Nutty vegetable pie topped with coquina squash mash

Oh, poor old me has been suffering from a bad cold since Sunday evening. Now I forced myself to the computer with a hot blackcurrant juice, as being active does make you feel slightly better. No doubt that I will soon be returning to bed to rest. However I wanted to post this recipe for a pie that I made a while ago. At the moment I don't have much strength for cooking. My favourite meal, when I'm sick, is spaghetti with little butter, salt and grated cheese. That's the glamorous food I'm planning to eat today as well. It's just suitably tasteless, but keeps you going.

So, quite the contrary this recipe is full of flavour. It's for a lentil, black bean and hazelnut pie with roasted coquina squash top. It really oozes autumn and warms you up on a chillier day.

Please have a look how easy it is to make.

1 coquina squash

Olive oil for roasting

½ tsp salt

1 cup breadcrumbs

Peel the coquina squash, remove the seeds and cut to wedges. Brush the wedges with olive oil and roast at 180-200C until soft with roasting marks. Mash the squash and season it with salt. I added breadcrumbs, as the squash mash can be fairly liquid, more so than a potato mash would be. So the breadcrumbs help to make it a sturdy top layer for this pie.

150 g hazelnuts

Cut the hazelnuts in half or into smaller crumbs and toast them in the oven.

1 cup green lentils

1 mushroom stock cube

Rinse the lentils and boil them in water with the mushroom stock cube until fully cooked.

240 g / 1 can black beans

3 shallots

3 garlic cloves

Olive oil for frying

1 cup dry cider

2 bay leaves

2 tbsp vegetable stock powder or two vegetable stock cubes

1 tbsp miso

Salt and pepper to taste

Chop the shallots and garlic finely and start cooking them in olive oil. Once the shallots and garlic are cooked soft, add the beans, cooked and drained lentils and toasted hazelnuts into the pan.

Cook for a couple of minutes and then add the cider and season with bay leaves, vegetable stock powder, miso, salt and pepper. Also add the miso to taste.

Let the mix simmer slowly for about 15 minutes. Then remove the bay leaves and layer the lentil mix into ramekins or a large oven dish.

Spread the squash mash on the top and bake the pie at 180C for about 40 minutes.

Enjoy your autumn pie!

Your VegHog