Chicken & Pumpkin Lasagne

Last night instead of making the spiral pasta dish I had planned earlier in the week I decided to use the ingredients slightly differently and since Huddo was having a long sleep in the morning, decided to make a lasagne instead. It worked out great and was so easy just to stick in the over at 5.30 for 50 minutes while I went about giving Huddo dinner and a bath.

It was a little bit of a self-made recipe but Troy loved it and Huddo had some of the mince bit with his pasta teddies for dinner.

The recipe is as follows:
The mince:
500g of chicken mince
250mL of chicken stock
Large handful of spinach leaves
3 tomatoes- diced.
3 heaped teaspoons of Barilla Pesto alla Genovese
1 clove garlic
bit of cracked pepper

Basic Bechamel sauce:
1 large tablespoon of butter
1/3 cup of flour
60g parmesan cheese
2 cups of milk
descent pinch of nutmeg

also half a butternut pumpkin sliced
lasagne sheet
handful of breadcrumbs
handful of freshly grated parmesan (got to love my measurements sorry if they are a bit vague)

Method:
1)Cook mince and the glove of garlic (crushed) in a large saucepan with a dash of olive oil.
2)Add the chicken stock, tomatoes, spinach leaves, pesto, pepper. Cook on high and stir until boiling. Turn stove down to low heat and allow to simmer while preparing bechamel. If you have the time just leave it for an hour or two. I left mine on low for an hour and a half.
(note: If you want to leave it on low for an hour, no need to start bechamel until about 10 minutes to go and prep pumpkin in this time too.)

3)With a different smaller saucepan melted butter until frothing/bubbling...add flour and whisk constantly until you have a smooth paste that is bubbling around the edges. Take off eat and gradually stir in milk then return to heat, add parmesan and nutmeg. Stir continuously until sauce thickens and coats the back of your wooden spoon. Take off heat.
Also mince should now be ready. Now something I find with Chicken mince is that it doesn't break up as nicely as beef mince does so you can use this mixture as it, however I put the contents of the saucepan into the food processor for 10 seconds and blended it a bit more.

4) Preheat oven to 180 oC. In a deep tray, lightly grease the tray with some olive oil first.
5)Cover the bottom of the tray with lasagne sheets and a layer of pumpkin of top of them.
6)Pour some of the bechamel sauce over the pumpkin, use a tablespoon to work through the sauce so it covers the pumpkin.
7)Do a layer of lasagne sheets
8)Pour a layer of mince and once again spread with a separate tablespoon.
9)Do a layer of lasagne sheets.
10)Now I found that I didn't have much of the mince and bechamel left (so I put them in a pot together and stirred up), back to the tray I did a layer of pumpkin, then covered it in the mince/bechamel mix.
11)Finally sprinkled a handful of breadcrumbs and a handful of parmesan over the top.
12)Place in oven for 5o minutes.
Oh yes....yummmmmmm! ...(and I wonder why I gained a little weight this week)...loving food this much isn't d0ing me any favours.