Roasted butternut squash and mushroom lasagne

Fancied a bit of a veggie treat this weekend, and this is one of my favourites. It’s pretty different to a normal lasagne!

The first job is to sort out the butternut squash. Put on the oven to preheat at around 180 degrees. The best advice I could give for squash is to use a really big knife! Peel, deseed and chop up the squash into cubes. Put a little vegetable oil and some salt and pepper on and put it in the oven for half an hour. 

Whilst that’s cooking, chop up some mushrooms (I used the best part of a standard supermarket packet!) and fry them on a high heat. I then put a couple of cloves of garlic in the pestle and mortar with a little salt, a little olive oil and a handful of fresh parsley, mushed it up until it resembled a sort of pesto, and added it to the mushrooms.  You don’t have to do this, I more or less did because I have a new pestle and mortar I wanted to play with, but it was nice! 

I soaked some dried mushrooms in a little boiling water for ten minutes then added them too. (Porcini mushrooms are the nicest, but I used Portobello because they’re cheaper! Not quite as tasty though) After they’ve cooked for a minute or two, add the water the mushrooms soaked in. About two tablespoons of double cream, and a good tablespoon of crème fraiche makes them pretty tasty. Add a good dose of salt and pepper.

 (it's very green because of the parsley pesto)

Then make a béchamel sauce, by mixing together flour and butter over a low heat and SLOWLY mixing in milk. I will confess that I managed to totally screw up my béchamel tonight! I added the milk too quickly and then wasn’t paying attention and it went a bit curdled and manky… I promise it’s the first time in years that’s happened! I started again, and followed my own instructions… and it was perfect. Then mix in some grated cheese to thicken it up. Your squash will be cooked by now so take it out of the oven!

If you were doing this for a dinner party or anything you could prepare most of the bits in advance, and assemble later.

You need quite a lot of sauce, as this is going to be the main cooking liquid for the lasagne sheets. About three quarters of a pint of milk. 

I recently had a conversation at work where more than one person said they would ALWAYS cook lasagne sheets before using them, even if the packet said you didn’t have to. I have to say, I really don’t bother. There’s enough faffing around in this recipe without that to deal with too! I don’t mind the occasionally crunchy corner, and as long as there’s enough liquid to cook them it doesn’t make too much difference.

 Then layer it all up. I go for:

Fresh spinach, roasted squash, then half the mushroom mixture. Then a layer of lasagne, and the same again. I’m not too fussy about making sure there are absolutely no gaps in the lasagne sheets. When I put the white sauce on top I want it to dribble through a bit to help cook everything evenly. The top layer should be lasagne then pour the sauce over the top. A bit of grated cheese and some salt and pepper, and it’s ready to go in the oven, for about forty minutes. 

Whilst in the oven, have a glass of wine and make a salad. Then it’s all done! I love this dish, and I don’t miss meat in it at all. Cheap and really tasty.

This weeks soup: Leek and potato again.

Whilst making this I mostly listened to: Monsters of Folk. A colleague recently purchased this, and has let me borrow it while he’s on holiday. Seems only fitting whilst making a hippy-ish veggie meal I should also listen to hippy-ish music.