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Sweet potato and spinach lasagne



This is one of my absolute favourite vegetarian lasagne recipes. It's much less faff than the traditional minced beef one (which, don't get me wrong, I love too!) and is a whole lot healthier. 

To make sweet potato and spinach lasagne you will need:
3 medium-sized sweet potatoes (approximately 700g)

1 tsp of dried sage (or 4 fresh sage leaves, chopped)
2cm knob of ginger, peeled and grated
500g mascarpone cheese
2 tbsp milk
1 egg
75g toasted pine nuts
100g parmesan

70g spinach leaves

10 lasagne sheets, or enough sheets to make 2 layers of pasta (but it'll be totally dependent on the dish you're layering everything up in!)

A little bit of parmesan to grate on the top



Preheat the oven to 170°C and kick things off by peeling and dicing your sweet potatoes, pouring over enough boiled water to cover then and cooking for 10 minutes until they're soft enough to mash



In the mean time you can prepare the white sauce. Pop the sage, grated ginger and toasted pine nuts in a bowl.


Stir in the mascarpone cheese, milk, grated parmesan and egg until it's all nice and gloopy and you'd be able to spread it.

You can either buy fresh lasagne sheets, which you won't need to cook, or dried which you will. It's important to cook the dried sheets (even the ones that say 'no pre-cook necessary') as there's very little liquid in this dish and so any that there is will be soaked up by the pasta if it isn't already cooked. When boiling the sheets make sure you put plenty of oil in the water so they don't stick together and only cook a maximum of 5 at a time so you don't end up with a pasta-disaster!

The lasagne sheets take approximately 7 minutes to cook, but follow the instructions on the box if they recommend a specific time for the type you're using.

Once all the components of the lasagne are ready you can start to assemble!


Smooth half of the mashed sweet potato on the base of your dish and throw on top half of the spinach.


Layer over enough lasagne sheets to cover the vegetables.



On top of this smear over half of the white sauce...and repeat! Grate a little more parmesan on the white sauce and put in the oven for 30-40 minutes, or until the top has gone all crispy and golden.

Serve with a green salad (or some leftover spinach as I decided to!)





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