The ultimate comfort food as made by my after school chef!
I do love food. I love cooking, I love shopping for food, I love preparing food.
But do you know what?
I also love having a day off every now and then.
When my husband and I began courting all those years ago he would occasionally whip up a delicious, mouthwatering meal, but those days are long gone. Now, if I ask him to make dinner a frozen pizza gets shoved in the oven or plain pasta is made. I know he can cook – he just doesn’t any more. Meal preparation is pretty much 100% my department these days.
Well, I tell you things are about to change!
Our eldest also has an interest in cooking. A few weeks ago he began the hospitality course at the local college and he’s regularly bringing home lovely dishes from his hospitality class at school (it’s a sort of education share thing – one day a fortnight is spent at college with the rest of the week in secondary school.). Yesterday the two of us got creative in the kitchen making this four cheese chargrilled chicken pasta bake for the family. I mostly supervised and occasionally stirred the sauce while he was busy chopping or removing something from the oven.
He taught me a new technique for chopping onions that he learned at school:
Peel the onion and leave the root end on; this holds the onion together. Holding the onion with one hand chop lengthwise through the centre  almost all the way through to the root end, and slice along either side, not cutting all the way through to the root. Then, rotate the onion 90 degrees and keep slicing across until you reach the root end. If there are any large bits of onion chop them up fine.  Oh, and his top tip if you don’t want watery onion eyes: wear swimming goggles.
In exchange, I taught him how to finely chop the onion by pressing down on the tip of the knife while quickly moving the handle left and right while chopping.
Mum, why you’re not a professional chef is beyond me.
– 14 year old admiring my onion chopping skills.
Together we massively adapted a quick sausage, pesto and tomato penne pasta recipe from Jo Pratt’s Madhouse Cookbook (2013). After all, recipes are only guidelines, right? The original recipe includes sausages, tinned tomatoes, pesto, cream cheese and pasta (that’s it!) but we thought we’d replace the sausages with chargrilled chicken and add a few other ingredients – oh, and cheese. Lots and lots of lovely, lovely cheese.
And parsley, straight from the herb garden.
After sprinkling the chopped parsley into the sauce and stirring, he remarked:
Oooooh, this is gonna be really good!
And he was right!
Fusilli pasta coated in a delicious creamy tomato pesto sauce with chunks of chargrilled chicken, peas and sweet corn sprinkled liberally with three types of cheese baked in the oven until the cheese goes all golden and bubbly? – absolute (calorific!) comfort food! I might have had thirds.
So, my tip for a successful family teatime routine is to get the kids involved. Get your #afterschoolchefs cooking, chopping, stirring, setting the table and tidying up afterwards. Get them involved in recipe preparation and teach them what flavours work well with each other and how to make the best with what you’ve got on hand – be it the last remaining herbs in the garden before winter sets in, ready made products in the deep freezer or plain boring pasta. My kitchen isn’t some sort of cafeteria where you just come and help yourself – everyone needs to get involved! (That means you too dear husband!) 😉
Four Cheese Chargrilled Chicken Pasta Bake
Ingredients
- 4 Birds Eye Original Chicken Chargrills (or 2 chicken breast fillets)
- 300 grams dried fusilli pasta
- 1 tbsp sunflower oil
- 1 onion chopped finely
- 1 clove garlic chopped finely
- 400 grams tinned chopped tomatoes
- 1 tbsp tomato puree
- 2 tbsp basil pesto
- 4 tbsp cream cheese
- handful fresh parsley chopped finely
- 100 grams frozen peas (We used Birds Eye)
- 100 grams frozen sweetcorn (We used Birds Eye)
- 100 grams emmenthal cheese grated
- 60 grams mature cheddar cheese grated
- 25 grams Grana Padano cheese grated
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Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180 C.
- Bake the chicken chargrills according to the packet directions. If using the chicken breasts, brush with a little oil and grill until cooked.
- Meanwhile, cook the pasta in boiling, salted water, for eight minutes.
- While the chicken is baking and pasta cooking, prepare the sauce. Heat the sunflower oil in a saute pan and saute the onion until it begins to soften, about five minutes.
