Butternut Squash Lasagna

Our daughter, Lauren, used to work in a library, so she is well aware of the treasures on library shelves. I was surprised to learn that you can find cookbooks at the library, but Lauren has gathered quite a stack of recipes without spending a fortune on cookbooks.

This is one from her collection. It’s from the cookbook Celebrate by Pippa Middelton, and something we fixed when I stayed with Lauren earlier this year. I love to add vegetarian dishes to my repertoire, but I find that I would like this dish seasoned a little more than the sister-in-law of the future king of England – no surprise there. 😉

Ingredients

olive oil

1 ½ large onions, peeled and thinly sliced

2 ½ pound butternut squash, peeled seeded and sliced in 1/8 inch crescents

1 large bunch of sage leaves, half left whole and half chopped

4 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced

1 pound fresh spinach

generous grating of nutmeg

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 pound dried lasagna noodles

2 4-ounce balls of mozzarella, sliced

for the béchamel sauce:

1 stick unsalted butter

3 cups milk

¾ cup grated Parmesan, plus ½ extra for sprinkling between layers

(We made the full béchamel recipe, even though we were making a smaller pan of lasagna, so ours is heavy on the sauce)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 F
Add onion, squash, chopped sage and garlic to a large baking dish
Toss with a little olive oil
Bake for 15 – 20 minutes, until soft (We used frozen cubes of butternut squash, giving it a chop or quick whir in the food processor will give you a thinner veg layer than pictured here.)
In a separate pan, add the spinach, nutmeg, salt and pepper
Cook in a little olive oil until the spinach has wilted, pressing out any excess water
Cook the lasagna noodles, for 5 minutes just to make them soft, in a large pan of boiling salted water with a little oil olive added to help keep the noodles from sticking
To make the béchamel sauce, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat, stir in the flour (you should have a paste), cook for a couple of minutes
Slowly add the milk, stirring constantly, to form a thick sauce, add the ¾ cup Parmesan cheese (the recipe doesn’t call for it, but it would have benefited from a little salt, maybe a pinch of white pepper and/or cayenne)
To assemble all of the components, put a layer of pasta in a 9 x 13 baking dish, top with a layer of the squash mixture, a layer of béchamel sauce, some spinach and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese
Repeat the layers, finishing with a layer of pasta, spread with the remaining béchamel sauce, scatter the top with mozzarella slice and any remaining Parmesan.
Bake in the preheated oven for 25 – 30 minutes until the mozzarella bubbles and browns
Garnish with the whole sage leaves flash fried in a little butter (we were running a little short on sage)

Serves: 8

Pippa recommends paring this with a full-bodied white wine such as a Chenin Bland or a white Rhone

Lois Britton

An accountant by trade and a food blogger since 2009, Lois Britton fell in love with Polish cuisine during the years she lived in Poznań, Poland. As the creator of PolishHousewife.com, she loves connecting readers with traditional Polish recipes. Lois has a graduate certificate in Food Writing and Photography from the University of South Florida. She is the author of The Polish Housewife Cookbook, available on Amazon and on her website.

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