Finally, time for some squash

I found my camera cord! Thank goodness. I tried cleaning the house and when that didn't work, I just randomly started poking around in the few boxes that I have yet to unpack and lo and behold, there it was.

The next few posts will be about the glory that is the butternut squash. I'm totally enamored of it lately. I keep getting them in my CSA each week, and the more of them I get, the more I love them. Here's my first venture into butternut squash land - in true Lena fashion - pie.

I got this recipe from The Dinner Diaries: Raising Whole Wheat Kids in a White Bread World by Betsy Block. Zack made fun of me for reading a book about raising kids, but I prefer to think of it as a book about cooking healthy. There are recipes in it! And I'm trying to be healthy. Don't mock.

1 pie crust
1 Tbs vegetable oil
1 small butternut squash (about 2 pounds)
1/2 cup cream
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp allspice (a personal note - I just shook in a bunch of "pumpkin pie spice." I figured that was the same.
1/8 tsp salt
3 large eggs, room temperature

I had pie dough leftover from my apple tart from Rosh Hashanah (yeah, this was a while ago). I guess technically it was tart dough, but whatever. It's what I had. You can read about it here.

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Halve your squash and scoop out the seeds and stringy bits. Line a baking pan with foil and put the squash in the pan, cut side up. Rub with oil and bake until it's soft, about an hour.


2. Prebake your pie crust - for about 5-8 minutes. You can do it while you bake your squash. I didn't weight mine down and it went all crazy. So, line your crust with foil and weight it down with dried beans or pie weights or something.

3. Turn your oven down to 375. Cool your squash a bit and scoop out the flesh into a food processor or blender or just a big bowl if you want. Add the cream (I accidentally added 3/4 of a cup instead of 1/2. It tasted good to me in the end, so yay!), sugar, spices and eggs. Pulse it in your food processor or just mash it a lot until it's all smooth.

4. Pour it into the pie shell (take out the foil/weights first) and bake until the filling is set, about 40-45 minutes. I made a few little squash custards too - I just poured some filling into little ramekins and baked them along side the pie.


Aren't they cute? Here's one up close.


The pie was good too. I served it with whipped cream and everybody liked it. It's kind of like pumpkin pie. Just tell people that it is if they don't like the sound of squash pie.