Squash and Meat Pie by Sicut Cervus

[From The Victory Garden Cookbook]

1 partially cooked pie crust (use your usual recipe for that part -- flour, a bit of salt, fat, water); roll out and put in pie pan, prick with a fork, weigh it down with another pan buttered on the bottom and full of old pennies or whatever; bake at 425, take it out after 8 minutes and get rid of the weighing-down pan, prick again and adjust the edges if needed, put back for a couple more minutes, take out and let cool.

Meat layer

3/4 lb ground beef
1 stalk celery
1 small onion
1/4 lb ham
2 T butter
1 egg
1/2 cup grated swiss cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 t thyme
1-1/2 t salt (I found this a bit excessive and would use less next time)
freshly ground pepper

Topping

2 eggs
2 cups cooked winter squash
1/2 cup cooked rice (or other similar-textured bland carb, whatever you've got)
2/3 cup cream
1 T melted butter salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

To make meat layer, brown ground beef, drain off fat, and put meat in mixing bowl. Chop celery and onion, dice ham. Melt butter and sauté celery and onion till barely wilted, 3-5 minutes. Add ham and cook for 2 minutes. Stir into ground beef.* Beat egg and mix with beef mixture along with cheeses, parsley, thyme, salt and pepper. Let cool while you make the custard layer.

Put all ingredients for custard in food processor and blend till smooth.

Put cooled meat mixture in the pie shell, spread around and pat down. Cover with squash topping (I had extra topping; I didn't measure the squash, so there may have been more than 2 cups of it; plus the recipe is for a 10-inch pie pan and mine are 9-inch. I put the extra custard in an oven-proof dish and baked it separately.)

Sprinkle with parmesan cheese (I forgot to do this).

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes, turn down heat to 325 and bake for 20-30 minutes longer till crust is nicely browned and filling is set and starting to brown around the edges.

Confession: I was in a hurry. I baked it for 15 minutes at 375, then turned it down to 300 for 10 more. It was perfect.

*I did this in my usual order -- do the onion and celery in the butter, then add the (raw) beef and brown it, then the ham, etc. It saved one dirty bowl, and probably blended the flavors a little more.