delicate operation once the pumpkin starts to cook and soften.

When the browning is done, pour a couple of tablespoons of honey into the pan and stir everything around gently. The honey will start to thicken. Put a lid on the pan for a few minutes until the pumpkin pieces are tender. Set them aside until you're ready to combine them with the braised meat you're using — lamb, turkey, or chicken, for example.

Definitely cook the meat with onions and spices. Adding tajine spices to the pan of caramelized pumpkin cubes or slices is optional. Actually, the meat is optional too. The little Tajines (Hachette 2005) cookbook I have includes a recipe for a vegetarian pumpkin tajine cooked with sauteed onions, raisins, spices, butter, and honey. The caramelized pumpkin could also make a good dessert, with pound cake or rice pudding, for example.

Un tajine : ustensile et plat

I've mentioned that last weekend I made what is called un tajine, using lamb and pumpkin. It occurred to me that you might not know what a tajine is. Here's one. It's pronounced [tah-ZHEEN], with the same -zh- sound as in our words measure, treasure, and pleasure.

The tajine is the name given to both the cooking dish (l'ustensile) and the food (the "dish" or le plat) that's cooked in it. Tajines are a specialty of  northwestern Africa (Morocco and Algeria). It seems they were an important part of the cooking of the original Berber people who inhabited the area before the arrival of the Arabs more than a thousand years ago.

You don't absolutely need a special cooking vessel to make a tajine, which is a highly spiced sauté or stew of meat and vegetables or meat and fruit. Highly spiced doesn't mean the tajine preparation is hot like some Mexican or East Asian dishes can be. The tajine spices include non-fiery cinnamon, nutmeg, cumin, coriander, fenugrec, curry, caraway, and turmeric, plus a small quantity of hot red pepper like cayenne. The tajine "utensil" is a nice way to serve it, however.

I don't always use the tajine dish when I cook a tajine. I did use it for the lamb and pumpkin tajine the other day, because the recipe I found called for braising the lamb for an hour or more in a slow oven. A few years ago, I bought a tajine and was told that I could cook in it on a burner on top of the stove. I did so, but the pan cracked after after a time or two. As you see, the conical lid has a small vent hole or "chimney" in it so that some steam can escape, though most of it condenses on the sides and drips back down into the base, keeping the meat and vegetables moist. It works great in the oven.

For the lamb with pumpkin, I first browned chunks of lamb and a lot of sliced onions with spices in a metal pan on the stovetop, and then I transferred all that to the tajine, added some liquid, put on the lid, and put the whole thing in the oven at a fairly low temperature. The meat ended up very tender, and it was flavorful with all the spices and onions in the cooking liquid. The pumpkin went in later...

Cockles etc.

The shellfish that I got Saturday morning when I went to the market in Saint-Aignan turned out to be cockles. We've cooked them several times over the past couple of years, and we enjoy them. At 12 euros per kilo, they are much less expensive than clams (praires 24€/kg, palourdes 20€/kg).

I've done posts over the years about making spaghetti or linguine with what is called "white clam sauce" — here, for example. It's called "white" because it's not made with tomato sauce, but with olive oil, white wine, and garlic or onions (or both).

Cockles are reputedly full of sand, so letting them disgorge in salted water for at least an hour, if not two or three, is important, as I described a couple of days ago. You need to put in 35 grams of salt for each liter of water to mimic seawater.

Meanwhile, yesterday for lunch I made a Moroccan tajine of lamb and pumpkin, using the rest of the lamb I roasted for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday and about a quarter of an orange pumpkin from our 2016 vegetable garden. It was a success and would be good made with chicken or turkey too. More later...

The chicken + pumpkin tajine recipe

The Moroccan seasoning mix for tajine and couscous dishes is called « ras el hanout ». There is no standard recipe for it (but there are recipes here and here). It can be made up of any number of powdered spices — cinnamon, cumin, nutmeg, fenugreek, carraway, cayenne pepper, turmeric, coriander seeds, sweet or hot paprika — and is the cook's or grocer's special blend. It seems that the main difference between the Moroccan spice and Indian curry powder is that the Indian blend includes mustard powder, which gives it a different flavor. The Moroccan blend is sweeter and works better with sweet-savory dishes.

