Food You Can Eat: Pasta Bake

For the subset of vegetarians who are dairytarians

7/12/23 HammerZeitgeist 10

I make this dish every couple of months when I feel like my arteries have recovered sufficiently from the last pasta bake.

Ingredients

1lb aubergine

1lb butternut squash (it’s ok if it’s larger…That’s what she said. Hehehe!)

3 large peppers (red, yellow, orange)

4 tbsp butter

1/4 cup flour

3 cups milk (I measure this out first so it gets close to room temp when I need it)

2 tbsp whole grain mustard (I use more depending on my mood)

1 pack Boursin (herbs & garlic)

8oz grated sharp cheddar (I use one brick and sometimes switch it up with smoked Gouda)

1 bag fusilli pasta (It holds the sauce the best)

Sometimes I add grilled chicken

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 420. Wash and cut all the veges into large chunks. Toss with olive oil. Bake on tray for 40min. I like to broil it towards the end.

2. Boil pasta until just before al dente. My pack said 8-10min so I boiled for 6-7min. Put pasta into large baking/casserole dish.

3. Patiently make the roux: Melt butter over medium heat. Slowly whisk or stir in flour (a little at a time). Slowly stir in milk (a little at a time). Continue stirring until the it’s thickened. Take it off the heat and stir in mustard, Boursin, grated cheddar.

4. Pour veges into the pasta (add chicken if you want). Add the cheese sauce. Mix gently to avoid breaking the veges. Place dish in the oven and set it at 350 for 20min.

Enjoy

P.S.

I took that picture before signing up for FYCE. It tastes way better than it looks.

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10 Comments

  1. Actually, it looks like it tastes amazing! In my house, it’s practically a rule that the tastiest food is the ugliest. Also, I really don’t think to use squash often enough.

    I made that tiktok tomato feta pasta last night and it was so good… There wasn’t a scrap left 🙂 But, damn, it was ugly, especially with the tri-colour pasta I had.

  5. Oh Hammie, I wish you could visit me. Once again, The Skipper has decided that we can’t have a Holiday Open House. We have about 50% of the decorations up but I’ve been told, “Gilligan, you’ve got one foot in the grave.” It’s not true, and I enjoy black humor as much as the next person.

    In an act of revenge last week I had him buy the ingredients for a Hot Dish, which I think is basically what you’re making here. I needed Tater Tots though.

    So BH called me from the high-end non-chain market and said, “This place doesn’t seem to have Tater Tots. And I don’t know what they are?”

    I, very Karen-ish, said,”Find a manager and let me talk with them.” [Believe me, when you’ve been through what I’ve been through in the last decade you don’t give an everlasting fu-Fa la la la la.]

    So I got on the phone with some kind of department head at this supermarket and we had a very convivial chat. He confirmed to me that they didn’t carry Tater Tots anymore. Supply chain problems, labor shortages, etc.

    When BH got home (without the Tater Tots) I said, “If it’s 2023 and we’re experiencing a food shortage in Tater Tots you have to do something.”

    So the next day he did, and ordered from a wholesale club two cases of New England clam chowder. Which I love, but he taunts me this way, because my antipathy to Boston is well known.

    • Imagine keeling over while hosting a luscious Holiday Open House. What a story that would be.

      Would The Skipper consider letting you host if you trim down the guest list and/or food prep? Not to compare you to my grandmother… but my grandmother loved to host large dinner parties for which she would prepare a decadent +five course meal and the cocktails and wine flowed freely all night. The party would culminate in homemade +100 proof cherry schnapps made by my great grandfather some 50yrs ago and the most pungent wheel of cheese that is liquid at room temperature. She scaled back on the complexity and number of courses over the years to appease my grandfather who worries about her health more than she does. She hasn’t hosted a dinner party since the pandemic because she can’t physically do it anymore and sadly half the usual dinner guests have  passed away. All this to say, I hope it isn’t the end of your hosting era and I wish I could join in on the festivities.

      • Did I ever tell you how the 2019 Holiday Open House went? We decided to scale back, because they were getting crazy. We were supposed to invite 12 people each, no staff from an employment agency, no bartender, no server, no passed hors d’oeuvres. Fine with me. So I upheld my end of the bargain, sort of, because I invited 12 people, but a few were in relationships, so, maybe like 16 people. He, on the other hand (and he was paying for it all) let the floodgates open.

        “Who are these people? And how do you know them?”

        “Oh, that’s X and Y from my gym, and that must be a friend of theirs—”

        We ended up having like 100 people and I said to him, “I’ll get you back next year. Filet mignon all around. Make sure you have your credit card ready.” But then, of course, we all stopped entertaining and a lot of my friends just gave up on New York entirely.

        But, with God as my witness, there will come a day when we’ll start throwing parties again.

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