Today I thought I’d share with you a recipe I created myself a few weeks back and turns out to be a scorcher of a dish!
This is a beautiful chicken lasagne with a mint layer and roasted butternut squash inside. It’s something a little unusual, but in my experimenting, it really works. Give it a go and surprise your guests!
Ingredients (Serves 6)
- 1 x medium sized Butternut Squash
- 6 x chicken thighs
- Big handful of fresh Mint Leaves (depending on how minty you like it)
- 8 x Bacon rashers
- Cheese 100g
- Flour 40g
- Butter 40g
- chopped tomatoes 800g
- oregano to taste
- pepper
- salt
- 3 x medium cooking onions
- 1 garlic clove
- 2 chillies
- 1 pint milk
- nutmeg
- Lasagne Pasta sheets
Lasagne Filling
- To prepare the butternut squash, skin and cube it, and place in a bowl and drizzle with some olive oil and place in oven in non stick dish. Roast for 25 mins on 200c or until golden brown with a semi crispy coating.
- Chop the onions, garlic, chop the chicken into fairly small pieces, chop the chillies too.
- Put the onions & garlic into a frying pan with a little oil, fry until golden brown
- Throw in 1 heaped tablespoon of plain flour and then mix into onions then put in chicken and fry until golden brown.
- Throw in the chopped chillies and fry some more for another few minutes.
- Add the chopped tomatoes and season the mixture with the oregano, salt and pepper to taste.
- When the butternut squash is done roasting, put that in too and cover and cook for another 25 minutes on low heat.
White Béchamel Sauce
- Melt the butter in a pan and when melted, sift flour into it and mix up into a paste.
- As soon as the paste is formed, start adding milk a bit at a time and mix in thoroughly each time.
- Add a little seasoning here to taste and also a couple of pinches of nutmeg.
- Add cheese and melt all the way
- Heat up until thicken and take off the heat.
Construction
- Get a lasagne dish and start layering. Start with a filling layer and apply loose and sparse.
- Apply a layer of lasagne sheets
- Add some white cheese sauce, not too much, (leave plenty of white sauce for the topping later)
- Add filling and keep repeating this layering process until you are on the final layer
- On the final layer before you layer the last layer of lasagne, get your mint leaves and liberally create a layer of mint on top of the last layer of filling.
- Layer the last layer of lasagne
- Pour over the remaining white béchamel sauce, which there should be plenty of so you cover the whole lasagne top.
- Now finally place bacon on top with good in-between space, about 8 rashers would be nice, just to add flavour.
- Dust very liberally with crushed black pepper.
- Put into over for 30mins on 200c
There you have it! A different sort of lasagne for a more summery feel!