Kabocha squash lends itself well to grain-free baking because it is so starchy. My recipes may require no flour at all when the squash is very starchy.
As you may have noticed, I love using kabocha squash for eating and baking and this time of year they are plentiful and fun!
In this recipe I used a little coconut flour, but if you get a very starchy squash you may be able to make the batter without it. I added some here because the squash I cooked was not as starchy as usual.
Kabocha squash has a very nice nutrition profile – grouped in with all the winter squashes like butternut squash. It is high in vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol), thiamin, niacin, vitamin B6, folate,calcium and magnesium, and is a very good source of vitamin A, vitamin C, potassium and manganese.
The vitamin A content in vegetables is actually a measure of beta carotene, which has to be converted to vitamin A in the body. Some people have trouble converting beta carotene to vitamin A so this is not a good measure of how much vitamin A you are getting. Children also may not be good converters. It is best to get vitamin A from animal products like dairy, butter and meat, but beta carotene and all the carotinoids are excellent anti-oxidants and should be eaten for that reason.
Winter squash is a vegetable that might be especially important for us to purchase organic. Recent agricultural trials have shown that winter squash can be an effective intercrop for use in remediation of contaminated soils. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), including pyrene, fluoranthene, chrysene, benzo(a)anthracene and benzo(a)pyrene are unwanted contaminants. PAHs are among the contaminants that can be effectively pulled up out of the soil by winter squash plants. When winter squash is planted as a food crop (as opposed to a non-food crop that is being planted between food crop seasons to help improve soil quality), the farmer’s goal is definitely not to transfer soil contaminants like PAHs up into the food. But some of that transfer seems likely to happen, given the effectiveness of winter squash in mobilizing contaminants like PAHs from the soil. For this reason, you may want to make a special point of purchasing certified organic winter squash. Soils used for the growing of in certified organic foods are far less likely to contain undesirable levels of contaminants like PAHs.
However, winter squash is number 22 (continuing after the dirty dozen) from EWG so I am not sure about how critical it is to buy organic. It can get costly when you eat a lot of it as they are heavy. But if they are contaminated I certainly do not want to eat them….
What do you think about this? Leave a comment and let me know! And let me know how you like the cookies!
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