This year I plan to grow other favourites like butternut squash and my all time favourite squash the Moschata variety Muscade pictured below.
Charlotte of The Great Big Vegetable Challenge has asked for squash recipes for her Great Big Squash Up event. This is a Greek inspired pumpkin pie which is delicious to eat and impressive to serve.
You will need:
Enough filo pastry (my tin takes a pack of ready made frozen Jus rol, 6 sheets folded double)
250ml Olive oil
150g onion, peeled and sliced into very thin rings
1.2 kg pumpkin flesh, coarsely grated
2 tsps. salt
2 flat tablespoons of sugar
Freshly ground black pepper
2 or more tablespoons semolina (to soak up excess moisture)
190g pack Cheddar Cheezly (animal eaters might substitute Feta cheese here, but I can't recommend that.)
Defrost Filo pastry
Heat oven to 200C.
Fry the onion in 4 tbsp. of oil over a gentle heat until soft without browning. Add the pumpkin and turn the heat up a bit. Stir and fry for at least ten minutes until the pumpkin is soft. If it appears soft before this keep cooking anyway, the moisture content needs to be reduced.
Sprinkle in the semolina, sugar, salt and pepper to taste and stir well to remove any lumps. Allow to cool then add the finely cubed Cheezly. Stir to mix.
Oil a pan (9x9 inches, 1.5 inches deep)
Put two folded layers of filo in the base, brushing with oil between each layer. The pastry will come up the sides of the pan, this is good.
Put one half of the pumpkin mixture into the pan and cover with another two double layers of filo, oiled as before.
Put the rest of the pumpkin mixture on top. If you have more sheets of filo you can divide the pumpkin into more portions and make more layers.
Cover the top of the pumpkin with the last two folded sheets of pastry and use a blunt knife to tuck the overhanging edges down the inside of the edge of the pan. Brush all over the top with more oil, then carefully cut through just the top layer of the pie to make diamond shaped lozenges. This will help with serving.
Bake for 45 minutes until golden brown. Serve hot or warm, enough for 6 as a main course.
7 comments:
Wow wow wow - that looks superb.
We have printed it off and will be trying it out.
Will be telling all about your wonderful blog and recipe tomorrow.
Thank you very much!
You're very welcome. I noticed I'd forgotten to add the pepper in the instructions but you just chuck it into the pumpkin mix when the salt goes in, and I expect you would have guessed that :)
This is a recipe I'm going to have to try - it would be superb for a Halloween Party! I love growing different Squash varieties - Marina di Chioggia was my favourite from last year - sweet, dense and smooth!
Celia
PS lucky you having a harvest of sweet chestnuts!!!! have you tried squash with chestnuts?
Came to you via Great big Veggies site - this looks like a good recipe for me to try too.
Pete
Wow, what a fabulous array of squashes!
Pumpkin and squashes are pretty much out of season here now, but I'll put this recipe on the list for later in the year...
Thanks Celia - my challenge for this year is butternut, it might be ubiquitous but I find it really hard to get right and have produced precisely one fruit from about 10 vines over the years. That year's chestnuts were spectacular - I never done it but can't decide whether they would be best in a sweet or savoury pumpkin pie.
Good luck, Pete, nice to see you.
AFOS - the great thing about squashes is that properly ripened and stored they will hang on even into May which is a great help for the smallholder's hungry gap. But I didn't get that right last year and so we're also waiting for the next harvest (or a trip to Waitrose!) Thanks for coming by.
I just found your blog this morning while searching for kolokithopita recipes. I immediately found your Boston style aduki beans AND "tako"yaki.
wow. greetings my soul sister/brother...thanks for the inspiration
i'm off to bake some aduki, and fire up the takoyaki pan
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