Can you still eat big patty pan squashes? One-pan cream cheese, patty pan squash and tomato pasta recipe

 I did an accidental experiment in the garden by failing to notice one of my patty pan squashes until it had reached a diameter of about 16 cm (6 inches) across. I so utterly failed to notice it, that I don't even know if it started off yellow like the rest of my patty pan squashes or was dark green right from the start. Here's a picture of a normal patty pan squash next to my huge one.

It was so big, I wasn't sure if it was still going to be worth eating. But it seemed a shame to waste it, so I thought it would be worth giving it a try. When I cut it in half, it had far more prominent seeds that the little squash:

It also weighed around 800 g, so I didn't think it was sensible to eat the whole thing at once. Instead, I cut myself a quarter of it, scooped out the seeds and peeled it (because I thought the skin might be too tough to eat) and cut it into bite-sized slices. The little, yellow patty pan squash didn't seem too prickly, so I simply cut that one up without peeling it. The seeds were so tiny that there was no need to remove them. I then put both in the recipe below (no photo, because it didn't occur to me at the time that I was going to be including this recipe on the blog until after I'd eaten it and realised how nice it was):

Cream cheese, patty pan squash and tomato pasta recipe

Serves 1 (ingredients can be doubled, tripled, quadrupled etc.)

Ingredients

Up to 250 g of patty pan squashes

Up to 250 g tomatoes (ripe)

40-50 g Philadelphia-style cream cheese

80 g pasta (e.g. penne)

salt

freshly ground pepper

Method:

1. Boil water in a pan.

2. Add the pasta and put the buzzer on for 4 minutes less than the recommended cooking time.

3. While the pasta is cooking, prepare the squash. If necessary peel the squash (if big or prickly) and remove the seeds (if the seeds are big), then cut into bite-sized slices.

4. When the buzzer goes, add the slices of squash to the pan and set the buzzer for the final four minutes.

5. Meanwhile, chop the tomatoes into approximately 1 cm chunks and remove the hard core beneath where the stem was.

6. When the buzzer goes, thoroughly drain the pasta and squash in a sieve or colander and put the tomatoes in the pan. Add the pasta and squash back to the pan and return to the heat for around 30 seconds to warm the chopped tomatoes.

7. Add the cream cheese, salt and pepper (make sure you add a decent amount of pepper, it really brings out the flavour of the cream cheese).

8. Stir thoroughly.

9. Serve.

I've been doing very well with avoiding powdery mildew on the squashes so far this year. The leaves of a few of the squashes, especially the patty pan ones, became infected with powdery mildew after the torrential rain we had. But I removed the leaves and tied the squash plants up better so more of the plant was off the ground, and now they look good.

Orange and raspberry muffin recipe

I had one orange and one egg to use up plus more raspberries growing than you can shake a stick at, so I halved the quantities of a recipe for orange and raspberry muffins that I found online. The recipe was in cups, which was a bit of a pain (and reading it back, I notice I accidentally made some adaptations), but it turned out so delicious, I thought it was worth writing out a metric version, so here it is with my accidental adaptations (you'll need to halve the quantities if, like me, you've only got one orange and one egg left):

Ingredients (makes 12)

320 g plain flour

170 g cup white or golden sugar (plus extra for sprinkling)

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 pinch of ground nutmeg

1/2 cup  of vegetable oil (I used non-virgin olive oil)

235 ml whole milk

2 eggs (medium or large)

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 oranges (zest only)

570 ml fresh or frozen raspberries (approx.)

12 muffin cases

1. Put one of your oven racks in the middle position, then turn on the oven to 190 degrees C (no fan). Take out your muffin pans and put large muffin cases in 12 of the cups (in my muffin tin, the large cases stick over the top of the muffin tin - see photo above). Make sure you only have one case in each, I accidentally put doubles in several.

2. Stir the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and nutmeg together in a medium bowl. Whisk the oil, milk, eggs, and vanilla together in another bowl. Finely grate the zest from the oranges, than add to the wet ingredients.

3. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients and the raspberries into the centre (if you put them in frozen they will keep their form, if they are fresh or allowed to defrost they'll break up when you stir, which was delicious). Stir the wet and dry ingredients together until the dry ingredients are moistened but still a bit lumpy – do not over-mix the batter. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cases (mine were only about 3 mm off full - you could also make smaller ones by 3/4 filling the cases). Sprinkle the tops of the muffins with sugar (about 1/4 teaspoon per muffin).

4. If you went with 12 nearly full muffin cases, bake for about 30 minutes. If you went for 15  3/4 filled ones, bake for about 25 to 30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through cooking. You’ll know they are ready when they are golden brown (and a cake skewer comes out clean). Cool muffins in the pan on a rack for 5 to 10 minutes. Turn the muffins out of the pan and cool on the rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Harvest is coming

It's taken me a long time to get much to eat out of the garden this year, possibly largely due to slug and snail problems, but harvest is finally coming. Many of my apples are ripe. I know this because not only are they bright red, but they keep falling off the tree, and I keep eating them.

The raspberries are now producing more than I can usually eat in a day – I stir them into porridge – and I am freezing the rest.

The patty-pan squashes have also started producing edible squashes. You're meant to eat them when they're small. They have an incredibly boring flavour, so you have to put them with something more interesting. I've been having them with green beans and pasta and pesto and the few tomatoes that have ripened. It's nice to have a second sort of vegetable alongside the beans, and the plants seem to be producing fairly reliably now - not in the quantities a courgette would, but they're much lower FODMAP than courgettes.

My tomatoes have mainly yet to ripen, but they're getting pretty big, so I live in hope that they will soon.

The Maxima squashes are also coming along. This is my biggest one, and if it's anything to go by, the name is no lie: they're going to be huge.

I've accidentally also grown my most interesting sweet corn yet:

It's without any leaves covering it and it made me realise that each of the silks that stick out of the top connects directly to a different kernel of corn. It'll be interesting to watch it ripen.

The garden as a whole is looking dry anywhere I haven't watered (i.e. the grass), but I'm no longer worrying about whether I'm going to manage to harvest anything.