Try a New Recipe: Butternut Squash and Spinach Lasagna

I have to say that I LOVE a good pasta dish.  It has to be fancy though.  You will not find commercial spaghetti sauce in my house.  I will eat spaghetti to be polite if it is served to me. You will not find KD or noodles and sauce in my house either (except when my nieces and nephews were little and I would buy KD for them if they stayed over).  I however love a good cheesy Alfredo sauce, a seafood fettuccine, jambalaya fettuccine and other fancy pasta dishes you'll find in restaurants.  Sometimes I'll shake things up at a restaurant and order steak or ribs, but often it is pasta.

This fall I had intended to make a huge batch of butternut squash soup, which I really enjoy.  I had already turned a 10 lb bag of carrots into ginger carrot soup, and then I turned the pumpkins I had decorated with into a curried pumpkin lentil soup. I just didn't think I needed more orange similarly flavoured soup.  I had already bought the butternut squash however and I need to use some up.

 

I googled what I could do with butternut squash that's different from just roasting whole squash, or cubing it and roasting along with other winter vegetables, which I both love, but only so often.  I came across this recipe for butternut squash and spinach lasagna: https://www.cookinglight.com/recipes/butternut-squash-and-spinach-lasagna?amp=true.  It looked good and a healthy version of a nice pasta dish.  I'm not a meatless dinner person though.  I'm getting better about using other sources of protein.  I chose to add two honey garlic sausage removed from their casing to the onion spinach mixture.  (I think ground chicken would be really nice here as well and would be leaner but I don't have any).  I also noticed that there isn't a lot of seasoning in the recipe so I added pepper, some hot pepper sauce and nutmeg to the yoghurt/egg mixture.  I also used full fat versions for all the dairy products and mozzarella for the provolone and Gruyere.  That said my regular ricotta cheese was only 0.8 percent butterfat, so very light to start with.  

I will say that slicing the butternut squash on a mandolin was not that easy, and I can't imagine keeping nice even slices trying to slice thin slices with a knife.  The butternut squash was too long for the gadget that slides along the mandolin and I couldn't force the butternut squash through standing up.  Especially as I got further down I had to watch my fingers near the blade and used another kitchen tool to push it towards the blade the last little piece.  I think that is the one big reason that I probably won't make this very often unless I figure out another way to slice the butternut squash.

 

However, it was so good!  Absolutely delicious.  Next time I know to cook the butternut squash a little more ahead of time; I had it in longer than it stated in the recipe but I have a tiny microwave.  It wasn't quite done when I took it out of the oven, which was quickly remedied by popping a serving into the microwave for a bit.  It may even be better for the leftovers that will need to be reheated anyway.