Vegetable pasta bake
- Prepare
- less than 30 mins
- Cook
- 30 mins to 1 hour
- Serve
- Serves 4
We could eat this no-fuss veggie pasta bake every week. It's packed full of your 5-a-day and easy to make. Minimise washing up by making the sauce in the roasting tin that you bake the pasta in.
Each serving provides 598 kcal, 23g protein, 68g carbohydrate (of which 14g sugars), 24g fat (of which 8g saturates), 10g fibre and 0.6g salt.
By Annie Rigg
Ingredients
- 1 red pepper, seeds removed, cut into bite-size chunks
- 1 yellow pepper, seeds removed, cut into bite-size chunks
- 1 aubergine, finely chopped
- 1 courgette, finely chopped
- 1 red onion, sliced
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 150g/5½oz cherry tomatoes, halved
- 400g tin chopped tomatoes
- 2 garlic cloves, crushed
- 3 tbsp roughly chopped basil
- 300g/10½oz pasta, such as rigatoni or penne
- 150g/5½oz ball mozzarella, drained and finely chopped
- 2 tbsp pesto
- 2–3 tbsp finely grated Parmesan, or a vegetarian hard cheese alternative
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
Preheat the oven to 190C/170C Fan/Gas 5.
Put the peppers, aubergine, courgette and onion into a roasting tin or deep baking dish and coat in the oil. Season with salt and pepper and cook for 45 minutes, turning twice, until the vegetables are tender and golden brown.
Add the cherry tomatoes, chopped tomatoes, garlic and basil and cook for 10–15 minutes.
Meanwhile, cook the pasta in boiling salted water according to pack instructions. Add 4–6 tablespoons of the pasta cooking water to the vegetables to loosen the tomato sauce.
Drain the pasta and stir into the roasted vegetables. Stir through the mozzarella and pesto, top with Parmesan and return to the oven for another 10 minutes, until the cheese has melted.
Recipe tips
Make sure you use a vegetarian-friendly hard cheese if you're cooking for vegetarians.
Adding pasta cooking water to the vegetables is an easy way to create a sauce as the starch in the water acts as a binder.
When roasting the vegetables, they don't need to be fully roasted before adding the pasta, just golden as directed in the recipe. You don't want fully charred edges as they will cook further after adding the pasta and could burn and become bitter.
