Description
A perfect pasta dish for fall
Ingredients
Scale
- 1 15 ounce can pumpkin (or if you are really ambitious ~1.5–2 cups fresh puree)
- 2 cups milk of your choice (I used unsweetened soy milk)
- 3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
- 7 roasted garlic cloves (directions for roasting in the recipe)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- generous amount of freshly ground black pepper
- pinch cayenne
- pinch nutmeg
- 4 leeks
- 3 shallots
- extra virgin olive oil
- 4–5 slices whole grain bread (I used sprouted whole grain from our local bakery-delicious!)
- 1 handful fresh sage (I found some locally grown organic sage at our grocery store :-))
- 1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika
- 2 (12 ounce) boxes whole wheat pasta
Instructions
- First, you’ll want to roast your garlic. This can be done ahead of time. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Take an entire bulb and cut the top off, like this:
- Drizzle some olive oil over the top and rub it in to ensure the top of every clove is covered. Loosely cover with foil.
- Put it in the oven like this (no pan needed) and let it roast for 30 minutes. The roasted cloves will slip right out of their skin with a little squeeze. You can save the extra cloves for another recipe. I’ll be using mine to make a half-recipe of this roasted garlic bean dip.
- Prepare your pasta according to the package directions. Rinse with cold water and set aside.
- Wash the leeks and cut off the tops that look like silly hair. Thinly slice the white part and a little of the light green portion. Peel and thinly slice the shallots. In a large skillet, heat ~1-2 tablespoons olive oil over medium low heat. Add the leeks and shallots and cook, stirring them around occasionally, until they are brown and caramelized, about 20 minutes. I sprinkled them with a little sea salt half way through their cooking time.
- They will start out looking like this:
- And will turn into this:
- While the leeks are cooking, prepare the breadcrumbs and pumpkin sauce.
- For the breadcrumbs, tear the bread and sage leaves into pieces and put into the food processor. This is how much sage I used:
- I could have probably used a little more. Add the paprika to the food processor and pulse until your have coarse crumbs.
- Melt 2 tablespoons organic butter (or other fat of your choice) in a small skillet pan. Add the breadcrumbs and stir them to coat. Allow them to toast for a few minutes and then remove from the heat.
- For the pumpkin sauce, add your pumpkin puree, milk, cheese, roasted garlic cloves, cayenne, nutmeg, salt, and pepper to a blender or food processor (I used the blender because I wanted a smoother texture). Blend until smooth.
- To assemble the dish, mix the pasta with the sauce and place it in a large rectangular ceramic or glass casserole dish. Top with a layer of the leek/shallot mixture and finally the breadcrumbs. Sprinkle with a little more parmesan cheese, if desired. Cook in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. I covered the dish with foil for the first 20 minutes and then uncovered it for the remaining 10 minutes.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 80 minutes
- Category: main meal
- Cuisine: American / Italian
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 serving
- Calories: 631
- Sugar: 13.6g
- Sodium: 755mg
- Fat: 13.2g
- Carbohydrates: 112g
- Protein: 29.8g