Turban squash

Turban squash — also called Turk's turban or turban gourd — is the flamboyant, top-heavy winter squash of Cucurbita maxima whose blossom end swells into a bulging, brightly striped cap that sits on the fruit like the folded headdress it is named for. Bred as much for the harvest table and the mantelpiece as for the pot, it is ornamental yet genuinely edible: beneath the hard, warty rind is mild, sweet, faintly nutty orange flesh in the buttercup mould. In its native French kitchen the whole shell is hollowed and used as a soup tureen — the turban served en potiron — as well as roasted, mashed and simmered like any dense keeping squash.