Pumpkin Hand Pies
I have recently been more and more interested in Azerbaijani cuisine. One popular food is called qutab which is a flatbread that is stuffed with an assortment of savory fillings such as cheeses, herbs and winter squashes. It’s a thin rolled dough that is then cooked on a convex griddle known as a Saj.
My first attempt at making these qutabs were with a thin dough made from cassava flour. I used my lodge cast iron skillet and created a big, hard mess of dough. While the filling tasted alright, the rest didn’t really. So, I altered the recipe and decided to make this into a hand pie using banana to create a more pliable dough that would taste a bit better.
This turned out to be a delicious breakfast and snack that I stuffed with honeynut squash. But any winter squash would work great - pumpkin, honeynut, kabocha, koginut, butternut, etc. I also ran out of pumpkin filling and stuffed the last hand pie with caramel instead of pumpkin which was also ridiculously delicious.
Ingredients:
75g palm shortening
1 ripe banana, roughly 115g
150g cassava flour (I use Otto’s Naturals)
1/2 cup water
1tbsp Orange Carrot Powder, for color and flavor
Filling:
2 roasted honeynut squash
1.5 tbsp coconut or avocado oil
4 heaping tbsp date caramel
Date caramel recipe:
12oz medjool dates, pitted and soaked in water for 15 minutes
1/2 cup full fat coconut milk, or more per desired consistency
water to thin out if needed
cinnamon powder to taste
1/4 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt
Preparations:
Start by roasting your squash. Cut them in half and scoop the seeds out. Then, add oil to the flesh and roast in the oven for 30-45 minute at 400F. Keep an eye out on it to make sure it doesn’t burn. Remove from the oven and set it aside to cool.
Meanwhile, make the date caramel sauce by blending the soaked and pitted dates with the coconut milk, cinnamon, and vanilla. You may add water if you’d like a thinner consistency. Blend until fully smooth. Pour into a jar and set aside.
Spoon the flesh out of the squash and mix it together with the date caramel in a bowl.
Prepare your dough. In a large bowl, mash the banana with the palm shortening. Add in the cassava flour and orange carrot powder. Then slowly pour in the water a little bit at time until a dough begins to form.
Transfer the dough to a surface and continue to kneed until it is well incorporated. Layer it between two pieces of parchment paper and roll it out into a large circle.
Spoon a few tbsp of the filling onto one side of the dough making sure to leave enough room around the edges to seal it up.
Then, using the parchment paper to guide you, fold over one half of the dough and seal it with either your hands or the back of a fork depending on your desired effect.
Repeat with the remaining hand pies.
Transfer to your oven an bake at 350F for 25-30 minutes until the pies are nice and golden on top.
