It would have been perfect timing for me to post up this recipe last week. The pumpkin would have been a shoe-in for Halloween and last month’s Cheese, Please! theme was hard sheep’s cheese. But last week saw me on a remote sheep farm in the Peak District with inadequate Wi-Fi, trying not to shout at to entertain two small boisterous children and fashion firelighters from old copies of the Farmer’s Guardian. It was a remote and beautiful place and if I ever have a mid-life crisis and decide to become a cheese-maker, I think I will move there and make a nice mountain sheep’s cheese.
But reality bites and here I am back in the Big Smoke, with only a piece of Whitmore Ewe’s Cheese as a memento (oh – and a pair of very warm fleecy slippers). I would love to claim creative rights for this recipe but I actually saw it in November’s Sainsbury’s magazine. The original recipe called for pecorino and I bravely road-tested the recipe on a foodie Italian friend. It passed muster and so here it is, this time made with Whitmore Ewe’s Cheese. Made by the Staffordshire Organic Cheese Company, it’s a hard unpasteurised ewe’s milk cheese, so makes a perfect substitute for the pecorino. If you like egg custard, you’ll like this; it has a sweet and slightly cheesy flavour and is as nice cold as warm. This is only the second time I have made pastry from scratch so be gentle with me, dear reader.
Ingredients
200g plain flour
1 tbsp finely grated sheep’s cheese
100g cold unsalted butter, diced
1 large egg yolk
750g peeled and deseeded pumpkin or squash
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
150ml double cream
A generous grating of nutmeg
1 tsp light brown soft sugar
3 tbsp grated pecorino or similar sheep’s cheese
10 sage leaves
A little butter, for frying
First make the pastry (gulp). Tip the flour, 1 tbsp of cheese and butter into a food processor and whiz to form crumbs. Add the egg yolk, a pinch of salt and 1 tablespoon iced water. Pulse the mixture until it comes together (you may need to add a little more water). Chill the pastry in clingfilm in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Chop the pumpkin into small pieces. I used a harlequin squash; how pretty is this for a vegetable?!
Steam the pumpkin in a steamer until tender.
Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface and line a 23cm-diameter tin (3cm deep). Press the pastry down into the base and chill for a further 30 minutes.
Pre-heat the oven to 200˚C / 180˚C fan-assisted / Gas Mark 6. Whiz the steamed pumpkin in a processor until smooth then tip it into a bowl to cool.
Scrunch up a square of baking paper, open it out again and put it into the tart case so it lines the pastry. Tip in baking beans (I used dried chickpeas) and bake the tart case, on a tray, for 20 minutes.
Remove the paper and beans, and bake for a further five minutes. Leave to cool (and panic about all the holes and lumpy bits you spot). Turn down the oven to 190˚C / 170˚C fan-assisted / Gas Mark 5.
Mix the pumpkin purée with the eggs, cream, nutmeg, sugar, grated cheese and season. Fill the tart case with the mixture and bake for a further 35-40 minutes or until just set.
Fry the sage leaves in a little hot butter with a pinch of salt until just crisp.
Serve the tart barely warm, topped with the sage leaves and shavings of cheese.
Fromage Homage 
This is for sure going on the menu for next week! Love the mix of pumpkin and cheese 🙂
Let me know how it goes! I was a bit daunted by all the different stages (well, mainly the pastry…) but it turned out well and my guests couldn’t get enough.
Will do! I usually just go with my own pastry recipe – tried and tested and has never let me down 🙂
This looks delicious, we have been obsessed with the squash and sage combination this year!
It’s a lovely combination, isn’t it? And goes well with this slightly salty sheep’s cheese. A great way to use all those seasonal squashes too – I’d been staring at my pretty squash for ages, wondering what to do with it.
If you need something different to do with other squash we stuffed some with a sausage and fennel combo recently which was pretty nice!
They are so pretty, it’s a challenge not to buy several every week at the farmers market!
Looks delicious!
It’s very moreish!
This sounds really good – although the idea of blind baking pastry terrifies me. If I get brave enough, it’s a recipe I’ll be trying soon!
If I can do it, anyone can! Mine looked a bit bumpy and puffy in places when it came out of the oven but as long as there’s no holes in, the filling will push down and cover up the worst of it 😉
Lovely combo – sage and cheese (except possibly in Sage Derby). And the Yorkshire view is stunning.
I tried the Fowlers Sage Derby, which just has a sprinkling through the middle – that was nice. The green marbly-looking ones scare me a bit. It was stunning, simply lovely, with hares running along the walls (the Derbyshire bit here though).
Sorry, Derbyshire, of course. My bad. Still lovely though.
This looks really lovely and I was about to make individual mushroom and Stilton tarts for my blog to appease vegetarians at Thanksgiving – I have percorino in my fridge so will use your pastry recipe here. And thanks for the pic of the Peak District – my childhood stomping grounds and it brought back wonderful memories 🙂 A trick with blind baking; brush a little egg white onto the base first (waterproofs it and stops it from going soggy after adding the filling). Then if it puffs up, just stab it a bit with the tines of a fork.
I grew up just south of the Peak District so it was nice to go back. This is just north of Buxton (on the one day it didn’t rain in torrents). Thanks for the pastry tip!
A wonderful tart recipe…
Looks great. And of course you can make pastry!
beautiful dish beautiful!
thank you for linking up with #FridayFoodie
What a wonderful use of herbs in this tart……looks and sounds amazing!
It is lovely. Funnily enough, I was going to enter it into your herby challenge but then I thought that the herb was only really a garnish so it felt a bit cheaty!