The menu was ambitious and required so many cooking skills, but he was ready to move forward in his culinary education and who was Mom to hold him back. The separate ingredients of the lasagna could also be served as side dishes to add to the new chef’s repertoire. He would know how to make the squash and kale and onions for other dishes or as sides.
Making pasta and pastry, we had flours everywhere. Grating butter for the pastry dough was a new idea for us. He liked the recipe instructions that described the pastry dough as the texture of sand and the pasta dough as play dough.
The finished pasta dough. There weren’t any photos of the rolling out and cutting of lasagna. It got pretty hectic in the kitchen at that point.
But the lasagna-making was a satisfying experience for a guy who likes using all the kitchen tools and equipment from the stand mixer and pasta machine to the pasta cutter.
His lasagna was boiled very briefly before the layering began.
Part of the cooking lesson was also a lesson in recipe development. We looked at all the various butternut squash recipes on the Internet. Some had white sauce and some had tomato sauces. Some had ricotta and mozzarella and Parmesan. There were all kinds of meats and vegetables and Giada De Laurentiis even had crushed Amaretti cookies. After a quick inventory of our fridge, we settled on kale, caramelized onion and diced Andouille chicken sausage with mozzarella and a basic garlicky white sauce.
We were both proud of the final result and it was as good as we hoped with the sweet roasted squash and caramelized onion spiced by the Andouille sausage.
We had ripe Asian pears on the table from the farmers’ market, so the Asian Pear Tart in the Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef was the seasonal, and local-eating choice. The recipe took three hours for all the steps in the pastry crust, but the young man in the kitchen is a very patient and meticulous soul and he enjoyed the process.
With his artistic background, he also enjoyed the beautiful results.
Dessert was quite late after waiting through the chilling and freezing and baking of the pastry dough, but worth the wait. The apricot and vanilla bean scented pears caramelized in the flaky gluten-free pastry and topped with some of my mead-scented whipping cream was a dessert worth the time and effort. Quite a fancy meal for just the family.
Roasted Butternut Squash Lasagna
Ingredients
1 butternut squash, peeled, cubed and roasted
1 bunch kale, chopped and sauteed
2 cloves garlic, minced and sauteed with the kale
1 onion, sliced and caramelized in 2 Tbs olive oil
3 diced and lightly browned Andouille chicken sausages. I used Amy Lu’s from Costco
1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella
1 recipe gluten-free homemade lasagna or 1 box of Tinkyada lasagna
Bechamel sauce
Bechamel or basic white sauce
1 1/2 cups 1% milk
2 Tbs butter
2 Tbs sweet rice flour
1 tsp garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
Add sweet rice flour to melting butter, garlic powder and salt and pepper. Stir constantly over med-low heat for a minute or two until mixture thickens. Slowly whisk in the milk and continue to stir until it starts to thicken. Remove from heat.
To Assemble the lasagna:
Spread a thin layer of sauce on the bottom of a rectangular casserole dish. Add a layer of noodles, a layer of sauce, then the diced sausage and squash, and the kale and onions. Top with a sprinkling of mozzarella. Repeat with two more layers.
To make the layering easier and to clear some of the pans and clutter, I combined the sausage and squash in a pan and the onions and kale in another after they were cooked separately.
Bake covered with foil in a 350 oven for about 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake until cheese becomes lightly browned. I used the broiler at the end to get some browning on top and keep the lasagna from over-baking and drying out. Let rest for 5 or 10 minutes, then slice and serve.
For some great videos on the techniques used:
Bechamel- the classic French way
Roasting butternut squash for soup
Roasted butternut squash
Sauteed Kale a great advertisement for kale. Use his technique with the kale and garlic or use all the ingredients for a side dish. He also has gluten-free recipes on the site.
This post is part of Linda’s Gluten-Free Wednesdays where we share our best gluten-free recipes and ideas. Linda is also doing a roundup of squash recipes starting tomorrow with my version of Curried Butternut Soup. Stop by for Squash Fest and share our love for winter squash.
