Marrow and spinach lasagne

A friend of ours came round last week for a church meeting and she arrived holding a marrow! Apparently something had made it difficult for her and her husband to get to their allotment, so the courgettes they were looking forward to, had turned into marrows. I also had the lasagne sheets in the freezer left over from my pasta-making day, so I made it into a delicious lasagne. I used cottage cheese for this, which did look a bit ugly in the pan (a very lumpy cheese sauce!) but tasted good and wasn't noticeable once it's assembled. You could use ricotta, of course, but I couldn't find it in my little local supermarket. Low-fat soft cheese would also work well. This would be a good vegetarian dish if you omit the bacon.

Marrow and spinach lasagne
Serves 2–3

For the green part -
500g spinach
1/4 of a marrow, peeled and deseeded then grated (I used the trusty food processor for this)
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts

For the white "sauce" part -
2 cloves garlic
1 small red onion
3 rashers smoked bacon, chopped
1 small tub of cottage cheese
4 tablespoons of vegetable stock (or a generous sprinkle of Boullion and water - you can mix it in the pan, which saves washing up!)
1 teaspoon English mustard


fresh lasagne sheets (I used mine straight from the freezer)

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.

Finely chop the red onion and soften in a pan with some oil. Add the garlic and after about 5–8 minutes, add bacon and fry until cooked through.

Grate the marrow and defrost (if using frozen spinach) the spinach. If using fresh spinach, roughly chop it. Use half the spinach to form a layer on the bottom of the dish, then add half the marrow on top. Spinkle half of the nutmeg and half of the pine nuts on top.

Add the cottage cheese to the bacon and onion mixture, then add the stock and mustard and taste for seasoning (It was pretty salty by this point due to the bacon and stock, which seasoned the whole dish nicely).

Layer lasagne sheets on top of the marrow, then add half of the sauce and more lasagne sheets. Add the marrow again with the rest of the nutmeg and pine nuts, with another layer of lasagne and sauce, followed by the final layer of lasagne. Top it off with the rest of the spinach and the parmesan.

Place in the hot oven for 20 minutes. I have a grill in my oven so I switched it to grill at the end to get the top crispy.

Enjoy with a fresh salad!