Hello and welcome to The Vegan Corner.
One of the most appetising and popular Italian dishes I can think of is baked pasta.
People are usually more familiar with another kind of baked Italian delicacy, which is lasagne.
However, by baking pasta you can obtain a completely different yet very impressive result,
which I find to be the absolute best match for any busy festive season.
To begin with, let’s make the sauce for the pasta.
Take your favourite pan, place it over a medium heat, tip in the onions and the garlic,
and cook them for a couple of minutes or until they soften a bit.
Tip in the passata, clean its bottle with the water, add the tomato water to the pan
and stir well to combine.
We always like to clean the containers of sauces with water and use that liquid in the recipe,
just to avoid wasting good quality ingredients. Now, add in the salt, the olives, the oregano,
the chilli flakes and the baking soda.
Stir to combine and bring the sauce to a boil.
Once the sauce begins to boil, lower the heat to the minimum and start counting the cooking time.
We like to cook our passata for about 15 minutes over the lowest heat.
During this time the sauce should simmer just slightly and there is no need to stir it,
unless this task makes you particularly happy. If the passata you are using is already quite thick,
it will likely splatter all over your stove as soon as it starts boiling,
which is a clear sign that you should cover the pan with a lid immediately.
Once the time has elapsed, stir the sauce, turn off the heat
and let it cool down completely before using it, remembering to adjust salt if necessary.
For the béchamel sauce, place your second-favourite pan over a medium heat
and tip in the dry ingredients, followed by the milk.
Whisk the ingredients to properly disperse the starch.
Now, swap the whisk for a spatula and start stirring the ingredients.
As soon as the milk is warm, you can add in the vegan butter and keep stirring to dissolve it.
The butter adds a little extra richness to the sauce, but it is not strictly necessary,
so feel free to skip this ingredient if you prefer not to use it.
Stir constantly until all the butter is dissolved, and the sauce thickens and reaches boiling point,
and then turn off the heat. Once again, let the sauce cool down completely before using it.
To cook the pasta, simply follow the instructions on the packet, but since we have to cook it again later on,
you only want to cook the pasta for half the time stated on the packet, so if it says six minutes,
cook it for three minutes, and if it says ten minutes, cook it for five minutes.
I know, I know…I’m really good with complex calculations!
Once the pasta is cooked, drain it and we are ready to build the final dish.
First, preheat the oven to 200°C or 390°F, and then, transfer the partially cooked pasta into a bowl,
add in the tomato sauce, and stir the ingredients well to properly combine them.
Take an oven dish, grease it, add in a layer of the béchamel sauce and level it with a spatula.
Now, add a layer of the pasta and level it down.
Then, repeat the process, so add in another layer of the béchamel and another layer of pasta.
For the last layer, add in the béchamel and, for those of us who like to be indulgent,
a good layer of your favourite meltable vegan cheese.
You can either buy this ingredient, make our mozzarella cheese, or omit the cheese altogether.
The pasta is now ready to go in the preheated oven,
where it needs to cook for 15 minutes to complete the dish.
One last tip, and then I promise I’ll let you go:
let the baked pasta rest for ten minutes before slicing it and serving it.
This is not only to prevent you from burning yourself,
but also because baked dishes keep their shape better when they cool down a bit.
And this is how properly baked pasta should be:
decadent looking and nothing short of extraordinary.
The traditional Italian ingredients used in this preparation
perfectly blend together to create a food that literally bursts with flavour at every single bite,
which I’m sure you can gauge by yourself by simply looking at how beautiful it is.
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