Butternut Squash & Red Onion Pasty

My plate of squash pastys!

Coming from the very lovely, south West I have a certain fondness of pasties. I would also like to point out here I am not a politician trying to declare my love of the pasty to gain common ground with the poor British citizen.  Over the years it has been largely argued where the actual location of the pasty birth was, some say Cornwall, some say Devon, and being a Devon girl, I like to also believe it is Devon!

To make a traditional pasty, you don’t pre-cook the filling; you encase it in pastry and let the filling steam cook. I however have kind of cheated. Naughty, naughty! Using Butternut Squash as my main ingredient, I worried about how well the squash would soften, so cooked up my filling first.

All the pasty mix cooking away.

Ingredients:

2 small red onions, slice

1 butternut squash, cut into small cubes

A sprinkle of cracked black pepper, rosemary, and chilli

Freshly chopped Basil

For the pastry:

150g plain flour

50g sunflower spread

A few teaspoons of cold water

1 Free-range egg

A pinch of slat

To start I places the chopped onions in the pan, browned for a few mins and seasoned with a few different herbs. After that’s I added the cubed butternut squash in to the mix, added a little bit of water so the food didn’t dry out and left to cook away slowly on a low heat.

Whilst waiting for the mix to cook, I started to make the pastry. I tried the best I possibly could to remember the techniques I was taught in high school, but something makes me think I was a better pastry-maker at 15 years old. Sigh.

I sifted the flour into a bowl and added in the cubes of sunflower spread (I don’t like butter) and rubbed the mix through my fingertips until my flour looked like breadcrumbs. I then added my water in using a knife until the mix resembled some kind of dough that held together.  The next stage is wrapping up the dough in cling film and letting it rest for about 20 mins in the fridge. Giving me enough time to get around to turning the oven on, all the way up to 200 degrees.

The next bit was the bit that made me realise I needed more dough! So perhaps anyone following my recipe should double up the mix! So, to forming the pasty! This is just a case of rolling out the dough, placing two heaped spoons of butternut squash yumminess on each bit of pastry (this is a good time to grate some cheese over the mix if you want), roll out and use a fork around the edge to press down, creating a seal.  Place in the oven for 20-25 mins and viola! SQUASH PASTIES ARE MADE!!

Showing off the filling. 

What I think: Butternut Squash is easily one of my favourite vegetables! So I racked my brains and decided to come up with this little concoction. I’ve been planning on making it for a while now, and had a day off so finally did it. It wasn’t really as time consuming as I thought it would be. The only thing that was a hassle was chopping up the squash. So time consuming!

I think it was the right thing to pre-cook the veggies as it gave the squash some time to soften up. The only fault would have been the amount of pastry I made. I think I had enough mix left to fill two more pasties, so I’ll have to blitz that up and eat it as soup. Waste not, want not!

They did taste really good and I’m going to be making them again at some point, but I may give something like med-veg pasties ago!