Skip to main content

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!)





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Beetroot soda bread

This is a super-simple loaf to make when you don't want to wait hours for it to prove. I love the pink-hue you get from adding beetroot to this loaf. It is a good loaf to make to use up the dregs of bags of flour.  Beetroot soda bread Makes 1 loaf 300g beetroot (I used vacuum packed) 1 tsp fennel seeds 100ml plain full-fat yogurt 400g flour (I used 300g plain white and 100g wholemeal flour) 1 tsp sea salt 2 tsp baking powder 50g seeds (I used sesame) Preheat the oven to 220C. Puree the beetroot with the fennel and yogurt in a food processor until smooth. Mix the flour with the sea salt, baking powder and seeds. Fold the liquid beetroot mixture through this. As it comes together you can form into a ball with your hands but do not work too much or the finished loaf will be tough. Scatter some flour on a baking tray and place your ball of dough on top. You can add some more seeds to the top. Dust with flour and cut a deep cross into the top of...

Frozen yogurt breakfast bowl

I feel as if Instagram and Pinterest are awash with photos of breakfast bowls containing ingredients I just can't get my hands on in Wales (mail order acai berries anyone?) I did want to jump on the trend bandwagon however and so have been enjoying frozen yogurt breakfast bowls instead (sprinkled with some  homemade granola of course - this batch has cashews rather than ginger in though).  I make this in my smoothie maker - anything with the ability to blitz frozen fruit will do. I can thoroughly recommend this as a breakfast to get you kick-started in spring! To make 1 portion of frozen yogurt breakfast bowl you will need: A handful of frozen berries - the major supermarkets do this really well 1 banana 1 tablespoon of greek yogurt A splash of milk From experience of multiple attempts at this, you need to order the ingredients in the blender so that the banana and yogurt are nearest the blade (to create a kind of paste) with the frozen berries ...

Chilli chocolate birthday cake

On Wednesday it was my lovely friend Danny's birthday. I was invited to spend a long weekend with him and my favourite person, Emily, in Swansea. Danny's only request for his birthday cake was that it was "new flavours", which led to me and Emily baking Danny a chilli chocolate cake until 1am on Saturday morning.  Little duckling sheltering from the Welsh weather The cake was enjoyed on Saturday evening with everyone and it was super - the chilli isn't spicy at all but just gives a depth to the chocolate flavour that makes the cake taste extra special. The icing doesn't have any chilli in either so it just makes for a lovely celebration cake! It's important to use a good quality chocolate with a high cocoa content as it is so much more delicious than a cheap slab of chocolate; this cake deserves that sort of quality. The recipe is based upon one you bake in a  Le Creuset  but we instead baked it in a cake tin and it turned out perfectly. By al...