Experimenting with Potato Crust

Sorry, no photo.

Inspired by my friend Judy's endeavours, I attempted a potato crust for the pumpkin and blue cheese pie. I poked around the Internet and settled on the following as my recipe.

Ingredients

• 500g butternut pumpkin
• 1 brown onion, sliced
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 100g blue cheese
• 25g chopped walnut (use up to 100g more if you like walnuts a lot, or sub in pecans if you like)
• 3 large potatoes (I used desiree) grated
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• generous pinch of salt

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200º C.
2. Mix the potato, eggs, olive oil and salt. Line a pie tin (mine is a standard 20cm one) with the potato.
3. Cover the pie crust with foil and bake for 20 minutes. Remove the foil and bake a further 10 minutes.
4. While the crust is baking, peel, de-seed and slice the pumpkin flesh thinly. Coat with a bit of olive oil, some salt and the thyme and spread out onto a baking tray. Coat the onion with some oil and salt, and spread it into a single layer on the second tray. Roast the vegetables for 20 minutes.
5. Pour the balsamic vinegar over the onion to coat, and turn the oven down to 200º C and bake for another 10 minutes.
6. At some time during all this the pie crust will come out of the oven. Set it aside; it's OK to cool a little.
7. Mix the pie filling ingredients and fill the pie. Bake for about 5-10 minutes until the cheese is a melted.

So, it didn't quite work as planned. The bottom of the pie stuck to the tin and was not strong enough to hold together. I'll bake it for longer next time, perhaps just lining the top of the edge of the pie with foil to stop it burning while the rest of the pie crust cooks. Also, I will grease the tin before putting in the potato. I'll probably also drop one of the eggs from the mix.

And yes, next time I'll try to remember to take a photo!