Another lovely Chelsea Winter recipe. Light and tasty, a nice change from meaty bolognese.  This pumpkin and chicken lasagne is made a bit more special today using fresh homemade pasta that Miss 14 helped to make.

Being pasta making novices, we were inspired to try making our own, knowing there was a thermomix guided fresh pasta recipe that would probably be easy and also seeing pasta machines were 50% off at Stevens. I bought the masterchef one for NZ $60 which seemed like a bargain and was super excited to try this out. After a couple of very average attempts in the past few days, dough was too sticky and not knowing how to operate the machine properly, the pasta was clumping and difficult to work with. Today I’m hoping for success.  Having a teenager with confidence, who’s watched junior masterchef for years, we got it this time. Miss 14 successfully made three pasta sheets.  Rested pasta dough for 30mins instead of the 15mins recommended in the guided recipe because many of the experts seemed to quote this being standard and floured the sheets in between rolling.

Yippee! Making the sheets turned out to be very simple, and the only change we would make is to 1.5  x the guided recipe for a large sized lasagne dish and not roll out as thinly, number 3 thickness instead of number 2. The homemade pasta was beautiful, paper thin, light and fresh.. To adapt Chelsea’s recipe for thermomix , we  cooked bolognese base sauce in TM bowl at the time as steaming chicken and pumpkin in the Varoma above. Added cooked chicken back into sauce then added spinach to wilt. Then made bechemal sauce in TM bowl. Saves time, no pan frying or oven roasting pumpkin and chicken and steaming makes the dish quite light with no extra oil added. Layered up the lasagne and baked for 35 minutes.

Pumpkin and Chicken Lasagne adapted for thermomix 

• Place 4 cloves  garlic and one whole onion in TM bowl, Chop 4 sec, speed 7.
• Add 30g olive oil sauté 4 min, 120c, speed 2
• Add 1 TB of oregano, 3 tsp of rosemary, 1 TB balsamic vinegar, 2 cans of crushed tomatoes, 3 TB tomato paste, 1.5c chicken stock   ( NB I left out red wine  because there seemed to be too much sauce but you can judge consistency in the TM bowl after cooking and add water/wine if too thick. Or another better option would be to use TM chicken stock paste with wine leaving out water.  Possibly because there’s less evaporation using the Thermomix instead of stove  )
• Add 600g peeled and diced 2cm pumpkin pieces to Varoma tray  and add 600g chicken thighs halved to varoma dish.  Place Varoma dish and tray on top of  sauce in TM bowl.

  

• Cook bolognese, chicken and  pumpkin at same time using TM bowl and Varoma together 25 mins, Varoma temp, speed 1.
• Remove Varoma after checking pumpkin is soft, mash pumpkin roughly and set aside. Add chicken to TM bowl and shred chicken in the sauce 5 seconds, reverse speed 4.  
• Add 2 cups of spinach leaves to chicken sauce in TM bowl, wilt 5 mins, 100c, reverse speed stir. Set aside.
• Rinse TM bowl. Make guided bechemal sauce using either  the bechemal guided part of the guided lasagne recipe  cook all bechemal sauce  ingredients 12 mins /100c/ speed 3. (1000g milk , 80g butter, 100g flour, 1 tsp salt, 2 pinches nutmeg )or the separate guided bechemal (500g milk). Depends if you want less or more white sauce. We used 1000g  milk this time. Set aside.
• Layer lasagne:- pasta sheet, chicken sauce, bechemal alternately placing the smashed pumpkin in between one of the layers finishing with bechemal on top.
• Grate a cup of cheese in thermomix and sprinkle over top.
• Bake 180c for 35 minutes, grill a few minutes to brown top. Rest  for 10 minutes to allow it to set before cutting.

Thanks Chelsea Winter for another reliable tasty recipe. http://chelseawinter.co.nz/chicken-pumpkin-lasagne/