Moroccan tajine of chicken with winter squash

1 chicken (or the equivalent in chicken parts)

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 Tbsp. powdered spices (or more to taste)

3 medium onions

2 cloves of garlic

½ cup raisins (or more)

1 cup chicken broth (or water)

1 Tbsp. honey

2 lbs. of winter squash cut into cubes

2 Tbsp. butter

1 small can of chickpeas *

salt and pepper to taste

 
Cut up the whole chicken or use chicken parts like thighs and drumsticks (I used four of each). Brown the pieces of chicken on all sides in olive oil. Slice the onions and garlic and add them in with the chicken. Add the spices, raisins, and honey and continue cooking for 5 to 10 minutes so that the flavor ingredients are cooked and the spices are fragrant.

Then pour a cup or so of chicken broth (or water) into the pan, season with salt and pepper, and let the chicken and other ingredients cook together slowly until the chicken is starting to fall off the bone — 45 minutes to an hour is not too long — at low temperature. Most of the liquid should evaporate, leaving you with a spicy-sweet, syrupy sauce.

Cut up the winter squash (pumpkin, butternut, acorn squash) into large cubes, peeled. Brown these in butter with salt and pepper, covering the pan toward the end so that they will cook through. Test the chunks of squash for tenderness by piercing them with a knife or skewer.

When the chicken and the squash are done to your liking, turn off the heat under one or the other until both are ready. Finally, add the cooked squash to the chicken along with the chickpeas and gently stir to combine everything. Leave the pot on low heat for 5 minutes before serving.

* Instead of putting chickpeas in the tajine, you can use toasted almonds or macadamia nuts, adding them at the last minute, or even at the table as a garnish.

The ideal accompaniment to this tajine is couscous "grain" cooked according to package directions. If you want to see the French recipe this tajine is adapted from, it's here. It calls for saffron instead of other spices.

A Moroccan tajine of chicken with winter squash

One of the best ways to prepare pumpkins and winter squashes, I'm convinced, is to cook them in what is called un tajine [tah-ZHEEN], a Moroccan specialty that's a spicy sauté or stew. In French it could be called un plat sucré-salé (sweet and savory) and it's seasoned with a blend of spices including nutmeg, cinnamon, turmeric, fenugreek, cumin, and hot red pepper, plus a tablespoon or two of sugar or honey.

Yesterday I made a chicken and winter squash tajine using onions, garlic, spices, raisins, and a sucrine du Berry squash. The sucrine resembles a butternut squash. Here's what it looks like on the outside and on the inside. Cooking with winter squashes and pumpkins is like bringing fall colors into the house.

One of the things I like about this recipe is that you cook the chicken with onions, garlic, raisins, and spices in one pot, and then you cook the squash, cut into cubes, in a separate pot or pan. That way, you can control the cooking time for each component so that both are just right before you combine everything and take it to the table. I'll post a recipe tomorrow.

Tajine d'agneau aux pruneaux et aux pois chiches

This is a recipe I've probably made before, because I like lamb and I like prunes. They go well together, especially with the right spices — cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice coriander seed, fenugreek, cumin, carraway seed, curry, and cayenne pepper. You can make the same kind of dish with chicken.

A mixture of all those spices I listed above is what is called Ras el Hanout in Morocco. The word tajine [tah-ZHEEN] itself is the name of a cooking utensil and also the food that's cooked in it. You don't need the utensil, just a metal pot or a baking dish that's big enough. The tajine is a kind of stew with meat, fruit, vegetables, and spices in it. This is an example. (It would be really good made with lamb shanks.)

Tajine of lamb with prunes and chickpeas

2 lbs. lean lamb stew meat

2 onions

3 garlic cloves

2 Tbsp. Ras el Hanout spice mix

1 tsp. hot red pepper flakes

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 pinch nutmeg

2 dozen prunes

2 cups white wine

1 cup cooked chickpeas (from a can)

olive oil

salt and pepper

Cut the lamb into cubes (or buy it already cut up). Finely dice the onions and the garlic. Soak the prunes in the white wine to plump them.

Sauté the diced onion and garlic in olive oil. Add the Moroccan spice mixture (make your own using the spices listed above if you can't buy it ready-made) and let it cook for a minute or two.

