Butternut Bake

This is my take on a Simon Rimmer recipe I saw online recently for a roast squash bake; it looked OK but I thought it had far too much cheese, not enough onion and nowhere near enough garlic for our taste; oh, and I also thought the recipe was poorly written, but apart from all that it was fine!

This dish is one of those where the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. It doesn’t look much when it’s assembled and you’re just about to put it in the oven, but once it’s cooked all the flavours and textures come together; it smells wonderful while it’s cooking and it tastes even better.

1 small butternut squash

1 tbsp olive oil

2 red onions, peeled and cut into eighths through the root

5 cloves garlic

6 tsp Sacla Organic pesto

8 sun-dried tomato halves in oil from a jar

125g soft goats’ cheese

1egg

2tbsp crème fraiche

2tbsp grated parmesan-style cheese

Peel and chop the squash into chunks, discarding the seeds; put the chunks into a large baking tray, pour the oil over and mix the whole lot together with your hands. Heat the oven to 200C and put the tray in for 20 mins. Take the tray out of the oven, add the red onion wedges and the unpeeled garlic cloves, then put it back in the oven for another 20 minutes until the squash is tender and the onions are cooked and lightly caramelised.

Put the cooked squash into an ovenproof dish followed by the onion and the garlic, which you need to squeeze out of its papery case. Put teaspoonfuls of the pesto over the squash and onions then lay the tomato halves over the top.

Whisk together the goats’ cheese, egg and crème fraiche and spoon it over the vegetables. Scatter the ‘parmesan’ over the top and pop it in the oven at 200C for 20 mins until golden and bubbling.

I served it with a simple tomato and onion salad (we’re knee-deep in toms at the moment; they’re ripening faster than we can eat them!)

Serves 2