This is a recipe that we improvised at home a few weeks ago – but unfortunately we haven’t taken a picture of it either time. We tend to eat this over two nights, so I guess it would serve 4 at one sitting – although perhaps accompanied by some bread?
Pre-heat the oven to around 220C.
- Peel and dice a large butternut squash, and put it in a roasting tin. We dice into relatively large chunks – it’s up to you, but the smaller you dice it, I guess the shorter you’ll want to roast it
- Season with salt, pour some oil (we use a cheap rapeseed oil – basically anything that can cope with the high roasting temperature – which probably means not olive oil). You could put some woody herbs like thyme or rosemary in as well, although we haven’t
- Put the squash in the oven to roast – 30 minutes will do it for a relatively large dice, but basically until it is cooked through and soft. Once the squash is done you’ll want to turn the oven down slightly – to around 180C
- While the squash is roasting make a tomato sauce – we recommend making it with fresh tomatoes which keeps it lighter than the tinned. Basically chop an onion and fry gently to soften in plenty of olive oil (Damyanti says “lots of olive oil”), add some crushed garlic, some oregano. Blanch, skin and chop the tomatoes in the meantime, and then add them. Simmer it until it has reduced to a nice consistency – you don’t want too much liquid
- Make a bechamel/white sauce (sorry, not going to go into this here – but plenty of places you can find out how to do this)
- Now build the lasagne – first a layer of tomato sauce, then squash, then some fresh spinach leaves scattered over, then lasagne sheets (we use fresh and find you can just use it , but if you use dried you’ll want to put it in some boiling water first), repeat this pattern, and then top the final sheet of lasagne with the bechamel sauce.
- Put the whole thing in the oven for about 20-30 minutes – until the top has gone nicely brown
That’s it – it sounds complicated but to be honest it doesn’t feel like a big hassle once the squash is in the oven – it gives you time to do everything else. We really like it, and recommend it!