Pasta Bake with Hazelnut Pesto
- With Béchamel sauce and hazelnut pesto.
The hazelnut pesto from this recipe is used as an ingredient for this pasta bake. This recipe makes a generous amount of pesto, and you use all of it in this recipe!
Wholegrain Spelt Fusilli 500g, Organic (Biona)
250g of dry pasta. This spelt fusilli is a wholegrain pasta with an absorbent texture. Ideal for soaking up all of the flavour!
Wholemeal Spelt Flour, Organic 1kg (Doves Farm)
20g of flour. Here we have used spelt flour, which is one of our favourites.
3 bay leaves for the bechamel sauce.
Around half a teaspoonful of mace. Mace has a peppery flavour and helps to give the béchamel sauce a lift.
Atlantic Sea Salt Crystals, Organically Approved 250g (Geo Organics)
A pinch of salt.
Around 10 whole black peppercorns.
Other Ingredients
- 400g of milk (semi-skimmed is fine).
- 40g of butter.
- 1 onion, chopped.
- Around 50g of pecorino cheese, or as much as you need.
- 1 courgette.
- 1 small head of broccoli.
Method
- Chop the broccoli and the courgette and steam for 4 minutes in a steamer. You can make your own steamer by boiling around a pint of water in a saucepan, then putting a colander over that, placing the vegetables in the colander and then covering the colander with a plate or saucepan lid. The water should not touch the vegetables (only the steam!).
- Cook the pasta in a large pan of boiling water for 7 minutes.
- Drain the pasta and place in a large baking dish.
- Layer the pesto over the pasta.
- Next, around half the béchamel poured over that.
- Next, layer the vegetables over that.
- Pour over the remaining béchamel sauce.
- Grate the remaining pecorino over the pasta.
- Grill the tray bake for around 10-15 minutes until the cheese is browned.
