Italian Pasta Bake with Meat, Courgette and Beans

A short skiing trip to the Dolomites. Winter holidays. I’m absolutely delighted, because although the trip was short, it turned out to be incredibly fruitful. Above all, in teaching Ninka to ski. She did brilliantly: by the third day, she was already going all the way to the top and skiing down the runs. I’m bursting with pride. It was good for me too: I got back on skis after a fairly long break, and I don’t think I’m doing too badly either.

Things were fruitful in the kitchen too, as you can see in the photos on the PrymitywnaKuchnia Facebook fan page. Most importantly, I finally rented an apartment — a really lovely one — through Airbnb with the best holiday kitchen I’ve ever had so far. Five proper burners with real flames, a counter accessible from both sides, and all the equipment: knives, pots, dishes, seasonings. Ideal conditions. And the apartment itself was perfect for four people. Huge, beautifully finished and in a pleasant location. Perfect.

So there was cooking every day. Incredibly relaxing, even with aching muscles after skiing. I love it, and if I have to say what gives me pleasure after a day on skis, then yes… cooking and drinking wine. Italian wine. Not necessarily expensive, although I should mention we had a little “mishap”. Instead of taking advantage of Italy’s lack of price-killing excise duty, we got through wines at 15 euros a bottle on the first day 🙂 Just a little shelf mix-up: instead of shopping on a budget, we went “mid-budget”. So we had a tasting. Quite a pleasant one.

But today there’s just one recipe. Because, as tends to happen with Italian primitive cuisine 😉 I mostly made my usual dishes. Lasagne, or spaghetti bolognese, or gnocchi made with spinach, carbonara-style. You already know the recipes for those. But the bake I’m describing below was pure chance. As usual. Dishes like this are born of mistakes, coincidences or absent-mindedness.

Absent-mindedness in the shop, where I forgot we’d run out of tomato sauce and simply forgot to buy any. So I had to improvise. The result was quite an interesting bake of meat, pasta and vegetables. And, of course, two Italian classics: mozzarella and Parmesan. Have a look for yourselves. That’s my opinion, and my companions’ too. I’d happily make it again. So I recommend it with all my Italian Valentine’s heart 🙂

At a glance:

Preparation time: 1.5 hours

Baking time: 25 minutes

Baking temperature: 200 degrees Celsius

Serves: 4 people

How many calories: hehehe, don’t ask someone who’s just been skiing

Ingredients for baked pasta, probably Italian-style:

• 300 grams of minced pork
• 1 medium courgette
• 1 large mild white onion
• 1 medium tomato
• 1 small tin of small beans (the kind packed in liquid)
• pasta for 4 servings (I’m in Italy, so I picked up a packet of Torchietti, smaller than a standard packet, but the pasta is a bit nicer. I haven’t seen it in Polish shops — or, more accurately, shops in Poland, not just the “Polish” ones 😉
• 1 ball of fresh mozzarella
• 50 grams of Parmesan shavings
• freshly ground pepper
• salt
• a bottle of dry white wine (a little carton from Coop at a very agreeable 1.2 euros will do just fine 🙂
• olive oil

How to make baked pasta with minced meat and vegetables:

I heated olive oil in a large frying pan and added the minced meat. I salted it fairly generously, added pepper and stirred. After about 3 minutes, I added roughly half a glass of white wine and kept frying.

I diced the courgette and onion and added them to the pan. I peeled the tomato, cut it into strips and added that too. I fried everything for about 10 minutes, then added the drained tinned beans. I stirred, seasoned fairly generously with pepper again and added a glass of wine. The meat and vegetables cooked for about an hour and twenty minutes. Really, they were simmering and frying over a low flame — no quotation marks around flame, because in Italy it’s a real one 🙂

Of course, I stirred it from time to time and topped up the wine. The idea is to get a fairly uniform meat-and-vegetable mixture.

While the meat was “doing its thing”, I cooked and drained the pasta.

After about 1.5 hours of frying — or was it cooking? — the meat, I added the cooked pasta to the pan and mixed it in. Another generous helping of pepper, then I fried it for no more than 4–5 minutes.

I preheated the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. I transferred half the fried meat, pasta and vegetables to a baking dish (you can see it in the photos; it wasn’t from IKEA, so I don’t know what standard size it was 😉 and topped it with half the ball of mozzarella, torn into small pieces and spread evenly over the surface, followed by half the Parmesan. I covered it with the other half of the pasta, meat and vegetables, then scattered over the other half of the mozzarella and the rest of the Parmesan. I poured about 1/3 of a glass of wine over everything, seasoned with freshly ground black pepper and put it in the oven.

I baked it for 25 minutes, until the mozzarella was golden. At that point, the Italian-style pasta bake, according to Prymitywna Kuchnia, is ready. I served it with fresh rocket, sprinkled with extra Parmesan shavings and lightly drizzled with ketchup. The dish is ready. Enjoy!

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