Le Petit Potimarron

Thanks to darling Clothilde, I discovered a new vegetable…the potimarron (pronounced poe-tee-mare-ON)!  I hightailed it across the street to the Place Monge market and my favorite produce vendors, Michelle et Bernard, who like proud parents handed me their last potimarron, just as the market was closing. It wasn’t gorgeous like Clothilde’s but it was pretty darn cute. I brought it home and nestled it among my fruit until I could decide the perfect thing to make with it.

Potimarron is a combination of potiron (pumpkin) and marron (chestnut) and probably not so coincidentally, it tastes like pumking and chestnut. I of course googled “potimarron” and the first few hundred listings were all in French which does me no good, so I clicked on the page 12 link thinking someone in the US or UK had to have written something, anything about this, and voila, one listing in English!  Whew! Here’s what I found:

It hails from Japan and the most popular variety is called Hokkaïdo. They usually grow to about 2-3 pounds and are a delicious source of vitamins A, B, C, D, E, amino acids, unsaturated fatty acids, starch, natural sugars and carotene. Quelle surprise!  The potimarron can be stored in a dry cellar for months and it will not only stay fresh, it will actually increase in sweetness and vitamin content.  Where have you been all my life, little potimarron?!

Another enchanting tidbit I found was the obligatory Potimarron Festival!  Why not?  We have the artichoke festival, complete with Artichoke Queen (Marilyn Monroe was crowned Castrovilles first Artichoke Queen back in 1948!), and the infamous Gilroy Garlic Festival (you definitely know when you are near Gilroy!), so of course there would be a Potimarron Festival! 

This little squash is heralded every September in Lunéville, France which is in the eastern part of France near Nancy and Strasbourg in the Lorraine region. “Although the potimarron is the guest of honour, the day is a celebration of home growers, small farmers and everything that grows in the garden.”

Come September if you are so inclined to trek out to Lunéville to pay homage to this regal squash, here are the details:

Contact Details:
September 2005
Lunéville Tourist Office
Fax: +33 (0) 3 83 73 57 95
Phone: +33 (0) 3 83 74 06 55
Address: Aile Sud du Château, 54300 Lunéville
Directions: Take the A31 towards Strasbourg.

The other night Pierre and I were trying to decide what to make for dinner. I wanted to make my pressure cooker chicken soup as the ingredients had been in the fridge so long they were greeting me when I opened the door.  Pierre suggested making potimarron chicken soup!  Brilliant. So we set about prepping the vegetables with great gusto when I said, “what’s that smell?” Yep, a little too long in the fridge. We quickly realized it was the chicken so we proceeded with our pressure-cooker potimarron soup, sans poulet. I chopped while Pierre browned… It doesn’t get much easier than this…

Velouté du Potimarron

3 carrots (peeled & sliced crosswise in 1/2 inch slices)
4 celery stalks (sliced crosswise in 1/2 inch slices)
6 baby potatoes (peeled, cut in half or 1/4s depending on size.  keep uniform size with the carrots/celery)
1 potimarron (peeled, seeded, & cut into chunks keeping a uniform size)
olive oil, salt & pepper
crème fraîche (for garnish)
   
1. brown the carrots, celery and potatoes separately in same pan adding olive oil as needed and set aside. (you can do this directly in the pressure cooker to save washing a pan but I prefer to brown them in a sauté pan)
2. sprinkle a few tablespoons of brown sugar over the potimarron chunks and brown.
3. put all vegetables back into the pressure cooker and add about 4 cups water (or however much water you want. it depends on the size of your pressure cooker & how much soup you want to make).
4. add salt (preferably sea salt!) and pepper.
5. cook per your pressure cooker instructions.
6. puree soup and serve with a dollop of crème fraîche on top.
   
I had this soup the other night at the très cool Café Burq (6 rue Burq, 18th, 01 42 52 81 27) near Montmartre and they served it with tiny croutons and a swirl of pesto. Magnifique!

Bon appetite!

Comments

[Giao]

Very interesting! I somehow think your soup was for the better sans poulet. =)

[Lisa]

I've been buying those hunks of potiron they sell the the markets, and finding they don't have much taste. Does the potimarron taste anything like the butternut or acorn squashes of our home? Last night I made a little gratin of squash with sauteed apples and onions, topped with parmesan and breadcrumbs. It was good, but not great. The squash's flesh was kind of weird, reddish and stringy almost like spaghetti squash, instead of creamy.

[Amy]

I just stumbled across the potimarron as well, but at our hyper-marche in the Loire Valley. I couldn't find pumpkin for my favorite pumpkin-walnut muffins, so used the potimarron instead. (They turned out delicious!)

Thanks for the results of your potimarron research! I linked to this article on my blog so that my readers could benefit from it as well.

Bon appetit!
Amy

[Guillemette Cox]

Hi
Thanks for your brilliant web site
I am a potimarron fan and introducing my friends here in England to it We buy it from most markets when we are in France in the Lot (46) or in Paris but to my great chagrin I have never seen any in England .
I am going to try to grow some here in England (Oxford) and in France I hope I'll get a huge crop next year!
Guillemette Cox

[chad henry]

Glad to see this article. I bought some seeds from somebody online and was expecting to see a much larger vegetable, but the two I managed to grow are about the size of the one in your picture.

chad

[veronica mareschal]

OK! for the potimarron soup but I've had some delicious "gratin de potimarron" that I would like to make.
The dilema is that there are two schools for preparing the potimarron=> some vapeur cook it to start while others cook it cut in half in the ovenbefore adding egg, cream,nutmeg and cheese. Any feedback on that?

[cucina testa rossa]

hi veronica! i prefer to roast them in the oven as it give the pumpkin a much deeper flavor when it is caramelized :) i usually do that with all my vegetables before i make soup - parsnip, carrot, butternut squash, etc... hope this helps! bon appetit, laura

[Carol S]

Hello. I was watching one of the cooking shows & saw they had made Potimarron Bread. ? Which show? I do not recall. I did manage to copy the ingredients, but not the directions of what to do with them. Would you mind doing some research please,& see what you come up with? I only have computer acess at the library.
Following are the ingredients:
1-2 lb squash
1/4 cup milk
2 cup flour
1/tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 3oz cream cheese - soft
1/4 cup butter - soft
1 & 1/4 cup brown sugar - packed
2 eggs
1 Tbs maple or white sugar
1/2 tsp sage
1/4 tsp course salt (or) 1/2 tsp table salt
1 reciepe squash butter ( I do not recall if there was a receipe for this ??)

Your squash soup sounds good. It reminds me of being in Haiti, where they made a hot vegtable pumpkin soup. It had a touch of cloves in it, which made for an interesting flavor. I occassionally make it in the Winter time. Is one of my farvorites.

thank you for your time.