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This was a banner year for my mother's butternut squashes. At 87, she harvested nearly 100 pounds of classic Waltham Butternuts, probably a pound for every year under her belt, in fact. She remembered the first year she grew them, "just after the war" when the variety was new. "Dad and I had Aunt Nan and Uncle Oliver over for dinner and I made butternut squash from the garden and it was the best squash any of us had ever had." It's still a dependably great squash for a side dish or especially for a pie like this:
I use a deep Pyrex dish (9 1/2 X 2)
Pie Crust
- 1 1/2 cup flour
- 1 stick butter
- pinch salt
- 4 T ice water
Butternut Maple Filling
- About 3 cups cooked Butternut Squash. Since I always have the wood cookstove going in winter, I simply roast it in the oven (after splitting it and scooping out the seeds). You could always cook it on top of the stove by boiling or steaming, then draining the excess water.
- 1/2 Cup Maple Syrup
- 3/4 Cup Heavy Cream
- 3-4 Eggs (3 X Large or 4 Large)
A food processor makes this pretty easy.
Put the flour and salt in the food processor's work bowl, cut up butter into pieces, pulse 'til disbursed. Add ice water 1 tablespoon at a time. Pulse until mixture holds together. Don't overmix. Roll out between pieces of parchment or wax paper and center on a pie plate. Remove top piece of paper, invert, and carefully place into pie plate. Roll the extra crust and flute.
Puree the Butternut Squash in the food processor. With the processor still going, add the maple syrup, then the eggs, then the cream. Don't overmix. Pour into pie crust. Bake in hot oven (425) for about 15 minutes, then reduce to 350 for another 40 minutes. (Since I make our pies in the wood cookstove, I'm never too rigid about times and temps....."cook 'til done" as the old recipes used to say....)
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