Recipe: Traditional Maltese Pasta Bake

Dear readers,

It has been ages since I last cooked a pasta bake, or what we normally call it in my country, 'Imqarrun' or 'Ghagin il-Forn', so yesterday I decided to cook some.

It is a really tasty pasta dish made with a bolognese sauce and cooked in the oven. This is what the finished dish looks like:

Recipe:

You will need:

• 3 hard boiled eggs
• 400 grams ground / minced meat
• 1 tin corned beef
• 4 eggs
• grated cheese or parmesan
• penne 
• 1 large onion and 1 large garlic clove
• some olive oil 
• curry, chilly, salt, pepper, dried oregano
• marsala wine
• tomato passata
• tomato paste

Method:

• First off chop the onion and garlic, and fry them in a little bit of olive oil. 
• When golden, add and brown the minced meat.
• Add the tin of corned beef

It should look like so...

• In the meantime, boil 3 medium eggs
• Boil some penne pasta (I used about 500grms of Barilla penne) for about 5-7 mins - you don't want to over boil them.
• Add the spices and mix well
• Add in 2 tablespoons of Marsala wine and cook on high heat till wine evaporates
• Add in 1 or 2 tablespoons of tomato paste (optional - add a little bit of sugar)
• Pour in the tomato passata, reduce heat and let simmer for about 30 minutes

• Mix the bolognese sauce with the semi-cooked pasta.
• Dice the hard boiled eggs and add to the pasta/sauce mix.
• Add and mix the 4 (uncooked) eggs.
• Add grated cheese or parmesan to the mixture

• Spray a ceramic (or oven proof) dish with vegetable oil (you can also coat it with olive oil)
• Pour in the mixture.
• Put some more cheese on top
• Cook for about 1 hour (I cook mine on high - about 200 degrees celcius)

Finished dish:

Love,

Lorraine

xoxo