Chicken and Mozarella Pasta Bake

My guilty food pleasure is M&S ready meals. I normally have no tolerance for cutting corners in cooking when I feel that it is to the detriment of end product, but sometimes you just want (or need!) something ready to immediately throw in the oven. However, I also like to know what’s going into the food I eat, and the fussy part of me (a remnant of my childhood) appreciates that I can pick and choose exactly which ingredients are used. You’ll notice, for example, that I rarely cook with tinned tomatoes, because I hate those big pulpy bits that you can get. A nice sieved passatta is much preferable for me! Keep it smoooooth.

Anyway, back to the point, my absolute favourite M&S meal is a tomatoey, chickeny pasta meal which comes in a massive dish and which I have attempted to recreate numerous times, to no avail. So I decided to ditch all recipes and just wing it.

And it turned out well! I am in love with this meal – yes it takes quite a bit longer than a ready meal (mainly because of the cooking time of the sauce) but it is also fresh and delicious and flavoured exactly the way I like it. And there's enough food to last for days! Yum yum.

(serves 2 with hella leftovers) 

Ingredients

• 2 carrots, peeled
• 1 red onion
• 1 leek
• 1 red pepper
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 2 tsp oil
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• ½ tsp cayenne pepper
• A small bunch of basil, chopped
• 200ml chicken stock
• 200ml tomato pasatta
• A few cherry tomatoes (optional)
• 25g parmesan
• 2 chicken breasts
• Enough pasta for 2
• 1 ball of mozzarella
• 2-3 tbsp green pesto

Method

Finely chop the carrot, leek, onion, pepper, and dice the garlic. Heat the oil and throw the chopped veggies. Cook for about 10 minutes until soft and fragrant.

Stir through the cayenne, oregano and all of the chopped basil stalks, plus a few of the chopped leaves. Allow to cook for a few more minutes.

Add in the stock and pasatta, and season well.

Allow to simmer with a lid on the stove for 35-45 minutes until thickened and delicious. You can add some water if it looks like it is getting too dry.

At the end of cooking time, take the lid off, and blitz with a handheld blender, until you get your desired consistency. I left mine quite chunky.

Stir through the cherry tomatoes (if using) and parmesan and let sit on a low heat.

Now, we’re getting somewhere. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

Boil some water in a pot and cook the pasta.

While that’s cooking, grill the chicken breasts (George Foreman to the rescue!).

When the pasta is cooked, drain and tip it into the tomato-y pan. I added some of the pasta cooking water into the sauce before this, to loosen it up a bit.

Tip the tomato-y pasta into an oven proof dish, leaving a little of the sauce smeared around the pot.

Now, slice the cooked chicken into strips and place these in the pot, stirring them around a bit to get coated in a bit of the sauce. Tip this over the pasta.

Now, slice up the mozzarella, and scatter on top, and dot pesto around the top.

Bake in the oven for 15 minutes.

Serve! Totally delicious.