Roasted Butternut Squash & Ricotta Rotini

A friend served a dish similar to this at a dinner party recently, and I thought it would be a good way to break out of my recent curry/soup rut. I modified a few recipes I found online, notably this one. Since I'm not Watching my Weight, I went full fat!

My recipe was more like this:

Halve and seed butternut squash; rub with a little olive oil, sprinkle with kosher salt, and roast in 400º oven until tender (for mine, around an hour).

Cook 12 ounces of whole wheat rotini in salted water while making a garlic bechamel sauce (4 teaspoons of butter and 4 of flour cooked with 4 minced cloves of garlic [this was a bit too much, actually] to form a roux; add 2 cups soy milk, a dash of nutmeg, and some dried thyme).

Peel and cube squash; toss with drained pasta and sauce. Pour into large casserole, dot generously with ricotta, sprinkle with grated/flaked asiago, and bake in 375º oven until brown and bubbly (about 25 minutes).

I thought it was pretty delicious, though it is heavy on the fiber, so it's not for the faint of digestion. Aside from the cheeses, it's also pretty cheap; it's hard to beat squash (and here, you can buy local even in the warehouse stores!) for nutritional value on the dollar. I rarely go to the trouble of roasting a butternut squash (after all, they can be nuked so easily!), but they are awfully nice that way, and easy if not exactly fast; once roasted, the skin comes right off.