Family Food - Pasta and Roast Veg Bake

I have been REALLY living up to my industrious pseudonym

I have:

1. Actually had a proper night out (whoop whoop) with the lovely ladies from my antenatal class. May I add that I AM NOT UP THE DUFF AGAIN - the class in question was pre-The Bairn.
2. Lost an entire day following the afore-mentioned night out.
3. Started painting again, after a break of a couple of months.
4. Began a new exercise regime, a.k.a "toddler chasing" now the Bairn is a confident staggerer.
5. Got right stuck in at work again - dealing with such delights as eyes stuck together with dried mucus, 5 year olds lying about what they can see, and (the piece de resistance) an argumentative elderly lady with dementia and double vision.
6. Doing an entire actual SHEDLOAD of cooking.

My very gorgeous fellow optometrist friend was over for lunch today, so I decided I'd make things easy for myself and create a dish using only items I already had in my over-stocked fridge. WRONG! The dish I had chosen necessitated a morning dash to the supermarket, followed by an unscheduled Bairn-related nap-tastrophe; culminating in a wild panic to tidy the house, prepare lunch, prepare dinner (to be heated up later), as the wee monkey then refused another nap until 5.30pm - in a bowl of fish pie.

Ingredients

• Pasta - I used shells, enough for 4 people
• About 1 pint of white sauce (or a jar if you're cheating, as I did)
• Red onion
• Yellow pepper
• 1/2 a large aubergine
• Courgette
• 10 cherry tomatoes
• 3 cloves of garlic
• Mozzarella
• Seasonings as required - salt, pepper, Italian herbs

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C, heat up 2 roasting trays with a drizzle of olive oil.
2. Roughly chop garlic, aubergine, pepper, courgette and red onion - 1cm thick at least for aubergine and courgette.
3. Scatter veg over trays, should be spaced out a little, add seasoning and a drizzle of oil on top.
4. Roast in oven for 30 minutes, mixing up half way through.
5. Cook pasta as per packet instructions.
6. When it's all done, put it all in a casserole dish, stir through the white sauce, handful of grated mozzarella on top.
7. Bake for 30 minutes.
8. Serve with garlic bread.

It's not hard, it's just the washing up after that puts me off making this regularly! But then again, I am a lazy cow.

Variations

I also used about a "tit and a bit" of roasted chicken from the previous night's leftovers.

Plus, a few wee blobs of pesto over the top with the mozzarella, and added cheddar.

If making a homemade white sauce, laying off the salt etc - it could be mushed for babies.

 

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