The Great Squash Cook-Off

Gothamist has a thing for cook-offs. There’s something about the sincerity of it all—just a bunch of honest folk sharing their love for chili, casseroles or, in the case of Sunday’s event, winter squash.

This weekend’s Great Squash Cook-Off drew twenty amateur cooks to Park Slope’s V-Spot restaurant to compete before a panel of local food authorities (among them KalaLea of organic café and wine bar Smooch, Vikas Khanna of Tamarind and Isa Chandra Moskowitz, author of “Vegan With a Vengeance” ).

The mostly local group began crowding the submission table, crowded itself with crock pots of every stripe, at 3:30 on Sunday to get a first look at entries like Winter Squash Risotto, Butternut Persimmon Pudding with maple syrup, cinnamon and ginger, and Winter Squash Soup. Despite Gothamist’s best efforts to stir up some squash based rivalry, the competition was largely friendly—as one guest put it, “not enough protein for aggression.” That it was Superbowl Sunday hadn’t, it seemed, weighed heavily on this crowd or on its organizer, Ameet Maturu who in a subversive move, played Monday Night Football’s ‘Heavy Action’ theme as he described the judges’ criteria.

Split into three rounds—soups and appetizers, entrees and desserts—judges based their decisions on taste, presentation, creative use of ingredients and ease of preparation. They squeezed into a booth happily feasting away on course after course of mushy, generally orange, goodness as we peered sadly on, clutching our meager shot glass-sized portions.