The most quintessential Southern dish of all time- Squah casserole

Like most recipes I create, this dish happens in steps, and it will take some time. But, like the others, it is well worth the effort, in fact, if you only make one recipe from this blog, make this one. The woodsy roasted mushrooms and squash match so well with the creamy leek cream soup, it is a delightful combination. And for such a rich tasting dish, you will barely believe that I had no need for mayonnaise, sour cream, or buttery crackers in this recipe, just a little bread crumbs and a single egg to hold it all together.

The steps are these: chop and roast squash and mushrooms, make creamy leek soup, mix the two with a few other ingredients, bake and enjoy.

Roasted veggies
Ingredients
1 pound mushrooms, cleaned and sliced into 8ths (I used black mushrooms but baby bellas or cremini would also be good in this)
1 small white onion, chopped
3 lbs. squash, chopped into half inch slices
2 tbsp. olive oil
a few cracks of the pepper cracker

Set oven to 375 degrees. Toss the squash and mushrooms with the olive oil and pepper, until everything is coated. Roast for 30 minutes, remove, stir and roast for another 15 to 20 minutes.
When done, set aside to cool.

Cream of Leek soup
Ingredients
2 leeks, tops removed, then sliced thin and cleaned
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tbsp. butter
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 cube mushroom bouillon
2 1/2 cup milk
1/4 all purpose flour
1 package mushroom gravy (I use road's end organics, it needs to equal one cup)

Heat the butter and olive oil in a heavy bottomed sauce pan over medium low. Once the oil is warmed and butter melted, saute the leeks and garlic slowly, for 20 minutes until the leeks are soft and fragrant and garlic golden. It will smell like heaven. In a large pyrex or microwave safe bowl, heat the mushroom bouillon and and milk together for a minute or two, until milk is very hot. Whisk vigorously to melt the bouillon cube. Set aside. Add the flour to the leeks and stir with a whisk. Cook for a couple minutes, then add the mushroom bouillon/milk mixture, continuing to whisk until the flour is completely mixed into the milk. Cook, stirring constantly for 5 minutes as the mixture thickens. Finally, pour in the mushroom gravy mix packet, and the soup should take on a think, creamy texture similar to creamy condensed soup which has been about halfway reconstituted.

Time to put it all together.
Ingredients
Roasted veggies
Creamy Leek soup
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp. mild cheese like white cheddar, Mexican quesadilla cheese or mozzarella
1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp. plain bread crumbs

Reduce oven heat to 350. In a large lightly greased casserole dish, combine the roasted veggies, creamy leek soup, egg, 1/2 cup cheese and 1/4 cup breadcrumbs. Sprinkle the remaining cheese and breadcrumbs over top of the mixture. Cover and bake for 45 minutes, until the cheese is brown and bubbly and casserole is set.

Remove from oven and let stand for 10 minutes to cool. Enjoy!

Roasted Vegetable Lasagna

You are going to love this recipe. No beautiful picture of this because I gave my most recent lasagna away. I developed this for my mom for Mother's day and she thought it was great. I promise you, this dish is delicious and worth all the time spent on it. And I will warn you, it takes a while. At least 3 hours total, although most of that is just hanging out while things cook. If you don't have time to make it all at once, I suggest making the sauce and roasting the veggies one day, and then assembling and baking on the day you plan to serve. By the way, this sauce is amazing on pasta as well if you'd rather just eat some very tasty spaghetti.

Roasted Vegetable Lasagna
This recipe has four steps: Make the sauce, roast the veggies, mix up the cheesy ricotta filling, and assemble the lasagna. You can make this easy by making the veggies and cheesy filling while the sauce cooks and then assembling and baking the lasagna.

For Sauce

Ingredients:
1/2 cup good olive oil, the best you can afford
1 and 1/2 TBS. of garlic, about 3 or 4 cloves, chopped
1 28 ounce can of crushed Italian tomatoes (I prefer Italian but use whatever you can find, and if you have some with basil and garlic in it already that's fine too)
1 TBS. balsamic vinegar

I make this in a crock pot. Add the olive oil with the crock pot set to low. Heat on low for 10 minutes and then add the crushed garlic. Let simmer for 20 minutes, or until golden. Add crushed tomatoes and balsamic vinegar. Let simmer on low for 3 to 4 hours, stirring occasionally.

While the sauce is cooking, roast the vegetables.

Roasted vegetables

Ingredients:
8 cups of vegetables of your choice, most recently I used what was in season, squash, zucchini, turnips, and spring onions- chopped into about 1/2 inch pieces
3 tsp. balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup good olive oil
2 TBS. herbes de provence or garlic and herb Mrs. Dash (depending on how fancy you want to be. Other blends would work, too, like italian seasoning, or Spicy Mrs. Dash, whatever you feel like)
Several turns of your black pepper cracker
Place veggies on a lined baking sheet and pre-heat over to 375. Cover veggies with oil, balsmic vinegar and seasonings and pepper. Mix together on the sheet well with your hands so all veggies are covered evenly with seasoning and the oil/vinegar. Bake for 20 minutes, then remove from oven and turn veggies. Bake another 20 or 30 minutes, until tender.

While the veggies roast, make the cheesy filling!

Cheesy ricotta filling

Ingredients:
1 15 ounce tub of part skin ricotta
1 15 ounce tub of part skim cottage cheese
a small bunch of fresh basil, chopped fine (this is important, please use fresh, not dried basil if at all possible)
A pinch of salt
Several cracks of black pepper

Mix all ingredients together and set aside.

Time for the big finish, put it all together and bake.

The Lasagna

Ingredients:
1 box no-bake lasagna noodles
Sauce
Roasted Veggies
Cheesy ricotta filling
2 cups shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese, divided into 1/2 cup, 1/2 cup and 1 cup measures

This is the easy part. Place a ladle full of sauce in the bottom of a 14x9 pan. Spread the sauce across the pan, add another ladle full of sauce, and keep spreading and adding a ladle of sauce (about 4-5) until the entire bottom of the pan is covered in a thin layer of sauce. Place four noodles on top of the sauce, overlapping each piece only by a millimeter or so. Carefully spread half of the cheesy ricotta filling on top of noddles, followed by half the veggies, spreading in an even, single layer over the entire thing. Sprinkle 1/2 cup of the mozzarella, and spread evenly with a few more ladles-full of sauce.

Repeat, adding more ricotta filling, veggies, cheese and sauce in the same manner. Add one final layer of noodles, and ladle on the rest of the sauce, spreading evenly and over to all edges so all the noodles are coated. Sprinkle on remaining cup of mozzarella. Cover loosely with foil, being careful not to touch the foil to the cheese and sauce.

Bake for 55 minutes on 375 degree. Let stand for 15 minutes to cool. Serve with a romaine or bibb lettuce salad with a lemon tahini or vinegrette dressing. Enjoy.