This recipe accompanies this story

Ingredients

1 recipe hot pie crust or shop-bought puff pastry

Thin half moon slices of pumpkin, enough to cover a standard oven tray, overlapping

3 cloves garlic, chopped

4 or 5 star anise (yes, 4 or 5)

Dusting of ground cinnamon

Salt and pepper

Butter

Olive oil

Method

Make a hot water pastry crust. Roll out the dough and press it out on a standard oven tray (buttered) to reach 2 cms beyond the edges. This gives you some pastry to fold over and make a boat, as it were. Prick the pastry all over with a fork.

Place half-moon pumpkin slices in a decent pattern on the pastry. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and ground cinnamon, scatter star anise here and there, dot with butter, drizzle olive oil over, and bake in a 190℃ to 200℃ oven until the crust is firm and the pumpkin soft and golden. You’ll find, when you tuck into it, that it has a pleasing sweetness. DM/TGIFood

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