Pumpkin "lasagne"

Here's one that went down really well with all the family, despite them looking at it suspiciously in the beginning! I got the idea from my sister's brilliant squash gratin, which I had intended to do, but ended up doing this instead.

I started out by carving up a pumpkin so I had lots of slices, half of which went on the bottom of a dish like so...

Then I set about making the sauce, which entailed chopping onions and tomatoes and cooking them in a little oil with some garlic like this.

The stuff on the tray there at the side is the other half of the pumpkin, which I was simultaneously turning into pumpkin purée since the oven was on. Sunday afternoon is becoming the weekly food processing time, as I take advantage of the fact there's bog all else to do, to get done in advance anything that'll make things quicker and easier during the week. In this instance I was baking the pumpkin and using the heat from the oven to rise the dough for some bread on the stove-top, then cooking the bread in the already-hot oven while I made this sauce. I'm not always this organised, but it feels good when I am!

So anyway, once the stuff in the pan had softened a bit, I threw in some chopped apples and let that cook on a low heat while I was scooping the baked pumpkin flesh off the skin to whizz in the blender. Then I added some plain fava beans (from a can), half a tube of tomato purée and a glass of water, and mixed it all in like so:

Once that had started to bubble through, I tasted it and seasoned accordingly - I put in a beef oxo cube (though that could be a veg one to make the dish veggie or just skipped altogether to make it vegan), a bit of balsamic vinegar, half a teaspoon of salt, one teaspoon each of dried oregano and thyme and loads of pepper. This is just what I felt like it "needed" as I tasted it, but it could've been anything.

I actually bought that vinegar in Italy when I drove to Florence and back with my good buddy Wayne a few years ago, on 3 tanks of diesel. I bought so much of it that it's been lasting me all this time, and every time I use it I smile to remember the adventures we had on that particular trip! I'm on my last bottle though, so perhaps (oh darn!) we'll have to go over there again ;)

Once I was happy with the seasoning, I spread the lot out on top of the pumpkin:

Then (and again, skip this bit if you've got non-carnivores present at table) I took some corned beef slices and made a layer of those over the sauce, then grated some Just Jane cheese (any cheese would do, this is just what I had) over that, finished off with the rest of the pumpkin slices and baked it all at 180°C for half an hour. It came out like this:

And as I say, the kids looked askance at it to begin with, but once they tucked in they kept coming back for more helpings (as did I), because it was absolutely delicious!