Saturday, October 31, 2015

Vegetarian Pumpkin Lasagna

Thanks for reading, hope you find the recipe of use.
Please do take the time to leave comments, suggestions etc.

A great one for Halloween pumpkin flesh, but butternut squash is good as well.
Bursting with autumn flavour and colour. Based on a recipe from the Evening Echo, but from scratch.


I made this totally from scratch - but you can always buy the lasagna leafs and passata.

Pasta, and particular lasagna is very easy, without machines etc.
I made it before, just click on this text for the link.

This is a very simple meal to make. Very straight forward, without the white sauce.
Passata is easy to store if you want to make a batch, just can or jar it as you would jam so lets kick off with that.

You will need a blender, even a simple hand blender will do.
Then, in terms of ingredients (this is for about half a litre BTW)
 
About 7 Fully ripened medium to large tomatoes, halved. 
1 Large, finely chopped red onion, white is fine, but add extra puree. 
Olive oil to fry.
3 or 4 Peeled and chopped cloves of garlic. 
1 tbls Finely chopped basil, or basil pesto is really good. 
3 or 4 Sundried tomatos. 
1 good Desert sp Tomato puree. 
1 tsp Course ground black pepper. 
Salt to taste.

Place the tomatoes, garlic, basil and black pepper into a blender and liquidize.

Fry the onion until soft.

Pour the blender contents into your large pan and bring to the boil.

Blitz the tomato puree and sundried tomatos into a paste, mix through and then simmer for about 15 minutes.
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Now the lasagna. 
You will need:
Pumpkin flesh, about a cereal bowls worth, skinned, seeded and cut into about 1"/2.5cm cubes.
Olive oil
1 big onion, chopped.
2 crushed garlic
About 150 -200 grms spinach, frozen or fresh.
about 250 grms cream cheese, any type will do but a herby type is really nice,
Alternatively Cno Ban from On the Pigs back in the English Market in Cork.
Lasagna sheets, 2 or 3 big ones if home made.
The pasatta.
Some cheese, cheddar is fine, to top off.

Pine nuts are a nice addition with the pumpkin mix as an option.

Pre-heat the oven to 190 C, throw the pumpkin pieces in with the olive oil and toss, season.
Cook in the oven for about 15 minutes, until soft but not mushy.
Ideally you can do this while the pasatta is simmering away.

Meantime, sautee the onions and garlic 'till they are soft.
Throw in the spinich in the last 5 minutes.

Remove the pumpkin pieces from the oven and add in with the onion and spinach and take off the heat. 

Leave the oven ticking over.

Mix them up - try not to break the pumpkin bits.

Pasatta should be ready by now.

Pour in a base layer of pasatta to your lasagna dish - I just used a non-stick loaf tin.

Top that off with some of the pumpkin bits and then dot with the soft cheese.
Throw on your lasagna sheets, then repeat the process.
After two layers, I cap it out, then sprinkle the cheddar on top and bake for another 25 minutes, or until the top is brown and bubbling.

Sorry about the photography, but it really is a warming winter winner.

Thanks for reading, hope you find the recipe of use.
Please do take the time to leave comments, suggestions etc.



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