Skillet Butternut Squash and Italian Sausage Lasagna

Skillet Butternut Squash and Italian Sausage Lasagna

This is the ultimate one-pot dish for many reasons. Don't you just love a dish you can cook in one pan, with minimal fuss. There is no need to even cook the lasagna noodles. This goes for any lasahna dish as long as there is enough sauce to submerge the noodles enough to cover them during the cooking process. The ingredients for the lasagna are cooked in a fry pan, then layered in the same pan and baked in the oven until browned and bubbly. With my new work schedule of working 6 days a week for the next year, one pot dishes like this that can be whipped up with minimal fuss are more than welcome. Add a tossed salad and a slice of garlic toast and dinner is served.

I am submitting this recipe to Presto Pasta Nights which has been the baby of Ruth over at Once Upon a Feast for over 5 glorious years. Whenever we feel the urge for some pasta we can go over to her site and have years of entries from all over the world to choose from, from pasta salad to lasagna to Pho. There is a pasta for every season, every ingredient and every taste. All of these delicious pasta dishes have been submitted by all of you!!!  Ruth says, " Every week food bloggers photograph and write about their latest pasta creation… if it’s for breakfast, lunch or dinner; served hot or cold; spicy or sweet; from appetizers to mains to desserts." This week the event is being hosted by Kirsten of From Kirsten's Kitchen to Yours.

Back to the Future....

Over four years of blogging I have found many wonderful recipes to share on these pages. Some from my own kitchen, some from your creative blogs and web sites, and some from well known celebrities and chefs. I have been feeling a little nostalgic and was browsing these very pages just the other day, creeping back to the very beginning in 2006 when More Than Burnt Toast was in it's infancy and no more than "knee high to a grasshopper". We all have those stellar recipes from when we first started when we were lucky enough to find one comment and have maybe one reader; in my case even before I was taking photos of the dishes I prepared. My other motivation for reconnecting with the past is to create uniform formatting on this blog and this is a fun way for me to revisit past posts.

So here are a couple of flashback recipes from the very first baby steps here at MTBT with...

Hotel Grand Bretagne Moussaka
Valli's Greek Wraps
Wild Rice Salad with Feta
Panko Crusted Chicken Lollipops
Spinach and Red Cabbage Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette

**Butternut Squash Skillet Lasagna**

a recipe from the More Than Burnt Toast Kitchen

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 yellow onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
1 lb. mild Italian sausage, casings removed
2 cups tomato passata (sauce)
1/4 cup vodka or wine
2 tablespoons pesto
1 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
9 dried lasagna noodles, cooked al dente
3 lb. butternut squash, neck portion only, peeled and sliced into wide, thin sheets
1 cup mozzarella, grated

Position a rack in the lower third of an oven and preheat to 400°F.

In a large nonstick fry pan over medium-high heat that can also be used in the oven, warm the olive oil. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and translucent, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic, salt and pepper and cook for 30 seconds. Transfer to a bowl.

In the fry pan over medium-high heat, cook the sausage, breaking it into small pieces, until browned and cooked through, about 8 minutes. Drain the sausage on paper towels, then add to the onion mixture.

In the same frying pan cook the tomato passata for 5 minutes, add the pesto and stir. With a ladle remove 2/3 of the sauce to a bowl to be used in layering your skillet lasagna.

To assemble the lasagna,  top the remaining sauce in the skillet with a single layer of noodles. Top with more sauce sauce, sausage, a layer of squash slices and mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. Repeat the layering of sauce, sausage, Parmesan and mozzarella cheese and squash 5 times, replacing the squash layer with a layer of noodles after every 2 layers of squash. Top with the remaining sauce and the remaining mozzarella and Parmesan.

Transfer the pan to the oven and bake until the lasagna is browned and bubbly, about 45 minutes. Sprinkle with the 1 tablespoon parsley. Let the lasagna stand for 15 minutes before slicing.

 Serves 4

You are reading this post on More Than Burnt Toast at http://morethanburnttoast.blogspot.com. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to the author and or owner of More Than Burnt Toast. All rights reserved by Valerie Harrison.