This dish is pure comfort food at its very best. It combines all of my favorite comfort foods, pasta, bechamel sauce, sausages and cheese and is cooked like a gratin thereby giving a delicious crusty, cheesy topping. What more could you want? It is inspired from a northern Italian recipe. In the original version, large pasta shells or conchiglioni are used and the sausage stuffing in placed in the shells but if you cannot get hold of them, feel free to use any large pasta such as penne, cavatappi, fusilli, rigatoni or even rotini.
Serves 4 to 6
Ingredients:
1 small butternut squash, peeled, seeds discarded, chopped into small cubes
2 teaspoons olive oil
10 sage leaves, chopped
6 pork sausages (I used Toulouse sausages)
1 teaspoon nutmeg
350g / 12oz pasta
50g / 2oz butter
50g / 2oz plain flour
850ml / 1 ½ pints milk
50g / 2oz parmesan, grated
100g / 4oz grated cheese (emmental, mozzarella mix)
Preparation:
Preheat the oven to 200 C / 400 F
Place the butternut in a saucepan with a little water and cook for about 10 minutes until soft
Heat the oil in a frying pan
Add the sage leaves and sizzle for about 1 minute
Remove the sausages from their skins and divide into small balls about the size of a marble or hazelnut
Add the sausage balls to the pan and fry until golden brown
Add half the butternut to the sausage mixture and set aside
Mash the remaining butternut with the nutmeg and any liquid in the pan
Cook the pasta according to package instructions
Melt the butter in a saucepan
Add the flour and stir, cook for 1 to 2 minutes
Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly
Cook for 2 to 3 minutes over medium low heat until you have a smooth, thick sauce
Add the mashed butternut, parmesan and seasoning
Spread the sauce and butternut mixture on the bottom of a large, shallow baking dish
Drain the pasta
Place the pasta on top of the sauce
Pour the sausage and sage mixture over the pasta
Scatter the grated cheeses over all
Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown
Enjoy!
Maison Travers 
This looks so yum.
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Thank you
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That sounds fabulous and those sausages look good. The Catalans do a similar type of stuffed pasta shell or galet, which they cook in a soup of stew at Christmas.
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They are delicious. My favourite sausages.
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Hello Nadia. I have been absent for a very long time battling my way out of a deep, dark despair. Happily, I am now blinking in the light of a new dawn. It is wonderful to ‘find’ you again making your enticing dishes that literally seem to spring from the screen, insisting that I must try them! I can literally taste this and smell it’s intoxicating aroma and I can tell that I am going to give it a go. Just as a by the way, the town I live in here in Massachusetts is the home of the butternut squash – honestly! And the house I live in was built on land owned by Farmer Leggett …. https://www.farmersweekly.co.za/crops/vegetables/the-strange-history-of-the-butternut/ 💫
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Dear Osyth,
I had wondered what happened to you. So pleased to hear from you. I am sorry that you have been through tough times. Hopefully it is all in the past now. Interesting that you live in the butternut squash Capital, my kind of place😃keep safe and well.
Bisous😘
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I found moving from France very hard was part of it. We are in the process of moving towards the move back sometime in the next year but I have learned not to look to far ahead and I think that will pay dividends in this very tough moment in all our lives. x
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