I made Jamie Oliver’s ‘super easy’ sausage pasta bake — I added ingredient for induglence

Cooking for a family can be hard work and time-consuming, especially if you’ve got young children who are fussy eaters. In that situation, it’s a lot more effort and time (not to mention washing up) to make one meal for the adults and another for the children.

It’s even more challenging to find something simple that suits everyone while also not being . Fortunately, that’s where a simple pasta bake comes in.

Despite being ever so easy to make, a pasta bake can be a rich and indulgent meal for the grown-ups while also keeping the kids happy. What’s more, it can be made as a simple and quick midweek meal or enjoyed as a warming evening meal on the weekend with a glass of wine.

I made Jamie Oliver’s sausage pasta bake. One of the pleasures of this is that it gives you the chance to turn leftovers (in this case, bread) into something delicious. I also added leftover prosciutto (Parma ham), which goes crunchy and gets even more flavourful when cooked, as well as bacon that needed eating.

The sauce is rich, and the breadcrumbs and oregano topping add an extra layer of flavour as well as a satisfying crunch. If the bread happens to be homemade or from a quality independent bakery, that’s even better.

This serves four people but you could increase the ingredients if you want to make a bigger pasta bake and have more leftover to freeze for super-quick future evening meals. I didn’t include the garlic or chilli flakes so that the rest of the family would eat it, and I don’t think the omissions affected the dish’s quality.

Ingredients

• 3 cloves of garlic
• 50g mature Cheddar cheese
• 50g stale bread
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• Olive oil
• 4 sausages
• 1 pinch of dried chilli flakes
• 3 x 400g tins quality plum tomatoes
• 400g dried rigatoni (you can also use penne or a different pasta)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200ºC.
2. Peel and finely slice the garlic, grate the Cheddar., and tear the stale bread into small chunks or blitz in a food processor.
3. Tip the breadcrumbs into a bowl with one of the sliced garlic cloves, a good pinch of the oregano, the grated cheese plus a pinch of sea salt and black pepper. Drizzle with a little oil and mix it all together.
4. Get the sausage meat out of the skins (this is easy to do, but becomes a little harder if you are using defrosted sausages as the skin breaks more easily).
5. Break each one into four equal pieces, roll each into a ball shape and place in an ovenproof dish. Drizzle over a little oil and roll to coat. Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes, or until golden and cooked through.
6. Heat a little oil in a frying pan over a medium heat. Add the remaining sliced garlic and oregano, and the chilli flakes. Stir until the garlic is coloured, then tip in the tomatoes.
7. Add a pinch of salt and pepper, bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
8. Cook the rigatoni according to the packet instructions, taking it off the heat 2 minutes early, so it’s al dente. Drain in a colander and tip into a large baking dish.
9. Add the sausage balls, pour over the sauce and mix well. Sprinkle over the cheesy crumb mix and bake for 15 minutes, or until golden on top and bubbling.