“Kürbisfest 2024? Didn’t you buy new pumpkins this year?”
Yes, but somehow every time I said, “Hey, I want to make the pumpkin lasagna” I heard, “no, make real lasagna”, as if a layered dish of cheese and flat noodles isn’t real lasagna. The cup of purée I froze specifically to make this recipe fell down to the back of the freezer, behind the spinach and peas.
But I finally got my chance! I’m temporarily avoiding tomato-based meals for medical reasons (four weeks until I’m back on the Bolognese, baby!) so there was no pushback. Bonus, I got to use my copycat American sausage recipe.
“Pumpkin lasagna” is sort of a misnomer. This is a white lasagna with that bit of purée mixed into the Béchamel sauce. German recipes mix diced pumpkin into the meat mixture, or replace the meat with the pumpkin entirely. But they also use tomato, so I’ll try that later…
And if you like white lasagna with sausage, you will love this.
A modification to the recipe that I made right away: I thawed and drained four ounces of frozen spinach instead of chopping and cooking a giant pile of fresh spinach. Saves not only time, but also money; a 500g box of frozen spinach on sale runs about the same as big bag of fresh spinach and there’s no pressure to use it all up before it turns fuzzy.
The other mod was using less onion and no garlic for medical reasons; I cannot recommend this as it severely damages the flavor. In the future I am all in on the garlic.
A modification I will make going forward: 250g of ricotta instead of the 420g in the recipe. I assume this amount came from the standard size of a tub of ricotta in US supermarkets. Tubs here are 250g, the leftover ricotta was annoying, and the ratio of ricotta to other components was too large for us.
I also had more sauce than fit in my 8″x”8 purple dish, which led to a drier final dish. Reducing the interior cheese might help.
I was a little concerned it would be too soupy with all that sauce, but after letting it rest for 15 minutes, it sliced up nice. It’s a bit heavy, so put a green salad next to it.
A good start; now that I know how it works I will make it again with my own modifications and extra garlic. So much garlic.
