Naguri is a hybrid Japanese Kabocha squash. The somewhat flattened globe-shaped fruit is dark green with pale green stripes and HUGE seeds and weighs about 3 lbs. It has a vivid orange flesh, somewhat reminiscent of, but stronger in flavour than butternut squash.

Awful to peel, but worth the trouble.

I don't like banging things on counter tops because it makes everything jump, so I put a cutting board on the floor and broke it in half using a large cleaver ordinarily reserved for whacking coconuts. A machette would have worked better, but I don't have one...yet. Still, the cleaver worked fairly well to cut it further into two-inch strips, even if they were a little irregular. But it took two of us ten minutes to peel the squash using long kitchen knives. I tried a paring knife and gave up.

As this was the first time we had cooked naguri, we decided to roast cubes of it in a mixture of butter and olive oil, seasoned only with salt and pepper to sample its flavour and texture.

It was really quite delicious. This particular one was slightly sweeter than butternut squash, a bit more fibrous (it called for lots of butter), and the colour was magnificent. It would make a very good soup.

So that was my big food adventure yesterday.

Hm. /me thinks about Naguri squash with kimchi.

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