This is our improvisation over the mushroom-flavoured beef ragù recipe that we posted before. The story begins one fine morning when we realized that we had half a pumpkin left over from the pumpkin soup we made a week earlier. While Ying Ying decided to make pumpkin soup, I decided against it later on. Too bad the pumpkin and carrot were already baked. I remembered reading Jamie Oliver using pumpkin in one of his lasagna recipe. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the recipe with us. Oh well, what better than to improvise ourselves! Surprisingly, the lasagna turns out really good. Here is the ragù with pumpkin recipe. (Oh, and did I tell you that we only had 300 g of beef?)
Makes approx. 900 g
- 300 g minced beef
- 200 g minced pork
- 1 heaping cup (~250 g) Prego fresh mushroom flavoured sauce
- 1½ white onion, chopped roughly
- 2 shallots, smashed and minced
- 3 cloves garlic, smashed and minced
- 1 fresh tomato, diced
- Tomato sauce (to taste)
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 2-3 tbsp margarine
- 1 tsp freshly-ground nutmeg
- White and black pepper (to taste)
- Salt (to taste)
- 2 cups warm water
For the baked pumpkin
- ½ medium pumpkin
- 1 large carrot
- vegetable oil
- First prepare the baked pumpkin and carrots. Preheat the oven to 180 °C. Chop the pumpkin and carrots into large pieces (approximately 3 cm x 3 cm). Smear the baking tray with some oil and place the pumpkin (with the skin side up) and carrots on a baking tray. Bake for 35 minutes.
- When the pumpkin is done, remove the skins gently. Dice the carrots into small cubes.
- Heat the margarine in a large wok until bubbling but not brown and fry the onion. When the onions are turning soft, add garlic and shallots and fry for another 30 seconds.
- Add the minced beef and pork and fry until they are no longer pink, ensuring that there is no big lump of meat.
- Mix in the Prego sauce. Stir in tomato sauce, salt, both peppers, nutmeg and sugar. Mix thoroughly and fry for 3-4 minutes.
- Mix in 2 cups of warm water and the diced tomato.
- When the meat sauce starts to simmer, mix in chopped pumpkin and diced carrots.
- Cover the wok and stir occasionally until the water is reduced to half the volume (but still wet). Taste the ragù and adjust the seasonings as necessary. The ragù should taste a little sweet due to the pumpkin.
- Continue simmering until most of the water has been reduced, stirring more often to prevent the ragù from burning.
We find this ragù a very good match as lasagna sauce. The saltiness from the cheese sauce perfectly balance the additional sweetness from the pumpkin, while the pumpkin also provides a much better consistency for the lasagna.
Acknowledgment: This is an improvisation over our original beef ragù recipe with the pumpkin inspiration from Jamie Oliver.
