Squash Mac & Cheese

This dish is perfectly autumnal, soothing and feels like a big embrace as darker evenings come earlier. I paired it with some beautiful pork and leek sausages from my butchers, but it’ll also be a lovely match with a good lamb chop or a dish all on its own – in which case, add more mushrooms.  

Ingredients

• 300g short pasta

• ½ squash or pumpkin, deseeded and scored

• 3 chestnut mushrooms, sliced

• A good handful of fresh sage, leaves only

• 100g grated parmesan

• 100g coarsely grated extra mature cheddar

• A good knob of butter

• Rapeseed oil

• Salt and pepper

Method

• Heat the oven to 200C, and when ready, put in the squash - flesh side up - for 40mins or until easily pierceable with a spoon.

• Gently melt the butter with a tablespoon of oil in a large pan until foaming and near to brown, adding in the sage leaves to slowly infuse the fats. When they’re soft and have darkened, turn off the heat but leave everything in the pan to further infuse.

• In a separate hot pan, add in a tablespoon of oil and fry off the mushrooms. The aim here is to get colour fast, so we get as much of that delicious mushroomy flavour to the front. Once browned and cooked, set aside. Tip: if they have shrivelled and started to release water, they’re overcooked.

• Heat a large saucepan of salted water, and when boiling, cook pasta until al dente. Reserve a cup of the starchy water.

• Before adding the pasta to the sage butter, pick out and set aside a few leaves that have crisped up, doing the same with some pretty mushroom slices. Coat the cooked pasta in the butter, also adding in the remaining mushrooms.

• When the squash is cooked, spoon the flesh into a blender, along with 2/3 of the cheeses, the pasta water, lots of freshly ground black pepper and just a small sprinkling of salt. Whizz up to create a smooth sauce.

• Pour this sauce over the pasta and stir, making sure everything is coated evenly with no bare side of pasta in sight.

• Dish this into a suitably deep oven dish (I used a loaf tin), scattering the remaining cheeses all over the top and finishing by arranging the crispy sage leaves and browned mushroom over that.

• Put in the oven for 30mins, checking there is that compulsory chewy, cheesy crust in places before taking out.