One pumpkin bites the dust!

It’s so colourful it just about blinds you. The camera almost ran out of orange…

Mrs J turned this one into a lantern and a lasagna.

Yes, this scrumptious looking dish is actually made with pumpkin. It’s kid friendly and not terribly hard on your wallet if you’re going to whack a pumpkin or two anyway on Halloween.

Here’s how you do it. With apologies in advance for the lack of measurements.

Mrs J sort of worked her way up from the amount of meat she was able to scrape out of the pumpkin. She had a fairly small but nicely shaped pumpkin (one actually grown for food rather than decoration). Don’t worry about getting the meat out in even bits, just get as much out as you can (while preserving your lantern shell). Throw your meat on a baking sheet and add some olive oil, onion, sliced garlic, salt and a little bit of dried sage. Top with quite a good sprinkle of brown sugar. Bake in the oven at 180-200°C for 15-20 minutes depending on how big your pieces of pumpkin are. They need to be soft through and through. Also, it’s likely you’ll get quite a lot of liquid so make sure you use a baking tray that allows you to capture that liquid.

In the meantime mix some ricotta cheese with shredded mozzarella and a bit of parmesan. You’ll need about equal (or just above) in volume of this cheese mix to the volume of pumpkin. There should be enough ricotta to make the consistency kind of like a heavy batter. Add salt, pepper, a pinch of nutmeg (just a pinch, it’s potent stuff y’all) and scrambled egg. For 4 dl of ricotta Mrs J estimates you need one egg so adjust accordingly.

When your baked pumpkin has cooled enough to handle safely, transfer everything on that baking tray to a mixer and make a nice smooth purée. Put some oil at the bottom of your lasagna dish and start with a layer of pasta. Mrs used the dried kind that doesn’t need to be precooked which was just fine and dandy. Add some pumpkin purée.

Add another layer of pasta, then some cheese mixture, then pasta, then pumpkin and so on. Mrs J managed just two good layers of each but you might want to do more. The last layer in any case should be pasta, topped with additional shredded mozzarella and parmesan. Feel free to also add gratin cheese if you have some hanging around your fridge for the top layer (Mrs J did).

Bake for 40 min to an hour. Mrs J baked hers for 40 min covered at 180°C and then for another 20 uncovered at 225° to get good colour. Add some fresh sage for decoration and serve hot.

While your lantern might look more impressive using a huge pumpkin, your lasagna will not benefit. (The big ones tend to taste like Norwegian watermelon.) So if you want to cook with your pumpkin there is a compromise to be made.

Mrs J was very pleased with both her lantern and her lasagna this year.

Happy Halloween!