Serves: 8
Baking tin : 8″x 8″ and 8″ x 4″ or 16″ x 8″
Ingredients:
Pasta:
- Uncooked Spirali Pasta – 2½ cups cooked in 8 cups of mildly salted water until done. Drain, reserving half a cup of the pasta water. Pour this back onto the pasta in a bowl, toss well and set aside.
- Chicken:
- Boneless Chicken – 800 grams cut into 1″ cubes
- Mushroom – 600 grams, sliced thick
- Carrots – 6 large ones chopped small or grated thick (whichever way is easier to do)
- Green peas or sweet corn kernels – ½ cup
- Tomato puree – 200 grams
- Fresh Tomatoes – 8 large ones, de-seeded, skinned and roughly chopped (these will turn mushy upon cooking so don’t bother about how they are cut)
- Dried basil – 2 teaspoons
- Dried parsley – 2 teaspoons
- Rosemary – 1 teaspoon
- Garlic flakes – 10
- Spicy red chilli flakes or Bird’s eye chilli – 1 tablespoon or 4 chillies (adjust as per spice preference)
- Peppercorns – 1 teaspoonful
- Celery stalk – 1 large or 4 tender stalks chopped small
- Onion – 1, finely chopped
- Tomato ketchup – 8 tablespoons
- Olives – ¼ cup, sliced
- Jalapeno – 1 tablespoon, chopped
- Salt to taste
- Method for the chicken:
- Pound the dried herbs, garlic, peppercorns and chillies coarse.
- To a deep casserole on medium heat add a teaspoon of oil and the pounded herb mix, celery, finely chopped onion and fry until the onion turns translucent.
- Add the mushrooms and chicken and cook until almost dry.
- Slide in the chopped tomatoes, tomato puree and salt and cook until the tomato pieces turn mushy and the gravy thickens. You do not want a watery gravy. Set aside.
- White sauce:
- Milk – 2 cups
- Bay leaf – 2
- Dried Thyme – 1 teaspoon
- Onion – 1/2 chopped large 9
- Garlic flakes – 4, squished
- Pepper powder -½ teaspoon
- Birdseye chilli/ Goan tarvotti mirchi (or any other equivalent) – 1, chopped (optional for additional spice)
- Flour – 4 tablespoons
- Butter – 4 tablespoons
- Oil – 1 teaspoon
- Cheese cubes – 2 broken up, grated, chopped (whichever way is easier to do, this will anyway melt when you bake the pasta)
- Salt to taste
- Method for the White sauce:
- To a saucepan on medium heat add the milk, bay leaves, thyme, onion, garlic and pepper.
- Allow it to come to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for 10 -15 minutes stirring once in a while.
- Take the saucepan off the heat, cover and leave the milk to infuse.
- Once cool strain the infused milk into a bowl and set aside.
- To a separate saucepan on medium heat add the oil and butter followed by flour and cook stirring well until the flour no longer smells raw.
- Turn off the heat and whisk in the infused milk ensuring that there are no lumps.
- Return to heat and cook stirring continuously until the sauce turns thick. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the cheese. It’s ok if all the cheese does not melt at this point. It will once you bake the pasta.
- To assemble: You will need 8-10 cheese slices or 2 cups of grated cheese and a few tablespoons of room temperature butter to finish up the top.
- Drain out the water completely from the pasta.
- In the baking dish start with a layer of chicken mix followed by drained cooked pasta and white sauce.
- Finish with a layer of chicken mix and top up with as many cheese slices (or as much grated cheese) as you like. Dot with some soft butter and bake at 200°C for 30 minutes or until the cheese on the top melts to a light golden brown.
Notes:
- I’ve used a mix of whole wheat pasta and spirali durum wheat semolina pasta. With spirali the sauce gets into the threads of the spirali coating them well.
- Alternatives to:
- Boneless Chicken – 1 kilogram of Mutton mince. For a vegetarian variant make the tomato-based sauce and add a mix of vegetables such as parboiled broccoli, baby corn, zucchini, peppers etc
- Dried herbs – Use chopped fresh herbs.
- 1teaspoon of dried herbs = 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh herbs
- White sauce – Lots of cheese slices or grated cheese and a generous sprinkling of mixed herbs, crushed pepper (use a mix of different types of cheeses for more variation) over the pasta layer. This works great when in a hurry or when you simply haven’t the patience to make another sauce.