Easy Colourful Pasta Bake with Mascarpone cheese

Pasta is my answer to busy days when I cant spend much time in the kitchen. It is a relief because I know it always go down well with everyone. It comes to rescue while eating out esp. here in Europe where vegetarian food can be difficult to find at times. It is also my number one choice to eat in an Italian restaurant followed by pizza !

  

Also it freezes well, so it is easy to make ahead. It has at times rescued us in the early days of exhausting parenting of a newborn.
Today I share here an easy pasta bake recipe which uses mascarpone cheese as the base. I usually use cream, milk, butter, flour to form the sauce as the base for pasta bakes just as we do in mac and cheese, but a pasta recipe at a local supermarket using mascarpone caught my eye. Tried it. Liked it.
You can definitely play around with the vegetables, but I ve used peas and corn. Carrots, cauliflower, broccoli are all good choices. Elbow macaroni or penne work well for this dish but I used  since all I had was a little of 2 different types in my pantry I used a combination of both.

Easy colourful pasta bake with Mascarpone cheese

Yield Serves 4

500 gms penne or elbow macaroni cooked al dente as per manufacturers instructions
100 gms green peas, fresh or thawed if using frozen
100 gms sweet corn
200 gms mascarpone cheese
50 gms cheddar/gruyere cheese grated
150 ml milk
1 tbsp parsley. Fresh chopped fine or use dried
1/4 tsp chilli powder or paprika. Use more if you like it spicy
salt to taste
1 tsp pepper powdered or crushed
1. Preheat oven to 200 deg Celsius
2. Whisk together mascarpone, milk, parsley, salt, paprika, pepper to form an even mixture.
3. Mix the above mixture with peas, corn and cooked pasta and transfer the contents to an oven proof dish.
3. Sprinkle grated cheese all over the top of the mixture.
4. Bake for 25-30 mins or until golden brown.

Sending this to Pasta Please event hosted by Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes this month.

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