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)