Butternut and Spinach Lasagna
Lunch on a leaf raking autumnal afternoon.
Vegetarian lasagna. Some would call it a pie which is fair! A meal full of seasonal oranges and golds and deep green fresh greens. The vegetables caught between layers of summer tomato sauce, cheese, and home made pasta.
When eating seasonally these are the foods of the cooling months. The heart foods. The chickens will stop laying soon, there are only leaves left in the garden and benches of orange pumpkins are on stand by in the cool room. So there is a natural urgency to eat well and prepare for the cold seasons.
We need to stock up and eat up because winter is coming.
This pasta was made with Black Emmer flour but you can make it with good old All Purpose or whatever you have in the pantry.
🌟Do you have a flour-mill close by? See if you can find some local flour from local grains and help build a robust supply chain of food close to you. Keep these little businesses alive.
🌟Make friends with your farmer.
This pasta was made with four fresh farm eggs plus one egg yolk, (the cats got the left over egg white), three cups of flour, and enough water to bring it all together. Black Emmer is thirsty so I used about 1/2 a cup of water. Add your water cautiously – you want a stiff dough.
Allow the pasta at least 30 minutes to sit before rolling.
Scorch and roast the root vegetables.
Caramalize two onions. Pulled out some summer tomato sauce. Make a heavy bechamel with butter and flour, milk and cheese and lots of pepper.
The lasagna was constructed with the layers of home made pasta sheets, onions, tomato, butternut squash, spinach and cheese sauce.
The topping, which I crumbled on just before baking, was fresh breadcrumbs (I pulled apart a slice of Black Emmer bread) with dry roasted garlic and sage that I threw through hot salted butter.
Free style it! Just make sure to have enough liquid in the mix to cook the pasta.
Bake at 375F for an hour.
(Pop back to this post if you want to make enough pasta for a tribe: Pasta and Bread – remember those days when the house was full of people!! )!!
Remember that lasagna likes to sit for a few hours (or overnight) with a gentle weight on top to press it. After it has sat for those hours I add the last layer of bechamel, cheese then garlic and sage breadcrumbs. Then pop in the oven to cook- add 15 minutes if cooking straight from the fridge.
I have to admit that homemade lasagna is a mission, so make a huge pan of it so you can pop some in the freezer for a lazy meal.
Ok! After lunch I am going back out to rake more leaves in under the trees. Those leaves are life giving for the trees. I never burn leaves.
The chickens will get a few bags into their run too!
Cecilia
23 Comments on “Butternut and Spinach Lasagna”
Welcome to the Lounge of Comments
JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER:
DO A LITTLE SHOPPING:
Thank You So Much For Your Kind Help with Maintaining This Blog
thekitchensgarden 
That looks delicious and is very much like what I’d expect ancient pasta to look like – sheets of dough made with wheat flour and lettuce juice, around the second century in Greece (called Lagana). By the fifth century, in Rome, they were layering Lagana with a meat stufffing. Lovely bread too!
It has an amazing colour this pasta. Now – lettuce juice? What’s that about?
It looks fabouse! “The earliest mention of lettuce is in Ancient Egypt where it was considered an aphrodisiac. The Romans cultivated the plant, using it’s narcotic properties by taking it at the end of a meal to induce sleep, and brought it to Britain.” “Lactucarium is the milky fluid known as lettuce opium because of its sedative and analgesic properties. “Lettuce opium” was used by the ancient Egyptians, and was introduced as a drug in the United States as early as 1799.” Astonishing! https://allotmentheaven.blogspot.com/2012/02/lettuce-lactuca-sativa.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactucarium
That is wild. I will follow the links!
…though I originally assumed it would be for colour, like spinach.
That is what I was thinking. I use layers of spinach but lettuce water in the pasta would be interesting. But with our unbleached stoneground pasta – it would be not be-so bright?
I think spinach would give a better green regardless, but I’d like to try it with lettuce to see what it tastes like.
Oh that sounds like a delicious layer.
It looks delicious and comforting!
Yes – comfort food!
It would be great with any good greens too – like kale or beet leaves.
Yes! So much seasonal food is coming and going through my kitchen now. Squashes of all kinds, garnet yams, cabbages, all the greens I can find, other root veg and pots of soup using the bits and pieces. Spinach salads galore with roasted veg, farro and simple vinaigrettes. Autumn is wonderful and my favorite food season. Freezing is essential. It is only me, but so much easier to make bigger amounts and put away for another time.
It is not only you! Me too and other members of the fellowship also. We cook and freeze for later. Because – en yet is coming!
You use both tomato sauce and bechamel? Do you alternate them, or mix them? I’ve made red lasagna and white lasagna, but never one that uses both.
I mix the red with the spinach or kale layers.. Then the white sauce on top and right at the bottom.
Or I sometimes use cottage cheese instead. But just as a layer.
You know me. Rules!! 😂
I might like your versions, Celi. When we make red lasagna we put in a middle green layer of spinach, cottage cheese and an egg.
An egg! Tell me how that works!? I like it already!
We mix the beaten egg with the spinach and cottage cheese.
I love this post. So many great lasagne ideas. Next time I make lasagne I’m doing the breadcrumb topping ♡
The breadcrumb thing is great! And I like fresh breadcrumbs because they are crunchier!
I like sourdough breadcrumbs with a little grated parmesan for extra colour and crunch.
I’m obsessed with breadcrumbs.
Me too!! Especially fresh ones! I hate those dusty ones you buy – full of fillers!!