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.