Pumpkin, mushroom and gorgonzola lasagne
Pumpkin, mushroom and gorgonzola lasagne
I’m a sucker for a lasagne, and have been from a young age. Both my parents have their own secret recipes, albeit with slightly less than authentic ingredients (kidney beans and silverbeet for Mum, chicken mince for Dad). I think lasagne is the type of dish where it’s okay to get creative - most of the time it ends up tasting delicious. After all, you can’t really go wrong when it involves cheese sauce!
I will say at the outset that this lasagne is not a quick, nor an entirely stress-free, dish to make. There are lots of steps and it’s a bit of a faff having to blanch the lasagne sheets prior to baking. You could probably skip this step but both of my Italian bibles (The Silver Spoon and Marcella Hazan’s The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking) tell me to blanch, so who am I to go against their advice. It is well worth the effort though!
Serves 6-8
Ingredients
10 fresh lasagne sheets
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
For the fillings
1kg pumpkin or butternut squash
800g assorted fresh mushrooms
20g dried porcini mushrooms
2 cloves garlic
Handful fresh rosemary and thyme
For the white sauce
50g butter
50g plain flour
800ml milk
100g gorgonzola or other soft cheese
50g parmesan cheese, grated
Pinch grated nutmeg
Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Peal the pumpkin, remove the seeds, and cut into slices. Place on a large oven tray, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Bake the pumpkin in the oven for about 25 minutes, or until soft.
Meanwhile, soak the dried porcini in a small bowl of hot water. While the porcini are soaking, roughly slice the fresh mushrooms, garlic and herbs. Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat, add the mushrooms, garlic and herbs, season with salt and pepper, and cook for about 10 minutes, or until softened. Drain the porcini mushrooms, reserving the liquid. Roughly chop the porcini and add to the pan, stirring to combine.
To make the white sauce, melt the butter in a small pan over a medium-low heat. When the butter has melted, add the flour and whisk until smooth. Gradually add the milk, as well as the reserved porcini liquid, whisking the whole time. Increase the heat to medium and continue whisking until the sauce has thickened, about 5-7 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir through the gorgonzola and grated parmesan. Finally, add a pinch of grated nutmeg and season with salt and pepper.
If making your own pasta dough, follow the recipe in this blog post (200g flour, 2 eggs, plus an extra egg yolk). Cut the rolled out pasta dough into about 12cm x 18cm rectangles.
Place a large pot of salted water on to boil. Blanch the lasagne sheets (about 3 or 4 at a time) in the boiling salted water for about 30 seconds, then lay them out on a clean tea towel in a single layer to drain.
Now it’s time to layer up. Start by smearing a thin layer of the white sauce on the bottom of an ovenproof baking dish (about 20cm x 30 cm). Place a layer of the lasagne sheets on top, tearing to get them to fit. Add another layer of white sauce, followed by a layer of the pumpkin, and a layer of the mushrooms. Repeat with two more layers, then finish with a good grating of parmesan.
Cover tightly with tinfoil and bake in the oven for 30 minutes. Remove the tinfoil, then place back in the oven for another 15-20 minutes until lovely and golden.
