Tromboncino squash

[Catherine Iino]

Having read about how delicious the tromboncino is and having failed at growing them in my garden, I have now acquired one from a neighbor. I'd love to hear about traditional ways of preparing this wacky-looking squash. (My neighbor calls it by the Italian nickname which I can't begin to spell but which I suspect is rather off-color.)

[Gifted Gourmet]

one recipe for this squash is a Curried Summer Squash Soup ...

[Adam Balic]

I know of at least two types of squash that are are given the name of "Tromboncino". One is a forerunner of butternut squash, with similar shaped fruit with, but much bigger and oftern with green stripes, the other is sometimes called a climbing zucchini and the fruit are picked when young and light green. What type have you got?

[Catherine Iino]

Adam, I'm not sure. It doesn't have an enlarged bulb at the end like a butternut squash (or like the one in the photo in Melissa's link), and the fruit is light green, but I don't think it's young--it's about 2 1/2 feet long. I will just have to experiment and report back.

Thank you, Melissa. I make a much simpler curried squash soup with normal zucchini; that recipe looks tasty. I'm still curious about traditional Italian preparations, though.

[pedalaforte]

We've grown them (and cooked them and eat them) for several years now.

I don't know what you mean by traditional, but "traditional" to me means simple, fresh and keep it lively.

We just dice them into rounds and saute them in olive oil. We'll add maybe a few fennel seeds, or maybe some red pepper flakes (the Abruzzo blood in me). Often, in fact most often, when they're about half-way done, we'll add bread crumbs into the pan then turn the heat up and brown them. At the end we might add a little cheese, but we don't do that very often.

And a question: how is it that you can't grow these things? They seem like a weed sometimes when they're pumping out way too many of these things and we can't keep up in mid summer! And that's here in the frozen wastelands of Utah in the western U.S.!

Cheers