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"Toad in the hole" is a classic British dish for the colder months. To make it veggie you can use veggie sausages, sure. But this version, with the rich flavours of butternut squash and sage, is great! It's a good Sunday roast when you put it with roast potatoes, gravy and more.

Butternut squash is a good choice. I also made one using a "blue pumpkin" which appeared in our local grocer's, which works fine too. In either case, if the skin is not too thick then I recommend leaving the skin on -- it gives a good bit of texture to the dish. You do need to remove any knobbly or rough bits of skin though.

Serves 2--3. Takes maybe 90 minutes, including a lot of oven-time where you can do other things.

For two people I use a roasting tin about 20cm x 20cm. A larger tin is OK too - the dish can be wide and flat in that case, lots of surface area.

• Butternut squash (one small, or half a large one: 450--500g) and/or thin-skinned pumpkin
• 15--20 sage leaves (small, or 5--10 large ones)
• 2 eggs
• 300ml/300g oat milk
• 125g plain flour
• 2 tsp mustard
• To serve: roast potatoes (e.g. from 500g potatoes), gravy, and some greens

First we cook the squash until it's close-to-ready. You can do this just-in-time but it's a bit complex to juggle everything in the oven, so I suggest doing it first, as follows:

Heat the oven to 180C. You don't need to peel the squash but take off any knobbly bits, then slice in two and scoop out the seeds. Chop the squash into "chunky chip" shapes: i.e. cuboid finger-sized pieces e.g. 2cm x 2cm and not longer than about 5cm.

Put some oil in a metal baking tray, add the squash pieces and toss them to coat. Cook them in the oven for 20 minutes until they're starting to acquire some brown roasty colour -- but not too much! -- they'll be cooked more later. Take the tray out and put it to one side. It doesn't matter whether the squash has time to cool down or not.

Mix the batter: mix the eggs, milk, flour and mustard in a bowl, whisking with a whisk to beat out any small lumps. Let this rest for 15 to 30 minutes.

When you're ready for the main cook, turn the oven up to 200C. Preheat the dish that you'll be cooking in - put about 2 tbsp of vegetable oil in it and put it in the oven to heat right up. This may take 5 minutes. Stir the batter again.

Prepare the sage leaves: the small ones kept whole and the large ones chopped to a similar size.

Prepare your work surface ready for quickly assembling the dish: you'll need somewhere to stand the hot tin, and you'll need the batter, the squash and the sage. Working quickly, take the tin out (careful, hot oil), pour the batter in, arrange the squash pieces evenly (they should stick out a bit), then finally place the sage pieces into the batter in good spots between the squash pieces.

Then put the dish back in the oven and cook for 25--30 minutes until the batter is crispy at the sides and nicely cooked and starting to brown on top.

To serve, ideally you can cut slices of it and gently lift them out onto plates. To make that work, you should run a knife around the edge first to free it from the baking dish.