Put the lamb stew meat into the pan and sauté everything on moderately high heat until the meat starts to brown. Season with salt and pepper. Add a cup or so of water, cover the pan, and let the stew simmer either on top of the stove or in the oven for at least two hours. Keep adding just enough water as needed to prevent it from drying out.

When the meat is fairly tender, add the soaked prunes and the wine they soaked in and cook for another 30 minutes. Then add the chickpeas and let everything come back to temperature before serving the tajine with couscous grain or rice.

Tajine de poulet aux pruneaux et aux pois chiches

A tajine is a Moroccan dish that combines meat or vegetables or both with a spice blend that can include cinnamon, cumin, fenugreek, allspice, cayenne pepper, ground coriander seeds, and even curry leaves. Tajine vegetables are good when they are on the sweet side — sweet potatoes, winter squashes, parsnips, or carrots, for example. Another way to bring sweet flavors to the mix is to use dried fruit in the tajine, including prunes, dried apricots, or almonds. The Moroccan spice blend is called ras el hanout, and it's good if you can find it. Here's a recipe for it.

I made a tajine of chicken with prunes and chickpeas in early July. The process was to cut the chicken in half, sprinkle the halves with the Moroccan spice mix and salt and black pepper, and then brown them in a hot oven. Meanwhile sauté some sliced onions and garlic in vegetable or olive oil in a pan on top of the stove until they are translucent. Add a cup or two of chicken broth and two dozen prunes to the pan and let it come to a simmer.

When the chicken is browned but not yet cooked through, pour the flavored broth and prunes into the roasting pan in the oven and let everything continue cooking for 30 minutes or so at 180ºC (350ºF), until the chicken is pretty much done and the prunes are tender. Add a cup or more of cooked chickpeas and let it cook 10 more minutes longer. As a final touch, sprinkle the dish with toasted sesame seeds and garnish it with some fresh coriander (also called cilantro or chinese parsely) leaves, or another herb like basil or parsley. The chickpeas are starchy so you don't need rice, couscous, or potatoes with this kind of tajine.

Tajine de potiron, courge, ou patate douce

I posted about this a while back, but I had modified the recipe significantly. I made this tajine just with winter squash, onions, raisins, and spices, with a touch of honey (optional). The recipe comes from a little book called simply Tajines, published by Hachette in 2005 and written by Ghislaine Danan-Bénady.

We have had a huge harvest of winter squashes this fall. For this recipe, I used a 'buttercup' squash, but a butternut would be similar, or some pumpkin, or even sweet potatoes.The hardest part of preparing the tajine is cutting up and peeling the vegetables. A tajine is a kind of Moroccan curry, by the way.

Here's the recipe, in my translation:

Tajine of pumpkin with onions and raisins

2 lbs. of pumpkin (or butternut-type squash)

½ cup golden raisins

2 medium onions

1 tsp. turmeric

1 tsp. ginger (dried or fresh grated)

½ tsp. cayenne pepper

1 Tbsp. honey

Olive oil for cooking the onion

Salt and pepper to taste

Put the raisins to soak in just enough cold water to cover them for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, peel and chop the onions.

In a tablepoon or two of olive oil in a pan, put the onions on low heat to slowly cook and melt down with the spices and the honey. Cover the pan and leave it on very low heat for 15 to 20 minutes.

Cut up and peel the pumpkin, squash, or sweet potato. Cut everything into 1-inch cubes. Put the pumpkin cubes into the pan with the onions and add the raisins and the soaking water. Add more water as necessary. Stir everything together and set the pan on medium heat, covered, for 20 to 30 minutes, until the pumpkin cubes are tender and cooked through. Serve.

To go with the pumpkin tajine yesterday, I cooked a whole chicken. I poached it, which is a very nice way to prepare a chicken (or any poultry) so that the meat is tender and juicy. Put the chicken into a large pot of simmering water or broth and let it cook at a low simmer for an hour. I stuffed some garlic cloves and celery leaves into this one, and I added salt and black peppercorns to the poaching liquid.

When the chicken was cooked, I took it out of the liquid (which is now a nice chicken broth) and set it in a roasting dish to brown it in the oven. I sprinkled red tandoori curry powder over it, along with salt and pepper, and then browned it in a hot oven for about 20 minutes. Deliciously tender inside and nicely crispy on the outside, it was really good.

