Roasted Butternut Squash Lasagna

MMmmmmmm, lasagna!

This one looked and tasted delicious!  I'm not sure how fattening it was, but it tasted incredibly rich!  I've never been one for vegetarian dishes, but OMG!  You'd never even miss the meat in this dish because it is so flavourful on it's own!

I found this recipe through another blog called Oven Love.  She posted this recipe for Roasted Butternut Squash Lasagna back in October and I immediately starred it to make in the future.  Again, this was a dish I would have never made for just myself, but now that I'm living in England and I can enjoy cooking for Chris....time to make this fabulous looking dish!

I also took the time to make some home-made bread to go along with this dish.  I was at Sainsbury's recently and found a special type of flour in their bread aisle.

Being Canadian, how could I not buy this!!??

The loaf didn't rise as much as I had hoped for and it was fairly dense.  I think I'd used the wrong type of yeast...anyhow, it was still awesome!  There is nothing like freshly baked bread!

I just realized that this was the second loaf we made with this flour.  The first didn't do well, so we went and bought more.  This time I put Chris to work with the 10 minutes of kneading required (bum elbow and unfortunately kneading makes it worse).  He did a great job and this particular loaf was great!  Much better than the one I'd attempted to make a few days earlier.

I really did love this lasagna though!  I can't even say how yummy it was.  I do have another squash in the fridge at the moment, but I'm thinking I may attempt making butternut squash risotto instead.  Sounds delish too!

Vegetarian Pot Stickers & Baked Wontons

Ok, one final post before I head to bed.  Chris has a potluck lunch thing going on at work last week and he mentioned he was down on the list as bringing frozen grocery store quiche.  What??!!!  OMG!!???  You know it didn't take me long to offer to make him something much more presentable to bring in.  As I have the obstacle of few baking pans to deal with (yet I have bought cookie sheets since arriving here), I decided to make items involving wonton skins.  Little did I realize how difficult they would be to buy in small town England.   They don't sell more exotic Asian items in the grocery store here (who knew wonton skins were exotic!!??) so we would have to find a specialty store.  I knew of one shop nearby, so one day when Chris happened to finish early, he offered to drive by there on the way home from work.  They were closed....great.  I scoured the internet when he got home and found another little shop in a town about 10 miles away.  We quickly jumped in the car and raced over to the Happy Gourmet shop in Chelmsford.  I found exactly what I needed and more.  I didn't mention it earlier, but I decided to make several types of wontons. Firstly, I was making Vegetarian Pot Stickers especially for Chris's vegetarian colleague along with two other types of meat filled baked wontons.

The vegetarian ones were delicious and I'm told they were a huge hit at the potluck.  They were super simple as well.  The longest process was just assembling them...and even that didn't take all that long.

Next I made Chicken and Lemongrass wontons.  As you can see the original recipe was for steamed dumplings, but as my bamboo steamer is still in transit, I decided to bake them.  A super simple recipe again and when they were all assembled and ready to bake, I just gave them a light spritz with non-fat cooking spray.

Here's the filling for the chicken lemon grass ones.  Very easy as you can see.

Next I prepared a pork chop filling.  The recipe is called Red-Cooked Pork Chops, but it's not really anything like the red-cooked recipes I've prepared in the past.  That aside, it was delicious!  We had actually prepared porks chops according to this recipe the week before and loved it so much that I decided it would be the perfect filling for the wontons as well.  I cubed the pork and marinated it briefly in the sauce ingredients and then just sauteed the whole lot together in a medium pan.  Once I assembled all the wontons, I believe I baked them for about 12 minutes until brown.

Again, they were so easy!  What a great idea for finger food..great for any buffet, potluck or a wonderful hors d'oeuvre!  I think you could even prepare the filling ingredients days in advance and just assemble them the day of your gathering. These would definitely be an easy last minute appetizer to prepare!

Chris brought them all into work and he said everyone raved about them and gobbled them up.  *smile*  I gave myself a pat on the back for that.  I just love when my cooking goes over well!