The ‘c’ word – COOKING!

I do not claim I can cook. I can make spag bol and anything involving a big saucepan and shoving things in it with a tin or a sauce. I can bake, sure, 4 4 2 method works for any kind of cake, especially fairy cakes (where it is all in the decoration). However, get me to follow a recipe and I’ll want to give up at step 1.

But what is this? Did I just make a super scrummy lasagna this evening? Yes I did. I found a recipe with butternut squash 7 weeks ago that I’ve been dying to try. And with spring coming I thought, oh man, it’ll be too nice weather to make something with squash. But with snow still in my garden today (March 25th), I went with the wintry feeling and made something orange.

I will now share this with you, because I’m nice and just a little proud of myself. With some helpful hints that I discovered along the way.

To serve 6 you’ll need:

• 1 squash
• 1 onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 800g tinned chopped tomatoes
• 4 rashers panchetta
• cooking oil
• 250g ricotta
• 6 tbsp semi skimmed milk
• 1 egg
• 2-3 tbsp grated cheese
• dried lasagne sheets

To begin:

SQUASH ATTACK. I had to google how to prep my squash as the recipe simply said ‘1 squash, peeled and diced’. What you want to do is, using a super strong macho knife, chop off the ends. Then, using a hard core vegetable peeler, is peel the skin. Now, I used a coquina squash (whatever that is), and after one layer of peeling there was a lot of waxy stuff left on with some weird green lines, so I went around again until it was all orange.

Then slice down the middle of the squash lengthways, with your big macho knife.

This next bit sounded easy but proved tricky and messy! Use a smallish metal spoon to scoop out the seeds and sticky stuff. Its hard to explain but it doesn’t want to come out and then flings everywhere as it does – especially if you chop it in half unevenly (as I did).

Now its time to get chopping. Cut each half in half and then begin chopping lengthways and sideways. It helps to pile 2 or 3 slices on top of each other to make it quicker and easier.

  

I’m sure you get the jist of it. Keep the cubes in a bowl as you go along and that is mission ‘prep squash’ done!

 

Chop 1 onion, 2 cloves of garlic and your rashers of pancetta and put in a LARGE saucepan with some oil and sage (I just used dried Italian herb mix). Let the onions soften a little then add 300ml vegetable stock, 800g chopped tomatoes and the squash. Stir gently together and leave to simmer for about 20 mins. I said LARGE saucepan as I thought mine was big enough but it was full to the brim once all this lot was in there.

Next thing to do is the topping. Get 250g ricotta cheese, 1 egg, 6 tbsp semi skimmed milk and a few tbsp grated cheese and beat together. It recommended parmigiano reggiano (being a Waitrose recipe and all) but I used grated cheddar I had in the fridge which worked fine too.

Get yourself a nice big baking dish and wipe it down with some oil, or oil spray. Spoon in 1/3 of the squash/tomato stuff. Place a layer of lasagna sheets and repeat until there are 3 layers of sheets and no squash/tomato mix left. Spread on the ricotta cheese mixture on the top layer of pasta, sprinkle on a little more cheese and you’re done!

Place in the oven for 40 minutes. Once it went golden on top (around 36 mins in) I put some foil over the top to stop my fantastic cheese topping burning.

You’ll want to leave it to cool for a minute or so when it comes out, then go ahead and serve up. I steamed some carrots and leeks (which took all of 8 mins) to serve with it.

 

I did say this serves 6, my Dad had a second helping though and will have the last bit for his lunch tomorrow.

And you’re done. And its really yummy. I love squash and am so glad I took the time to make something lovely with it to cheer me on this cold spring eve.

Give it a go. Or at least look at my friends better blog about cooking – fivestarfuel.blogspot.co.uk

Many thanks to Waitrose, for the real recipe – waitrose.com/content/waitrose/en/home/recipes/recipe_directory/s/squash_lasagne0.html