Tajine de poulet et de courge

This is a really simple recipe. You might need to make your own spice blend, however, if you can't get the Moroccan ras el hanout mix where you are.

The ras el hanout mix I used included a little bit of cornstarch, which works as a thickener to make for a more velvety sauce, so you might want to add some, or some flour or potato starch, to your spice blend. The other ingredients in the ras el hanout are curry, powdered coriander seed, cumin, salt, carraway, turmeric, and hot red pepper including cayenne pepper. You could also just substitute commercially available curry powder, I think (but I haven't tried it).

You can use a whole chicken, cut up, or you can use chicken breast filets, thighs (boneless or not), and/or drumsticks. The main thing is to really dredge the chicken pieces in the spice mix, and not just sprinkle a little bit on. It needs a lot of spice. So don't use a spice mix that will end up too spicy hot for sensitive palates.

Lightly brown the spice-covered chicken pieces in vegetable oil in a fairly deep sauté or chef's pan, or a wok. Take the chicken out of the pan and set it aside, maybe in a warm oven.

Cut up a winter squash or some fresh pumpkin — butternut or acorn squash, for example. I used one half of a buttercup squash like the one I posted pictures of yesterday. You could substitute sweet potato. Trim the squash to take the peel off and cut it into one-inch cubes, more or less.

Peel and slice three good-sized onions. After you've browned the chicken, cook the onions in the same pan until they just start to brown a little around the edges. At that point, add the squash cubes and a handful of raisins to the pan. Optionally, toss in some almonds or macadamia nuts.

Arrange the chicken parts over the top, pour on a cup or more of water or broth, cover the pan, and let it simmer for 30 to 45 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through, the squash cubes are softened, and the liquid is velvety and thickened. (If you cook it too long, the squash will completely disintegrate into the sauce.)

Serve with some couscous grain, rice, or boiled potatoes.

This could easily serve 6, or four really hungry people. Here's an ingredient list:

1 whole chicken, cut up, or 2½ lbs. chicken parts

3 or 4 tsp. ras el hanout or curry spices, including cornstarch or flour

3 onions

1 or 1½ lbs cubed winter squash (peeled and seeded) or sweet potato

½ cup raisins (a handful)

1 or 2 cups water or broth

Winter squashes

When I lived in France in the 1970s and '80s, nobody sold or cooked winter squash. (A winter squash is called « une courge » in French, and calling somebody a courge is like calling sombody a dummy.) I don't remember ever seeing butternut or acorn squashes in the markets or supermarkets. It was the same with pumpkins. Back then, people in Paris didn't believe in mixing sweet and salty foods on the same plate.

This is a buttercup squash — une courge buttercup — from our 2013 garden.

It turns out that was an urban view of the world. Out here in the country, people definitely ate them. So much so, it seems, some people viewed them as they viewed rutabagas: they were feed for animals that people had been forced to eat during hard times in the 1930s and '40s. They were not esteemed or valued. Our neighbors across the road, in their 80s now, find pumpkin and winter squash just repulsive.

In 2005 we grew a lot of these big sucrine du Berry squashes.

However, early on in Saint-Aignan, ten years ago, a woman we had met in the village gave us some seeds from a winter squash called a « sucrine du Berry » — sucrine obviously refers to sugar, and the Berry is the old province just to the south and east of Saint-Aignan, centered on the city of Bourges. We grew them and they were to us a kind of butternut squash, but bigger, and just as delicious.

A sucrine du Berry squash sliced open — all the seeds are in the bulbous bottom.

We've also grown pumpkins of two or three different kinds — potirons, citrouilles, potimarrons — with great success. The only time I had ever eaten pumpkin in France before we moved to Saint-Aignan in 2003 (and I lived in France for 7 or 8 years before coming to live here) was once in the late '70s on a trip out into the country.

The buttercup resembles an acorn squash but has this blue-colored bump on the blossom end.

I don't remember where it was, but I'll never forget that pumpkin soup. It was sliced onions and thin slices of orange pumpkin cooked in milk and broth with herbs. The pumpkin slices were just beginning to fall apart in the soup, and it was delicious. I'll have to make that soon. Not to mention pureed squash soups and "pumpkin" breads (which are really cakes). I've already made a Moroccan-style tajine with buttercup squash...