NIGEL SLATER’S BUTTERNUT SQUASH PIE

I am a huge fan of Nigel Slater and I loved his BBC series Simple Cooking. Each week had a different theme and one week’s theme was ‘soft and crisp’ where he talked about the beauty of contrasting textures. To demonstrate a dish with a soft centre encased in crispy casing, he made a butternut squash pie. It looked so delicious and yet so easy, I thought I’d test it out myself.

Ingredients
2 large or 3 medium butternut squashes
2 sheets of Puff pastry
Rapeseed oil
1 knob of butter
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
2 tbsp grated parmesan
1 beaten egg for egg wash

Preheat the oven to 200°C, (180°C Fan), 400°F, gas mark 6. Then peel, de-seed and chop the butternut squashes into equal size chunks. If you want to save time, you don’t really need to be too pedantic about peeling it. It all goes soft in the oven anyway.

Add a good glug of rapeseed oil (you could also use groundnut oil) to a roasting tin and add the chopped butternut squash. Top with a few knobs of butter and sprinkle with some ground cinnamon, freshly grated nutmeg, sea salt and pepper.

Mix together then place in the oven for approx 20-30 minutes until the butternut squash is soft.

Then mash the squash in the pan.

For the crispiness, use puff pastry. Unroll a ready rolled roll of puff pastry and add the roasted butternut squash, leaving an inch around the edge.

Brush the edges with egg wash.

Grate some parmesan over the top.

Lay another layer of pastry on top of the butternut squash and press the edges round very firmly to seal.

Two or three slits on the top of the pasty will let the steam out.

Brush with some egg wash then place into the oven for approx 20 minutes or until golden brown on top.

Serve with a simple salad.

This is an amazing dish. It is unbelievably easy to make and tastes incredible. Sweet, soft, crunchy and more than anything…comforting. Its like a big hug!