I originally described this dish as somewhere between a gratin and a deep dish pizza. It turns out this description is the result of my massively misunderstanding what a gratin is.

So instead it’s more like a deep dish pizza would be if you repaced the base with thinly sliced potatoes and butternut squash.

As with so much I make, it’s the result of my being bored and wanting to make something nice but having no inclination to shop (also I’m currently visiting my parents, so shopping is a lot harder than it normally would be) or idea what I want to make.

In this case, the result is really good.

how it works:

The Base

We make the dish in a deep dish pizza tray. The base is made out of thinly sliced potato and butternut squash (I use a food processor for the slicing).

Oil the tray (I used olive oil) and cover the bottom with sliced potatoes. Drizzle them with oil and sprinkle with salt and rosemary. Cover with the butternut squash and drizzle that with oil and sprinkle with salt (I think the rosemary will burn if you put it on top, so I didn’t put any on). Roast on a high heat for 25 minutes.

The sauce

The sauce I made is as follows. Really any tomato sauce would work, but this worked particularly well.

Basically: Puree a small onion, fry it with olive oil and about a tbsp of dark brown sugar. Once it’s caramelised a bit, add a can of chopped tomatoes, a dash of red wine vinegar, some paprica and herbs de provence and let it reduce.

The assembly

Once the base has roasted for 25 minutes, take it out of the oven, cover it in the tomato sauce and then cover that in grated cheese. The cheeses I used were mostly Comté, with a little bit of Manchego. Then put it back in the oven for another 15 minutes, still at the roasting temperature.

Then take it out of the oven and eat it. All of it.

There were three of us having this – myself and my two parents. I expected there to be plenty of leftovers. Instead there was a very cleaned out pizza dish.