View City Harvest's amazing photos of the great pumpkin!
The story is truly a culinary fairy tale: magical seeds, a giant pumpkin and fairy godfathers (read: chefs). But this pumpkin will be transformed into more than just a carriage for the needy. This morning, at Great Performances, ten of New York City’s top chefs took a chainsaw to an 1,426 pound pumpkin, that had been donated to the hunger organization City Harvest by farmer Andy Wolf of Little Valley, New York. Each chef took between 50 and 100 pounds of the pumpkin and will create a unique dish to donate to City Harvest to help feed the hungry in New York City.
Shockingly enough, the 1,426 pound pumpkin is NOT the largest pumpkin ever; that prize went to an 1,810.5 pound pumpkin in Minnesota this October. Andy Wolf’s pumpkin came in fourth this year among the New York Giant Pumpkin Grower’s Association. It then traveled to Central Park for their annual Pumpkin Festival. There the pumpkin was “rescued,” when Wolf chose to donate the pumpkin to City Harvest.
The chefs were thrilled with the size (and novelty) of the pumpkin when they arrived at Great Performances this morning. Chefs Marc Spooner and Matthew Riznyk of Great Performances cut the first piece and then turned over the mini-chainsaw to Francois Payard of Francois Payard Bakery who slowly made his way through the rest.
The blade of the small saw was too short to slice all the way through the meat of the pumpkin. At times it took three chefs to rip a slice off of the frame of the pumpkin and most of the white chef coats were splattered with orange pumpkin by the time each had their slice. City Harvest employees were on hand to make sure every seed was saved for the farmer as the seeds are very valuable for next year’s crop of giant pumpkins.
Pumpkins raised for their size are not traditionally bred for flavor. Cooking a pumpkin like this will be an experiment, many of the chefs admitted. Wayne Harley Brachman of Porterhouse Restaurant predicted that the pumpkin would be a bit more watery than most, and would reduce by half when cooked. For the pumpkin bread pudding he will create for 50 people, he predicted he would need about 15 pounds of pumpkin.
Most of the chefs planned to create dessert dishes out of their pumpkin. Kerry Heffernan of SouthGate will base his dish on a roasted squash flan served at their restaurant. He is curious to see how this pumpkin compares to the blend of squash in the custard dish. Marc Aumont of The Modern was excited for his caramel mousse and pumpkin confit.
Great Performances’ Marc Spooner will be making two dishes—one sweet, one savory—to play on the flavor profile of the pumpkin. Check here for his recipes for a Pumpkin Ginger Soup and classic Pumpkin Pie.
View City Harvest's amazing photos of the great pumpkin!
Photo credit: Vincent Cham