Long Island’s Own Great Pumpkin

Growing up in the “Casserole Corridor” amidst the strip malls of suburban Long Island, I never imagined I would dine on locally-grown vegetables and farm-raised chicken as an adult. “The Island” was simply not the destination for a food culture. Certainly, there was always a food court within minutes, but the concept of food culture was quite foreign. As for “heirloom crops,” who knew the meaning of the term?

Indeed, that is changing, but I was still surprised on a recent visit to Restoration Farm to see “Long Island’s Own Cheese Pumpkin” listed as one of the selections on the chalk board. There on the table was a spread of some hefty, buff-colored gourds. There was much speculation among members at the distribution tent. Is it decorative? Is it for cooking?

I carry home an eight-pound pumpkin, and quickly get to work on my research. Good Grief, Charlie Brown! It turns out the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin is indeed an heirloom crop that hails from my native soil – and is considered the preferred pumpkin for pie. So what’s with the reference to cheese? It is named so because it resembles a flat wheel of cheese in shape, color and texture.

The cheese pumpkin – a variety of Cucurbita moschata squash – was widely available from the 1800s to the 1960s before it became scarce. According to the Long Island Seed Project, a Long Island seed saver named Ken Ettlinger is credited with the renaissance of the cheese pumpkin and its link to Long Island. The Long Island Seed Project offers this anecdote published in 2005 in the magazine, Edible East End:

“In the late-1970s when Mr. Ettlinger noticed that the pumpkin was becoming less common in catalogues, he began growing it from fruit he bought at East End farmstands where farmers had begun to save their own seeds. He sold the seed as the “Long Island Cheese Pumpkin” through the now-defunct Long Island Seed Company. Before long, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Seed Savers Exchange, and other catalogues began listing the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin as “an East Coast heirloom long remembered as a great pie squash by people in the New York and New Jersey areas.” Growing up on the Island in the 1950s, Mr. Ettlinger recalled hitting the farmstands just before Thanksgiving. “My family would always go to a farm and pick up a cheese pumpkin so Mom could make the pie,” he said. “If you talk to old timers, if you want to make pumpkin pie you use cheese pumpkin.”

The pies will certainly be made in the weeks to come, but what to do with that abundance of puree, from eight pounds of roly-poly cheese pumpkin? How about making some pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting for family birthday celebrations, and just to spread a little seasonal good cheer in the office?

This recipe makes a fragrant, light and delicate cupcake, and this recipe for cream cheese frosting adds a nice sweet tang as a final flourish.

©2011 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

My First Cookie Recipe - Petticoat Tails

There are various landmarks in my culinary journey. My first cookbook was the Betty Crocker Boys and Girls Cookbook. The first cake I decorated had white frosting and blue piping. I was in elementary school and the cake was for my parent’s anniversary. Much later, I baked my first baguette at the French Culinary Institute. And, my very first cookie recipe was for “Petticoat Tails.”

As I recall, baking Petticoat Tails was an elementary school class project. Here’s the actual recipe card which I wrote out by hand, and my mom still had in her collection of recipes. Based on the style of penmanship, it appears to be circa 3rd or 4th grade, but I’m not entirely sure. It was some time ago…

As far as junior bakers go, I appear to have been a bit of a rebel, and refused to organize the list of ingredients in the same order as their use. And, there are a few critical directions that seem to be left to the imagination. Maybe I was just a little confused. Fortunately, in attempting to revisit the recipe for Petticoat Tails, there is plenty of more specific direction online.

It’s a simple recipe - easy enough for a child to handle - although as an adult, I found that shaping the dough into a log proved just a bit challenging. Maybe I haven’t kept up on my modeling clay skills.

Considering this artifact a little further, I got curious as to the source of the name and recipe. Petticoat Tails is a shortbread cookie. The name always conjured up images of Colonial America for me. Not true. The origins appear to be French. “An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language,” by John Jamieson, D.D., (MDCCCXXV) offer some clues to the the name:

"PETTICOAT TAILS, the name given to a species of cake baked with butter, used as tea bread ...

"For Petticoat tails, take the same proportion of butter as for Short Bread," &c. Collection of Receipts, p. 3 ...

"The general idea is, that this kind of cake is denominated from its resemblance to a section of a petticoat. For a circular cake, when a smaller circle has been taken out of the middle, is divided into eight quarters. But a literary friend has suggested that the term has probably a Fr. origin, q. petit gasleau, a little cake ...

"The old form of this word is petit gastel. There is another similar term, Petit-cote, which is the name of a kind of biscuit or cake, baked for the purpose of being eaten with wine. It is shaped somewhat in a triangular form; and it has been supposed that it receives the name, from the thin or small side being dipped in the wine."

Petticoat Tails dipped in wine? My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Hall never mentioned that. But, they are sweet and buttery, and if you indulge in a few, you might just find yourself fondly reminiscing about spelling bees, recess, school assemblies and Snoopy lunchboxes.

©2010 T.W. Barritt all Rights Reserved