Pea Pesto and Sausage Lasagne

11th May 2016

After a few weeks of holidays and tragedies, its about time I got back to cooking properly and not just eating on the fly. Ordering pizza and eating badly has really messed up my stomach over the last week, so I need to get back to a low gluten and high fruit and veg diet. So whilst this does have gluten pasta in the recipe, its so much better than the cheese sandwich I might have made out of laziness.

To begin I fried the sausages as they were frozen. Once they had thawed a bit I could chop them into smaller pieces to cook faster. Meanwhile, the cherry tomatoes were seasoned with salt, pepper and drizzled with oil and roasted for 15 minutes. I also started the broccoli and peas simmering to tender in a separate pan. 

The greens were combined with the sausages and the mascarpone and pesto were stirred in and heated gently to make a cheesy pesto sauce.

The milk and butter was gradually heated in another pan. The remaining mascarpone and some of the grated mozzarella was whisked in gently until a cheese sauce consistency was reached.

Next the assembly! I used half the sausage and veg mixture on the bottom, then came half the roasted cherry tomatoes and finally a layer of pasta sheets. The same was layered again to make the second tier. I totally forgot to stir in the fresh basil into the sausage and pesto mixture so I sprinkled it over the top tier before the pasta sheets. the cheese sauce was poured on the top, spread out across all the pasta, and finally topped with pine nuts and mozzarella.

This was baked for 35 minutes, which was slightly too much as the cheese had got very brown and crispy (burnt). However, it tasted amazing. It was a really interesting take on the traditional lasagne.