(Veggie quesadillas that I made as part of my cupboard cook up before I moved back up here, mushrooms, beans, spices, passata to bind and three different kinds of cheese. Bliss.)

Speaking of sweet potato, I’ve long been a bit wary of it due to only really eating it as an ingredient in sub-standard veggie burgers – grated up and tasteless – but after using it in the mash for the excellent Lentil and Bean cottage pie, I decided that I ought to give it another proper go. So I have a Lorraine recipe for Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Lasagne and I love squash so that seemed a safe enough bet. One of my pet hates with veggie lasagne recipes is that they often use vegetables that don’t stand up to the cooking process, so you end up with mushy goo or lumps of uncooked veg. Or they throw out the pasta entirely and replace it with aubergine. Which is just, not lasagne anymore. Lasagne substitute for gluten intolerant people it may be, even a nice layered vegetable bake if you like aubergine, but not actual lasagne. This recipe side steps the issue of cooking the pasta and the veg at the same time, instead you pre-cook your squash and sweet potato first so they can then be mashed together (making a nice consistent texture), then part cook your lasagne sheets, add in an extra layer of spinach and only bake for long enough to finish off the pasta, cook the spinach enough that its tender but still intact and get everything else nice and hot. It falls apart a bit more than some meat varieties do – though I always bulked my mince out with beans or mushroom and broccoli – but not impractically so, as the veg mash holds together pretty well so gives it some stability. It tastes amazing too. I normally put mozzarella or smoked cheese on the top of my lasagne, and while I do think the Parmesan works well here I’ll probably use a mixture in the future. Though talking about the Lentil and Bean cottage pie, I might try adding passata to the filling of that recipe and see if that works as veggie lasagne filling…
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