Patty Pan Fondue
This year we grew patty pans in our garden, a lovely summer squash (known as Pattison in Switzerland) that is excellent for stuffing.
Sort of like a summery version of traditional fondue, we filled these scalloped beauties with bread and cheese, baked them in the oven and then dug in. Instead of dunking, you’re scooping out the bread, already cheesed.
I’ve made a pumpkin fondue before, but these little scalloped beauties are perfect for summer and make very cute individual servings.
The recipe was inspired by Betty Bossi’s Gefüllte Patissons, although I took out the eggs in favour of a little quark. It’s a great way to use up leftover bread, and any hard cheese you may have in your cheese box (I used Appenzeller with some mystery ends mixed in). When you make the filling, you can add some of the squash flesh that you have scraped out.
4 patty pan squash (each around 250-300 g)
120 g leftover bread, cubed
knob of butter
1 onion
3 tbsp quark or sour cream
200 g hard cheese, grated
salt and pepper
chopped chives, to garnish
Preheat your oven to 200 C / 400 F / gas mark 6.
First, prepare your patty pans. Cut a small lid out of the top. You want to scrape the squash twice—first removing all the seeds and discarding them. Then, you can scrape the sides again, but this time keep the scraped out squash (no seeds), and chop it finely. Set the scraped out squash aside—this will be added to the filling.
In a large frying pan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the bread and toast lightly until it has browned and crisped up. Add the onion and scraped out squash, then cook for a few minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Take off the heat, stir in the quark or sour cream, then the cheese.
Stuff this in the prepared patty pan, put the lids on and bake for about 25 minutes, or until the cheese is melty and a knife easily comes out of the skin when pierced.
Garnish with chives and serve immediately.
You can eat the skin of a patty pan, dig in!
Patty pan squash are known by many names. In German they are Pattison, French too (Pâttison), and sometimes they are called UFO or scalloped squash.
As always with a squash or pumpkin recipe, I love linking to the the German Wikipedia article complaining about English having too many "trivial names" for different varieties of gourds.
More gourds and cheese?
Pumpkin Älplermagronen
