This pasta bake has crispy crunchy bits AND oozy gooey bits! It’s vegetables 🌶 enhance flavor; instead of just making the sauce. It’s cheese gives you a punch 🤜🏻 and a zing 🤘🏾, signaling that this can’t possibly be the average Wednesday pasta thing.
Recipe
Ingredients:
- Pasta Shapes (Penne or Spiral)
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Spring Onion, Kale and Chinese Broccoli
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3 Eggs
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Milk
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Pesto
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Dried Mixed Mushrooms
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Gorgonzola
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Parmesan
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Salt
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Rosemary
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Thyme
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Lime and Chili Seasoning
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Olive Oil
Put water 💦 to boil with a nice pinch of salt
Grab out a casserole dish, roughly the size of a plate, so that you get a few servings for your efforts.
You can use any pasta shapes; I like the spiralled ones. A healthier alternative, which doesn’t taste like cardboard, is high-fibre pasta. I used 50% high-fibre and 50% normal egg pasta and I honestly couldn’t tell the difference.
Measure the pasta by pouring it into the dish so that you have roughly a centimetre to a centimetre and a half of dry pasta.
When the water is boiling pour the pasta from the casserole dish into the water. Make sure you cook the pasta until al dente (a little chewy), as it will be going into the oven anyway.
While the pasta is cooking…
Choose a nice mixture of green vegetables. It’s good to let one of them be spring onion, as it brings a nice tang to the dish. I chose Chinese broccoli and kale. Chinese broccoli can be easily be substituted for broccoli, or spinach. I also recommend kale, as it gets quite nice crispy bits when cooked. Measure the vegetables by placing them in the casserole dish so that they cover the bottom twice over ( approximately an inch deep). If you think this is a lot remember that when they cook they shrink. Once chopped and cooked the vegetables should just cover the bottom of the casserole dish.
Make sure you check on the pasta
Place a fry pan on high-heat with a good splash of olive oil, add your roughly chopped vegetables. After giving them a stir add rosemary, thyme, salt 🧂 and lime and chili seasoning mix. Fry until the kale gets crispy. Frying simply brings out the flavour of the vegetables.
When the pasta is done, take it off the heat and strain immediately
Fill a large glass with water and put in a big handful of dried mixed mushrooms 🍄 , making sure that they are all submerged. I find having a packet of dried mixed mushrooms in the house helpful as they add a lot of flavour to dishes, and can be easily rehydrated.
If you don’t have dried mixed mushrooms, fresh button mushrooms are fine. Make sure that you slice and fry them with a bit of salt before putting them in the dish. 
Now it’s time to start assembling the pasta bake…
Put the cooked pasta and green vegetables in the dish, and mix together.
In a glass crack 3 eggs 🥚 and mix together with a splash of your preferred milk. I used high-calcium soy milk. Add a heaped tablespoon of pesto and stir, then pour over the pasta and vegetables.
Next strain the mushrooms 🍄 and squeeze the rest of the water out with your hand. Leave them in nice big chunks, or strips, and mix into the dish.
Lastly get out parmesan cheese and a nice gorgonzola with some zing to it 🤘🏾.Typically, Italian gorgonzola 🇮🇹 has more of a zing to it than French or Belgium gorgonzola. I added nice big chunks of gorgonzola evenly spaced and put a nice sprinkling of parmesan cheese on top.
Assembly done ✅
Place in the oven at 180 degrees celsius until crispy on top and the egg mixture has hardened, like in the photo. To get extra crispy on top put the oven on grill for the last 5-10 minutes.
Nicole Reynolds 