"Claude" writes:
Thanks Jils. What I meant was I didn't find much on Google that told me
what a gramma is. Certainly found a few recipes but nothing that told me
exactly what type of pumpkin it is esp if it is a butternut or not. From
the replies I've received and talking to my family it now seems clear that
it is not a butternut but a particular variety of pumpkin that is sweet and
usually (or else my mum only bought the curved ones) horse-shoe shaped. My
mum's recipe was to boil the gramma in well-sweetened water with a dash of
lemon and then mash and put in the pie shell. Only problem I've got now is
where do I buy a gramma in Melbourne???

You're correct: a gramma is not a butternut pumpkin. But at a pinch, you
could substitute a butternut pumpkin or a Qld blue, for gramma. Gramma
probably isn't any sweeter than either of these pumpkins, it's the sugar
that the cook adds that makes it sweet! Gramma is more fibrous than most
pumpkin, very like the spongy flesh of a fully mature butternut.

I'm not sure about grammas necessarily being thin with a bulbous end like
a stretched butternut. Sometimes Coles has pieces of gramma on sale, the
flesh is redder than butternut, and the pieces wedge-shaped so it looks
like they came from something shaped like Cinderella's pumpkin (e.g., like
a large Qld blue or some Halloween variety). Its skin colour is orange,
the flesh is almost red.

Gramma pie is going to taste similar to pumpkin pie. A gramma + apricot
filling is nice, with ice-cream.
--
John Savage (my news address is not valid for email)