I Say Lasagna, You Say Lasagne

Whether you spell it “lasagna” or “lasagne”, it’s pretty tasty.

And this lovely Butternut Squash and Spinach Lasagne is especially nice. We both gave this recipe an enthusiastic thumbs up. We were practically licking our plates.

It gets most of it’s richness from the squash. The sauce is made from reduced fat milk, and the recipe uses a relatively small amount of cheese, so it’s much lower in calories than you might think from the richness.

Note that the recipe says it serves 4-6. The lasagne is very thin, so you will want to cut it into larger pieces than you might think for the pan size, especially if you use a 13×9 pan, as I did. That was just right for 3 noodles in each layer without overlapping, though I think the author used a pan closer to 11×7. I thought that 1/6th of the recipe was quite adequate (that’s a smaller portion pictured above – about 1/8th).

The sauce calls for 2.5 cups of reduced-fat milk, plus 2 Tbsp each of butter and flour for thickening. I found that to make a very thin sauce, which would probably work fine if you are using fresh pasta or the “no-boil” noodles, as they’ll absorb more liquid. Since I needed to use up some regular dry noodles (cooked), I used 3 Tbsp each of the butter and flour to make a slightly thicker sauce.

As for the cheese, 50 grams is about 1.75 ounces. I used up the last of the cheddar I had on hand, which was slightly more than that – about 60 grams. Between that and the small amount of grated Parmesan I sprinkled over the top (about 2 tablespoons – I didn’t measure), it was plenty. You really can get away with a small amount of cheese when you’re using a sharp Cheddar combined with the richness of the squash.

I roasted the squash and cooked down the spinach the night before I made the lasagna, which made this a little quicker to put together, but even then, it probably took close to an hour for me to boil the noodles, make the sauce, and bake it. If you have to roast the squash, cook the spinach, or prepare fresh pasta, be sure to allow enough time for that.

Some notes on the ingredients, with conversions:

• 1 medium sized butternut squash, peeled and cut into chunks (I used 2 lbs of raw chunks)
• 1 onion, roughly chopped
• 600ml semi-skimmed milk (2.5 cups)
• 3 bay leaves
• 5-6 peppercorns
• A pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
• 140g fresh spinach (5 oz. A 6-oz package would be fine.)
• 1 garlic clove, mashed
• A little olive oil
• 25g butter (2 tbsp)
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• 6-7 sheets of fresh lasagne, dry will do (I used 6 dry lasagna noodles, cooked)
• 50g very mature cheddar cheese (1.75 oz)

• Seasoning (The recipe mentions “seasoning” in the ingredients, but doesn’t really talk about it in the instructions. I felt that the sauce definitely needed some salt and pepper. I’d suggest tasting the sauce and seasoning it to your liking before assembling the lasagna.)

Not mentioned in the ingredients list, but in the instructions: Grated cheese (I used 2 Tbsp grated Parmesan)