Jamie

Pasta al forno con pomodori e mozzarella

9/29/2006 12:28:00 PM

Following on from the success of Young Sarah's Cake, I decided to give another recipe from Jamie’s Italy another go – the baked pasta with tomatoes and mozzarella.


Cooked, salad, piglets

We had lunch al fresco, with a bottle of wine and a salad. I also broke in my new Nigella Lawson’s Living Kitchen salt & pepper piglets! I don’t think they’re available in Australia – I picked them up at Breeze in Cambridge. I’m not really a fan of pre-ground, sneeze-inducing pepper, so I’ve filled one piglet with salt, and the other with dried chilli flakes. (Essential for any pasta!)

This dish is extremely simple, but very very tasty. You layer cooked orechiette with a simmered tomato sauce (tinned tomatoes, onion, garlic, dried chillies), fresh basil leaves, parmesan and mozzarella cheese.


Ready for Oven

Then it just needs to be baked for 15 minutes until the cheese is melted and the sauce is bubbling.

While it was cooking, I made a salad. The first thing I did was to leave some tomatoes in the sun to make them delicious and intensify their tomato-iness.


tomatoes sunning

I tried to recreate that fabulous salad that I ate in Rome - thinly sliced fennel, mixed salad leaves, grated carrot and tomatoes. Mine wasn’t exactly the same, but it was still pretty good!


Salad

This pasta is absolutely delicious! All the flavours just compliment each other so perfectly. It's great hot, straight from the oven, and any leftovers are fabulous eaten cold or microwaved. I think making this pasta is definitely the way forward when entertaining for large groups.


Table on porch

I am so glad that Spring is here!

You Might Also Like

3 comments

  1. Anonymous1:33 AM

    Was so inspired by this I made it for a pot-luck lunch today and it got rave reviews! Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have the pasta I need to make this recipe, but the thing that stops me is my inability to source the nice big mozarella I can only find little ones and when I have found a big one it cost about $10.00. Are they that expensive in Melbourne and how many did you need for this dish?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi there,

    I bought my mozarella from an Italian deli at Box Hill market, and it cost about $5 for a 500g ball. I only needed to use about half the ball, even though Jamie says to use about 450g. Good luck finding it!

    xox Sarah

    ReplyDelete

CONTACT ME

My email address is sarahcooks [at] hotmail [dot] com.