An amazing autumn lasagne. I love mushrooms, I cook with them all year, but I love them best in autumn. I got a whole bunch of mushrooms from the farmers market: Shiitake, chestnut mushrooms and a 3rd one of which I forgot the name, just make sure you choose mushrooms that keep their bite and aren’t too fragile.
This dish is easy to make but asks for a bit of organisation, see my notes below the recipe on how I recommend to work.
Mushroom Lasagne with Balsamic Glazed Onions, Spinach and Lemon Ricotta
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
Loading...Ingredients
- Mushroom ragout
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp butter
- 750 g mushrooms of choice (for example chestnut mushrooms), sliced
- 100 g dried shiitake
- 3 tbsp flour
- 300 - 400 ml stock (vegetable, mushroom or chicken)
- Other ingredients
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp butter
- 3-4 white onions
- Good pinch of salt
- 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 500 g ricotta
- Zest of 1 lemon
- 50 g parmesan cheese, finely grated
- 500 g spinach, roughly chopped
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 packet fresh lasagne leaves (± 250 g)
Instructions
To speed things up it's best to work with 2 frying pans, see notes on how I worked.
The balsamic glazed onions
Halve the onions and slice into rings.
Heat olive oil and butter in a frying pan, add the onions and a good pinch of salt. The salt will help extract the moisture from the onions and help caramelise better.
Sauté on low heat until caramelised and brown, stir now and then with a wooden spoon.
All you need is a bit if patience, this will take about 25 minutes.
When happy with the colour and consistency (the onions should be a bit jammy), deglaze the pan with a splash of balsamic vinegar, let bubble for 30 seconds, remove from the heat and set aside.
The mushroom ragout
Soak the shiitake in hot water.
Heat olive oil and butter in a frying pan and add the mushrooms. Make sure the pan isn't too crowded or they'll steam instead of sauté, this means you'll need to do this in batches or use 2 pans (see notes).
Don't stir the mushrooms too often, let them sauté on medium heat on one side until browned and then stir so they can brown on another side (stirring them too much will release their moisture which will evaporate and dry them out, by doing it this way the mushrooms will keep their moisture and als have a nicely browned layer). This will taek about 15 minutes per batch.
When happy with the colour and texture add the all the mushrooms into one pan.
Drain the shiitake mushrooms (keep the water), remove the stems and slice the rest. Add them to the mushrooms.
Sprinkle the flour over the mushroom mix, stir well so all the mushrooms are coated.
Let cook for 1-2 minutes, so the flour cooks through.
Deglaze the pan with 300 ml stock and stir will, the sauce will thicken quickly.
Add a few tablespoons of the shiitake liquid for extra flavour and keep stirring until your desired consistency.
The spinach and ricotta mix
Add the ricotta into a large bowl, season well with pepper and salt, grate in the parmesan cheese and the the zest of 1 lemon.
Sauté the spinach on some olive oil and mix with the balsamic glazed onions.
The assembly
Preheat the oven to 200°C.
Brush some olive oil onto a baking dish and start layering: 1/3 spinach onion mix, lasagne leaves, 1/3 ricotta mix, lasagne leaves 1/3 mushroom ragout. Repeat with all the ingredients ending with a layer of one of the ingredients (so not just the pasta).
Grate over some parmesan cheese and place in the oven.
Bake for 35 - 40 minutes until nice and browned and cooked through.
Notes
- To save time this dish needs a little bit of planning, it's best to work with 2 frying pans. I used the following planning:
- One pan: start with the onions, this will take 25 minutes.
- 2nd pan: sauté the spinach and when done set aside, this will take about 5 minutes.
- While onions are cooking prep the mushrooms and the ricotta mix.
- Start sautéing half of mushrooms in the pan the 2nd pan that has come free, this will take about 15 minutes.
- When onions are done, add these to the spinach and use this pan for the rest of the mushrooms.
