One Pot Baked Pasta & Meatballs

Let’s face it. Who isn’t busy at this time of the year? I’m not (ahem, cough, splutter), well I’m not with easy meals like this. Just throw it all into the oven and forget about it.

Make your favourite meatball recipe. I usually add 1 egg, some dried breadcrumbs and a few of my favourite Italian style herbs to ground beef and roll into balls.

Spray a baking dish lightly with oil, place your pasta in the dish and the meatballs on top. 

I used the Barilla fusilli pasta and the Cheese and Tomato Pasta Bake sauce. Barilla have made it easy for family dinners with a larger 540ml sized sauce for quick easy meals such as this. This Cheese and Tomato sauce has all the flavours of your typical Italian style pasta bake with an authentic, rich Italian flavour. (There is nothing but real tomatoes, real onions and real garlic in the Barilla range of sauces. That’s why I love them so much.)

Once I poured the pasta sauce over the pasta and meatballs, I added an extra half a jar of water and poured that over the top. Cover the baking dish with alfoil and bake for approximately 20 minutes.

Remove from the oven, take off the alfoil and give a good stir. You’ll find the pasta and meatballs have cooked.

Top with a little grated cheese and return to the oven until melted and golden brown.

Serve with a side salad and garlic bread and dinner is on the table in just on 30 minutes. This could also be done in the slow cooker. A good way to not heat the house up at this time of the year in the southern hemisphere. Buon appetito!

One Pot Baked Pasta & Meatballs

• 500 grams ground beef
• 1/4 cup dried bread crumbs
• 1 egg, to bind
• selection of Italian style herbs
• half box of Barilla Fusilli pasta (or enough pasta of your choice to serve your family)
• 1 x 540ml jar Barilla Cheese & Tomato Pasta Bake sauce 
• oil spray
• grated cheese of your choice

1. Preheat oven to 170 deg C.
2. Mix ground beef, dried breadcrumbs, beaten egg and dried herbs.
3. Form into meatballs.
4. Lightly spray a suitable baking pan (or slow cooker dish).
5. Add pasta and meatballs.
6. Top with pasta sauce plus half the jar of water then cover with alfoil.
7. Bake in oven for approximately 20 minutes (or 3 hours on high in a slow cooker).
8. Remove from oven, take off alfoil and sprinkle with grated cheese. (If cooking in a slow cooker, add cheese and once melted, serve.)
9. Return to the oven until cheese has melted.
10. Serve with a side salad and garlic bread.

Disclaimer: I was given a selection of Barilla products to try. All opinions, thoughts and photos are my own.

Fresh tomato & beef lasagna

I make lasagna often. It’s no big deal. Just a basic bolognese sauce, layered with dried lasagna sheets and topped with bechamel sauce. I always use tinned tomatoes but if I have the excess tomatoes, I’ll make big batches of passata to use in my bolognese and other tomato based pasta sauces.

I was clearing out the fridge one day when I came across way too many tomatoes. They were getting a little soft and maybe not so nice for salads so I decided to incorporate them straight into the ground beef for the lasagna that night. It was way quicker than deseeding them, peeling them, trying to bottle or freeze them.

I roughly chopped them with onion, garlic, basil, oregano, salt and pepper (and a couple tablespoons of sugar) and then mixed them with the browned beef. That was it.

The tomato taste was lovely and fresh and made a nice sauce for the lasagna. I did overcook this one and the top got a little brown. Here’s a link to my Beef and Eggplant Lasagna that will give you quantities and the recipe for bechamel sauce. Never throw those older tomatoes away. Cook them up into a pasta sauce.

How to cook Italian Food at Home

One of my all time favourite cuisines is Italian.  It’s tasty, it’s usually quick to make and most ingredients can be kept in the pantry.  Once you start stocking these ingredients, you’ll see that they can be used in many other cuisines like Greek, Spanish or other Mediterranean or Middle Eastern cuisines. It’s usually the cooking process that determines where its from. I try to keep these basics in my larder, that span across a variety of countries, so I am able to have a variety of meals at home. So, here’s how to cook Italian food at home.

What you need from the pantry:

Pasta, rice, flour, tinned tomatoes, chick peas (garbanzo beans or ceci), cannellini beans, berlotti beans, extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar, sugar, stock powder/cubes, breadcrumbs, yeast, nuts (eg walnuts, pine nuts, almonds, pistachios, hazelnuts), polenta, tomato paste, passata (cooked tomato sauce already flavoured)

From the fridge:

Beef, pork, chicken, veal, cured meats (eg pepperoni, proscuitto), ricotta cheese, marscapone cheese, parmesan cheese, cream, eggs, milk, butter

Fruit & vegetables:

Onion, garlic, tomatoes, celery, carrots, potatoes, spinach, broccolli, eggplant, zucchini and their flowers (corgette), capsicum (bell peppers), asparagus, pumpkin (butternut squash), leeks, radishes, beets, mushrooms, fennel, artichokes, beans, prickly pears, lettuce varieties (eg rocket, radicchio), lemons, apples, berries, oranges and other citrus fruit, pears, grapes, peaches, plums, cherries

Herbs & spices:

Basil, oregano, parsley, marjoram, chilli flakes, thyme, garlic, sage, peperonicini (hot chilli flakes), rosemary, mint, nutmeg, saffron, vanilla

Recipe Examples

Below are some examples of easy recipes to make Italian food at home.

Make your own pasta

Pasta e polpette (Pasta & meatballs)

Caramelised Carrot Risotto

Italian Garbanzos (chick peas) and Sausage

Spaghetti con pollo e funghi (Chicken & Mushroom Pasta)

Zuppa di Fagioli Rossi (Red Bean Soup)

Beef & eggplant lasagna

Chicken & vegetable risoni

 

Eggplant parmigiana & mozarella stack

Osso Buco with tomatoes & gremolata

Silverbeet & ricotta lasagna

Pesto genovese

Cannellini Bean Spread / White Bean Dip

Easy polenta

Orange & Fennel Salad

Pistachio & Cranberry Biscotti

Easy Pizza dough

So, there’s so many different varieties of Italian food but the ingredients are found in most homes. Let the seasonal produce dictate what you’re going to cook.  Remember, substitute, substitute, substitute.