Italian Pasta Bake

A fuss-free oven-baked pasta for busy weeknights! The little rice-shaped orzo pasta (also often sold as ‘bagos’ in Luxembourg) is perfect for a pasta bake – as it don’t need to be pre-cooked before going in the oven. It is only important to ensure the vegetable stock that you pour over is really hot, so that the pasta starts cooking as soon as it goes in the oven.

You can chuck in any kind of vegetables or other things – it’s a very adaptable tray bake, so feel free to be creative and use up what’s in your fridge!

Ah, and for your information, in this recipe I’m using a Luxembourgish herb mix by Téi vum Séi – the ‘Wanseler Mix‘ is a lovely mixture of tarragon, hyssop, thyme, sage and majoram. You can use herbes the Provence instead or just thyme or oregano will do.

This recipe was created as part of my “Recipes for Staying Home” show, you can watch the episode here.

This is a recipe from my cookbook ‘Flavours of Home’.

Ingredients

1 red onion
1 courgette
2 garlic cloves
3 tomatoes
2 tbsp olive oil
balsamic vinegar
½ tsp thyme
50g sundried tomatoes
50g artichoke hearts
50g rocket
50g green olives
250g orzo pasta
50g parmesan
400ml hot vegetable stock
150g mini mozzarella balls
1 tbsp Luxembourgish ‘Wanseler mix’ herbs or dried oregano
salt and pepper

Method

Serves 4

Preheat the oven to 180°C fan.

Peel and slice the onion. Cut the courgette into small dice. Peel and crush the garlic. Slice the tomatoes.

Heat one tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan and fry the onion slices for 5 minutes with a pinch of salt until soft. Add the garlic and fry for another minute, then add a dash of vinegar, stir and transfer into a 30x20cm baking dish.

Add the remaining tablespoon of olive oil to the frying pan and fry the courgette dice with the thyme and a pinch of salt for about 4 minutes until al dente. Add to the baking dish.

Roughly chop the sundried tomatoes and the rocket, cut the olives in halves and add to the baking dish with the orzo, parmesan and rocket. Mix everything with a spoon, so it’s evenly distributed.

Pour over the hot stock, then scatter over the mozzarella and arrange the tomato slices on top. Sprinkle with oregano and season with a bit of salt and pepper.

Bake in the preheated oven for 40 minutes.

Beef it up: Add sausagemeat to the mix. Remove the skins from 4 sausages (I like Italian salsiccia with fennel), roughly chop the sausage meat, then brown it in a frying pan with a bit of olive oil. Add to the baking dish with all the other ingredients before it goes in the oven.

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