Baked Pasta with Cheese

Baked Pasta with Cheese

Fill a large pot with salted water to boil.

Heat oven to 375F.

Pasta – Fresh (cooks in 4-5 mins) or dried (average about 9-12 minutes al dente) Make sure water is salted when boiling pasta.

For this recipe I used about 2 cups of dry pasta.

Sauce

Make a simple white sauce (Béchamel) if you do not have onion, bay leaves and cloves to add to the milk do not worry. If you have a little nutmeg add that but again if not, don’t worry.

Heat on LOW heat about 1 ½ cups milk – can use 1% or 2% or mixture of lower fat and higher fat milk; obviously the higher fat makes it taste richer and creamier. The milk will not take long to heat. When milk is hot (you will see steam coming off the top), remove the pot and remove the onion, bay leaves and cloves if added.

Grate your cheese (or cut into small chunks as long as it is in smaller pieces to melt easily). I like it cheesy and usually add about a cup to the sauce.

This is a preference of taste you can use a variety of cheeses whatever you like. In this particular recipe I used marble, old cheddar and some chive Boursin cheese as that is what was readily available at the time.

For the cheese sauce (Mornay) in another pot melt on LOW heat about 2 tbsp. of butter (or if you are short space / pots simply pour the hot milk into a bowl or pitcher and use the same pot to make the sauce).

Add about 2 tbsp. of flour and mix constantly to blend the melted butter and flour to a paste then add the hot milk and the grated cheese and stir continuously on LOW heat to thicken (a few minutes).

Season with some pepper.

The sauce will likely not require much salt if you have used salted butter as well as the salt in the cheese; taste the sauce before seasoning with salt.

Drain the pasta, pour into the casserole dish and pour the cheese sauce on and mix to cover all the pasta.

In a small frying pan melt about 1 tbsp. butter and add about ½ cup of breadcrumbs to coat the crumbs.

Sprinkle the buttered crumbs onto the pasta and bake uncovered in oven about 20 minutes. The breadcrumbs will be brown and the pasta will be bubbling.

Let it cool about 5-10 minutes before serving.

This recipe is very versatile and easy to add other ingredients:

Cooked meat (ground beef, chicken, turkey, pieces of ham or bacon etc.)– About 1/2 cup to 1 cup of cooked meat can be added at the stage of mixing the pasta and sauce before baking.

Chopped tomatoes may be added prior to baking as well.

Serve with salad, garlic toast or fresh bread.

BON APPETIT!!!!!!!!

MB