This courgette and mushroom pasta bake is an easy midweek family meal that will make you fall in love with vegetables all over again.
It’s a simple dish with roasted vegetables, cheese, a bechamal sauce and pasta. By roasting the vegetables you get a wonderful sweetness and the courgettes are perfect for spring time meal.
Ingredients – serves four
- A courgette – diced
- 400g mushroom, cleaned and ripped up
- two banana shallots (or one onion) finely chopped
- 4 cloves of garlic
- A handful of basil
- Handful of grated cheese
- 400g pasta – macaroni or penne work well
- 20g butter
- 2 tbsp plain flour
- 2 pints milk
- Breadcrumbs – blend your own preferably
- Roasting dish
- Saucepan
- Rubberised whisk
Method
- Put the oven on at 180c
- Prepare the courgette, mushrooms and shallots and add to the roasting dish with the garlic cloves.
- Add 2 tbsp oil, I use rapeseed, and mix through
- Put in the oven for 30 mins, turning halfway.
While roasting make the bechamel.
- Add butter to a saucepan on a medium heat, once it’s melted add the flour and whisk together, this should form a roux (it looks like a fluffy paste).
- Take off the heat and add the milk a splash at a time whisking to combine before adding the next splash.
- Once it becomes more fluid you can add the milk in bigger slugs
You probably need to turn the veg and put the kettle on for the pasta
- Now put back on the heat and keep stirring with the whisk, if you don’t you’ll get a sludge at the bottom.
- Put the pasta on for 5mins
Everything should be ready at once so get the vegetables out of the oven, drain the pasta and turn off the heat under the sauce:
- Remove the garlic cloves, remove the skins and put the garlic back in the tray.
- Chop the basil and add to the tray with the cheese and pasta. Stir through to combine.
- Now pour the sauce over the top and stir through again.
- Add the breadcrumbs on top and put back in the oven for 30 minutes.