Oven-baked pasta with mortadella and courgettes

The pasta hash or oven bake is a quick and easy way to make a simple plate of pasta into a tasty and nutritious mouth-watering recipe.  

The pasta oven bake can be made from scratch by cooking the pasta until it is still very firm, and then completing the process in the oven, but it will be just as successful if you use leftover pasta: what better way of combating hunger pangs! Its white sauce and stretchy cheese will make it deliciously gooey. No one can resist a pasta bake!

The Recipe:

First of all, put a saucepan of water on the heat and, as it comes to the boil, clean an onion and chop half of it for the sauce. Wash and cut the courgettes into fine slices and set them aside. Now take the mortadella and cut it into fine strips, while the fontina cheese has to be diced.

Heat one spoonful of oil in a non-stick pan and fry the onion until golden in colour. When the onion is ready, add the courgettes and leave them to cook, adding a cup of hot water.  Once cooked, add salt and pepper to taste and remove the pan from the heat.   

When the water starts to boil, throw in the caserecce pasta allowing them to cook to the point where they are still quite firm, then strain and transfer them to an oven dish. Mix the pasta with the courgettes and add the mortadella and Fontina cheese. Mix thoroughly to ensure that all ingredients are evenly distributed before adding half of the white sauce. Mix everything once again. Make sure the pasta is spread out evenly in the oven dish and then pour over the remaining half of the white sauce and sprinkle everything with the parmigiano, followed by the breadcrumbs. Cook in the oven at 180° for 30 minutes and serve while still hot.