february 19, 2006

vegetarian lasagne

I've bought a lot of cookbooks and food related magazines in my short life, but there's only a few recipes in them which I keep on returning to over and over again. One such recipe is Nadine Abensur's vegetarian lasagne from the February 2003 edition of Delicious.

Preheat oven to 180°c.

Place pumpkin on a baking tray. Drizzle with 2 Tablesppons of the olive oil and bake until softened and golden.

Wilt the spinach over medium heat in a pan with only the water left clinging to its leaves. Squeeze out excess water, season and add a pinch of nutmeg and the garlic.

Place remaining oil in the pan over medium heat. Add the mushrooms and a dash of soy sauce and pan-fry for 2-3 minutes until wilted. Add to the spinach with 5 tablespoons of the cream and stir to combine.

Pour the remaining cream into a separate bowl and combine with the tomato sauce. Add olives and mix well. Spoon one-quarter of the tomato mixture into a baking dish. Top with two sheets of pasta. Cut to fit.

Mash pumpkin slightly and spoon over pasta sheets. Drizzle with another quarter of the sauce.

Top with another layer of pasta, spoon over the spinach and mushroom mixture, spreading evenly. [At this stage the eggs can be cracked on top of the spinach layer.] Add another quarter of tomato sauce and a final layer of pasta.

Finish off with remaining tomato sauce and sprinkle with grated parmesan.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until bubbling hot. If eggs have been added, cover the lasagne with foil turned shiny-side down and bake for an extra 10 minutes.

Rest for 10 minutes before slicing.

:::...

As I'll often have ready access to silverbeet from the garden I'll use that, sliced up, in place of the English spinach. Also, I've tried the recipe with many different types of pumpkin and they've all worked very well, it's just that the time spent roasting them may vary.


pipstar @ 04:07 PM