Pumpkin Lasagna by Chef Robert Irvine

This is the first Robert Irvine recipe I've tried.  It's pumpkin time of year and this sounded good.

I scanned the recipe, printed it out and made a list of what I would need at the grocery store.  Earlier this evening I wanted to read the recipe again and rather than finding the printed copy I just looked it up online again, read through it, thought I knew what I needed to do.

Well, apparently there are two versions of this recipe, both Robert Irvine, both with nearly the same ingredients, but fairly different preparations.  And of course the one I read right before starting dinner, wasn't the one I printed.  The one I printed was on my recipe stand in the kitchen waiting to be made.  The one I read was in my head when I started prepping.  I didn't realize there were two recipes until I went to check the printed one only to find out in that recipe the zucchini is cubed.  In the other recipe it's thinly sliced.  I'd thinly sliced the zucchini!

Both recipes start with sauteing onions and garlic in olive oil until they are translucent.  The sausage is added and browned then the zucchini.

I brought up the second recipe and found that even though the ingredients were close, the preparation was quite different.  While the sausage and zucchini were cooking I started the sauce.  In the version I printed, it wasn't specifically stated to use herbs in the sauce, it was suggested in the text of the recipe, but not in the ingredient list.  The second one specifically stated to use fresh basil, fresh parsley and dried oregano.  Of course, no fresh basil in the house!

In the version I had printed and already started, you simmer tomato sauce with red wine (and it suggested to add herbs if you like).  I had that simmering when I found the second recipe.  While the red wine and tomato mixture smelled wonderful, the sauce, I thought, over powered the subtlety of the pumpkin.  In the alternate version, the wine is added to the sauteed onion and sausage mixture until reduced by half, which sounds much better to me!

The pumpkin is strained in one version, in the other it isn't.  The pumpkin isn't mixed with the cheese in one version, it is in the other and the layering was a bit different as well.  Here's how I did it.  First a layer of sauce.

Next a layer of noodles.  I made fresh noodles yesterday so I used those.

Next a layer of the sausage mixture is added.

The pumpkin and cheese mixture is layered on top of that.

This is then repeated with the remaining ingredients with the final layer being just sauce and cheese.

Bottom line, I think the second version sounds much better than the one I made.  That being said, the lasagna wasn't bad.  It wasn't fabulous, but it wasn't bad.  I didn't get a lot of pumpkin flavor but I think some of that might have been because the wine flavor was so overpowering in the tomato sauce.

Would I make it again?  Maybe.  Definitely differently!