Chicken & Zucchini Pasta Bake – the Ultimate Convenience Dinner

 

Listen up, uni students! This is the easiest thing in the world to make which is the reason I even made it. I do not like cooking. Sounds weird, right? After all, this is a food blog, but I like EATING OUT because I don't like cooking.

Still, needs must – we all have to cook sometimes, and this was delish. 

Before I start, a warning: I never measure anything. So the below is not written in the kind of logical, neat way you see on cooking blogs. Please use your own creative brains to understand the utensils you'll need and how much of anything you should add to your dish.

Instructions

Cut up whatever veg you want – go for a variety – peppers, mushrooms, green beans, onion, etc, etc, and fry it all in a deep pan with some butter. Before the veg starts going brown, cut up and throw in the chicken (up to 500g depending on how much you want). At this stage you need to be getting your water on the boil to cook the pasta.

Cook the chicken mostly through, toss it around with the veg, and now add sweetcorn and toss it around some more. Add any herbs to taste, and you may want to add some chilli peppers if you'd like the dish to have a kick to it. (I added raisins because I had some I needed to use up.)

Throw your desired amount of pasta into the water which should be boiling by now – it should be enough pasta to bulk the whole mix so it fills up your chosen baking dish to the brim.

Turn the heat on the veg and chicken right down, add your favourite chicken sauce (whether you make the sauce, or buy a sauce, it really doesn't matter, but about 500g is good unless you have a small dish) and keep tossing the food – now mixed into the sauce – every now and then as you wait for the pasta to soften.

Preheat your oven to 180C.

Once the pasta is just right (still a tiny bit firm – about 10 minutes boiling), drain the water from it and then add it, in stages, into the deep pan with the chicken, veg, and sauce. Mix it all together well.

When mixed, take the pan off the heat and carefully transfer everything in it to the baking dish and spread it out to fill all corners. I always take mine to the absolute brim and make sure the dish is full to the very top. (Because I feel cheated otherwise.)

Add slices of zucchini (or courgette) to the top of the dish as in the photo above, and then add grated or sliced cheese on top of the entire dish – whichever cheese is your favourite. I kept it simple and used Cheddar, but you could go for Red Leicester; Monteray Jack would be divine; or Mozzarella if you wanted a more posh taste. Sprinkle more herbs across the top if you want to.

It then goes in the oven for 25-30 minutes, and during the last 10 minutes, I turned the upper grill on, too, to get the cheese nice and golden on the top.

The result? A totally awesome uni student dish, enough for five or six portions. It will keep for two or three days, too.

Serve with your favourite salad.

YUM! The great thing about pasta bakes is that they're so versatile. You can use any kind of pasta you like, any veg combination, you can use meatballs or another meat if you don't like chicken, use any herbs to taste, any cheese that floats your boat, and any sauce whether store bought or home made, and you can get rid of foods you need to by throwing it into the bake (e.g. the raisins I had).

What's not to like? It's easy, quick, delicious, teachable to your grunting, half-asleep 17 year old, and you can have it with salad to make yourself feel healthy. Awesome.

Have fun experimenting with it and making it yours.

Dianna xx