Waffling Leftovers: Autumn Vegetable "Lasagna"

Yup, another installment of Waffling Leftovers, my never ending quest to put random leftovers into a waffle iron, and see what happens (you can read all about my previous adventures here!).

This one was inspired by other successful versions featuring Italian food and casseroles, in particular, lasagna and potato gratin, the former of which is quite successful, the later of which ... not so much.

This was in the "eh" category of success for me.

The Original: Autumn Vegetable "Lasagna".

The original was something our chef's dubbed "lasagna", but was gluten-free, contained no noodles of any sort, and was vegetarian.  Oh, and had no red sauce nor mozzarella.  So if you expect lasagna to contain 1) beef, 2) pasta, 3) red sauce, 4) mozzarella ... um ... yeah, not lasagna really.  It was offered specifically to meet some dietary constraints, alongside a traditional beef/noodles/marinara/cheese version.

It was was an autumn inspired Italian bake, with slices of butternut squash serving the purpose of the lasagna noodles, Alfredo sauce instead of marinara, a slew of other veggies (spinach, mushrooms, fancy peppers), and, plenty of herbed ricotta.

It was fairly delicious when it was served, hot and bubbling, and loaded with the creamy rich alfredo sauce and soooo much ricotta.  Very rich, but filled with so many veggies that it also didn't feel that decadent.

The Leftovers: Autumn Vegetable "Lasagna".

Of course we had leftovers, and, after trying some cold ("eh", is my official review), I decided to have some fun.

Sure, I knew that the reason lasagna waffles so well is the noodles themselves, and I knew potato gratin didn't work all that well, and this was more like potato gratin ... but I still wanted to try.

Leftovers in the iron.

I tried a fairly small glob to test, into the waffle iron at a fairly standard 350*, and then got to making the rest of my meal.

I went to check on it after I started hearing plenty of sizzling sounds.

Uh ... "waffle"?

Once I opened the lid, I saw that it had quickly spread out.  This was fine, but given the small amount I had put in, meant that it didn't have any waffle shape at this point.

I let it go a while longer, and then set to extracting it.  It took more work than usual to remove.  It just came out in chunks of rubble, again, this can be fine, a waffle shape isn't really necessary.  The bits were crispy, they were sorta cheesy, and were ... fine, but it just wasn't particularly compelling this way.  And did I mention, it was a pain to extract?  

I decided to heat up another batch more traditionally in the oven, mostly because I was lazy and didn't want to deal with cleaning up even more mess, but I think it would work much better with a thicker slab.