Wednesday 24 November 2010

mushroom + roast pumpkin lasagna

The weather has suddenly jumped from long coats and scarves to ice creams and trying to stay cool, but one of the last things I wanted to do before the weather changed was to cook a lasagna. Lasagna is not really a great thing to cook in summer, not only because it needs to be baked in the oven; this lasagna featured roasted pumpkin, so it required an extra long oven time.

mushroom + roast pumpkin lasagna

This lasanga is a sum of things that I love in lasagna, and rather than overwhelming with flavour, I found that the textures and flavours worked together to make something totally delicious. There are two distinct layers, a fried mushroom layer and a roasted pumpkin layer, and these two layers are padded with lasagna sheets, sun-dried tomato pesto, and a tomato sauce. So it goes sauce, pasta, pesto (spread thinly across the entire sheet/s), mushrooms, sauce, pasta, pesto, roasted pumpkin sliced, sauce, pasta, and the rest of the source. This was all topped with a mixture of Cheezely and nutritional yeast.

It wasn't too complex; the sauce was a very simple one, made using about 800g (two tins) of tinned tomatoes and some fresh and dried herbs, though I do wish I'd used maybe an extra half a can. Ordinarily I'd make the pesto, but I'd picked up some pesto from world vegan day, and worked that in. Roasting pumpkins is always a delight, and it's no trouble for me to slice and fry the mushrooms.

I sort of wish I'd made some sort of cheeze sauce, combining the Cheezely and the nutritional yeast with some tofu and milk or something, just to make it a little more moist; but the Cheezley and nutritional yeast combination was a perfectly serviceable last minute topping.

3 comments:

Johanna GGG said...

I feel I haven't made enough lasagnas this year and the time to make them has passed - still want to try quinoa lasagne that I think I saw you do - this one sounds like a good one - love anything with pasta and pumpkin

lasagna said...

I've been meaning to try pumpkin lasagna even before Halloween but I'm really worried that my kids will get overwhelmed with such big amount of veggies in lasagna. I mean they're okay with mushroom and spinach lasagna but pumpkin lasagna seems too daunting. Or maybe it's just me. Oh well, one thing's for sure, I'll be trying this one of these days. :)

Will Thompson said...

Yum! It's definitely lasagne season in this neck of the woods, and pumpkin is a great filling idea. One for tomorrow night, I think. Lunch in the form of spinach and mushroom lasagne was a tad weedy.