Roasted Pumpkin Lasagna with Butter Beans

Piping hot and bubbly out from the oven, it looks "alive".

This recipe uses two ingredients that I don't normally cook with: 1. carrot - I'm ok with carrot, I just don't give much thought about cooking or eating them; 2. celery - I'm better with celery now than when I was a kid. There's this other issue with celery: they come in big packages - I don't want to be thinking what to cook with celery for 7 consecutive meals. So it's not hard to see this is a combination that I'd usually avoid. It's probably the frozen cooked butter beans that called me to this recipe, which ironically plays no part in the original recipe.

I kind of messed up the part with the roasted pumpkin and cooked butter beans. The original instruction is "Clear a spot in the bottom of the pan and add the chopped roasted butternut squash and about 1/4 of the beans with their liquid. Mash the two together with a potato masher or the back of a spoon, and then add the rest of the beans to the pot." I didn't de-froze the beans fast enough (I forgot we now have a microwave). I also think butter beans are not as easily mashed as canned cannelini beans. Therefore, after some considerable futile attempts, the butter beans remained mostly "unharmed" and intact in my recipe.

The lasagna noodle recipes that I found online seem pretty strict forward. I'm not a pasta person or I wouldn't mind investing in one of those pasta maker and make my own noodles.

I'm glad I didn't reduce the recipe and made what's enough for 6 persons. Adrian did have a little comment "look like we'll be having lasagna for a few more dinners." When I said we could give it away, he looked surprised "give it away? WHY?" Yes, the lasagna is G.O.O.D.

For the filling:

• 1/2 a large pumpkin, roasted with olive oil, salt and black pepper. Mashed.
  
• 2 carrots, peeled and diced
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• small bunch of fresh thyme, leaves picked and chopped
• small bunch of fresh oregano, leaves picked and chopped
• 2 big handful of cooked butter beans
  
• 1/4 cup white vinegar
  
• salt and pepper

1. Saute onions with salt. Add celery and carrots. Stir to coat. Cover and let cook over medium heat for 10 minutes.
   
2. Stir in thyme and oregano. Stir to coat. Cover and let cook for another 5 minutes.
   
3. Stir in garlic and fry till fragrant.
4. Add cooked butter beans and mashed roasted pumpkin.
   
5. Deglaze with white vinegar. Add some water to thin it out if necessary. Season with salt and pepper.
   

For the béchamel:

• 5 Tbsp butter
• 1/4 cup flour
• 3 cups milk, heated
  
• 2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

1. Melt butter over medium heat. Whisk in flour. Continue to whisk until the mixture turns golden brown (about 6 - 7 minutes).
2. Add heated milk, one cup at a time, stirring constantly until the mixture is smooth.
   
3. Bring it to boil and cook for another 30 seconds. Season with salt and nutmeg.

To assemble:

• filling
• bechamel sauce (set aside 1 cup for topping)
  
• 4 oz. of mozzarella cheese
• 3 oz. of ricotta cheese
• Lasagna noodles
  

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Grease a 10cm x 20cm Pyrex baking dish with butter. Mix together mozzarella and ricotta. Set aside 1/4 cup.
2. Layer from the bottom in this order: bechamel, lasagna sheet, filling, and cheese. Repeat as many times as necessary. End with 1 cup of bechamel sauce and sprinkle the top with 1/4 cup of cheese.
3. Bake in the oven for 45 minutes, until golden brown and bubbly. Cool before serving.
   

Red Chillies Butter Beans and Chickpeas

I took the recipe from 101 Cookbooks and revamped it to its entirety, almost, due to resources restriction. First off, adobo sauce from canned chipotle pepper. Never see fresh or canned chipotle pepper for sale here in Bangkok. I once read somewhere that I could substitute adobo sauce with cayenne pepper, and had been doing it a few times. Now I'm curious about this sauce. I found a homemade recipe here. The only dried chillie they sell here is either Thai chillie or red chillie. I have both but I have no idea if they are different or same. Not knowing which to use best in place of anaheim, I decided to give each type an equal chance.

Homemade Adobo Sauce

• 4 dried red chilies
• 4 dried Thai chilies
• 2 garlic gloves
• 1 TB flour
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• lime juice
  
• sea salt to taste

Roast chilies in hot pan fragrant and not burnt.

Pour in enough hot water to cover and soak for 30 minutes.

Puree chilies with soaking water. Add the rest of the ingredients and puree to a paste.

Heat a spoon of pure sesame oil. Cook paste for a few minutes until thickened. Taste and season with salt and lime juice.

The recipe mentions use of any big white beans. I saw dried butter beans in the store and despite not having heard of it before, they looked familiar enough that I picked them over haricot beans. It took 0.17 seconds for Google to come out with 670,000 search results, faster than the time I took to click on the link that sounded like the answer I was looking for. Apparently butter beans are large, flat and white lima beans. Mystery solved.

Adrian and I also have some reservation about canned tomatoes. First of all, I didn't know why anyone would buy canned whole peeled tomatoes and crushed tomatoes if it's tomatoes you need. Convenient, perhaps? Having returned from our trip in The State and France, I came to accept what my friend Dia once told me: there's no good tomatoes in Thailand. Also Sandra who once defended her love for canned tomatoes because of the consistency in quality. Like strawberry and avocado, tomatoes just don't taste as good here as they do in the West.

Summer display of tomatoes of various shapes and colors at Seattle's Sunday Farmer's Market on Broadway.

Having said that I'm still concerned about the chemical leach that claimed to happen with canned tomatoes due to acidity of the produce. So what to do? For now, I'll make myself contented making crushed or whole peeled tomatoes with local tomatoes, or, I can pay double the price for French tomatoes. NOT. So how do you make crushed tomatoes?

Throw them into hot boiling water and remove to cool running water (or iced water) once the skins start to break. Peel the skin (or not) and crush them however you like. Done.

I somehow managed to make the adobo sauce just right (newbie's luck!), and used just enough of the paste for the right amount of spiciness. The taste went well with the slightest hint of saltiness of feta, and the toasted breadcrumbs were best to have more than less!

Red Chillies Butter Beans and Chickpeas

• Dried butter beans and chickpeas, soaked overnight, cooked according to instruction.
  
• 1 big pinch of red pepper flakes
• 1 generous pinch of sea salt
  
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• Two medium-size home-crushed tomatoes
  
• 1/2 tablespoon fresh basil leaves and rosemary leaves, chopped
• 1/2 - 1 tablespoon homemade adobo sauce
• 2/3 cup kale, washed, de-stemmed, and very finely chopped
• 1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled
  
• 4 slices of whole grain French bread (process into crumbs and toast in a skillet with melted butter, or buy ready made bread crumbs)
  
• Green Pesto (Instead of cilantro pesto as suggested in 101 Cookbooks, I used every wilting-greens in the fridge: cilantro, basil and parsley, and blend them with garlic, parmesan and extra-virgin olive oil.)

1. Preheat oven at 200C.
   
2. Gently saute red pepper flakes, garlic and salt over medium heat until just fragrant. Do not brown the garlic.
3. Immediately add crushed tomatoes and herbs. Stir and cook for a few minutes.
   
4. Remove from heat and add adobo sauce. Taste and adjust with salt or more adobo sauce to your own liking.
5. Toss beans, kale and sauce together. Transfer to a baking pan. Sprinkle with feta cheese. Bake for 30 minutes or until cheese brown and beans are crusty. Remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes.
6. Top beans with toasted breadcrumbs. Drizzle with green pesto just before serving.