- Add the garlic and cook for a further minute before adding the tinned tomatoes and tomato puree. Simmer gently for five minutes until the sauce thickens slightly.
- Stir in the pesto and cream cheese and cook a further minute or so until the cream cheese melts. Stir in most of the chopped parsley (reserve some for the top), remove from heat and set aside.
- Chop the cooked chicken chargrills into bite sized pieces.
- Combine the cooked pasta, bite sized chicken pieces, frozen peas, frozen sweetcorn and sauce together and transfer to a casserole dish.
- Sprinkle with the three grated cheeses and top with the remaining parsley. Turn the oven up to 200 C.
- Bake in the middle of the oven for 15-20 minutes, until the cheese is golden and bubbly.
- Serve with a side salad.
Linking up with Tasty Tuesdays over at Honest Mum and #CookBlogShare at Supergolden Bakes.
OTHER PASTA BAKE RECIPES YOU MIGHT LIKE
Meatball Pasta Bake by Feeding Boys and a Firefighter
Enchilada Pasta Bake by Amuse Your Bouche
Ragu Pasta Bake by Dinner with Crayons
Cheesy Mushroom Pasta Bake by Blue Kitchen Bakes
Chicken Tarragon Pasta Bake by Kavey Eats
Chicken & Leek Pasta Bake by Fab Food 4 All
This post is an entry for the #Afterschoolchefs Challenge sponsored by Birds Eye. Learn more on the Birds Eye Facebook Page. Elizabeth’s Kitchen Diary was sent vouchers to purchase the Birds Eye products used in this recipe, although all opinions expressed are our own. This is not a paid post.
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Rum & Raisin Cinnamon Rolls
I can’t understand anyone who doesn’t drool when they look at this recipe !
So tasty for a quick mid week meal
This sounds absolutely delicious, I love simple and tasty meals like this, def going to try!
Great mid week meal, thank you for the recipe
This i s a delicious and filling recipe- thank you
Mmm, a great recipe for this half-term break. Full of veg too.
This looks delicious, will have to try this as I love pasta 🙂
Looks a great meal for this time of year.
I will be trying this out with my 2 year old. Shes very fussy but does like pasta dishes and this looks very yummy
This looks delicious & a perfect family meal!
Pasta, chicken and cheese. Pretty much my ideal comfort food combination
Looks delicious! Cheese always makes things tasty! 🙂
What a tasty recipe thank you! The kids would love this!
Wow, this looks amazing! It has all the ingredients I like, so I will definitely try to make something similar. Thanks for sharing recipe with us!
Oh cheesy pasta anything is good in my book! My children love cooking and are getting quite experimental now, it s agreat skill to have for life.
That looks really nice hun, thanks for sharing x
Wow so fresh and flavoursome! Thanks for linking up to #tastytuesdays
Agreed – if you involve kids in cooking they are almost twice as likely to eat something new. Hopefully when my new kitchen is finished : ) Thanks for linking to #CookBlogShare
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I was lovely to hear about you and your son cooking together. The finished pasta bake looks really tasty. I hope your son continues cooking, as it’s such a valuable life skill.
Looks so very tasty and great to see children in the kitchen. Commenting for myself and on behalf of BritMums and thanking you for taking part.
Sounds delicious!
Yum! Pinned and saved in bookmarks for next weeks meals! 🙂 #tastytuesdays
WOW, I haven`t seen something more delicious lately. Can’t wait to try this. My husband would LOVE it!
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My stomach is growling looking at your gorgeous pasta bake there… yum! It’s great getting kids involved with making their own meals. My eldest helped me make pasties yesterday and loved it! They’re far more likely to eat it too if they’ve seen what’s gone into it. Thanks for the link!
I think it’s so important for children to know about food preparation. Pasties sound like a fun thing to make with the kids – lots of pastry rolling and filling 🙂
What a lovely looking meal. Well done to your son for making it. It is great when they start taking an interest
Thanks Alison, yes, it’s really lovely when they start cooking. I can’t wait to see what he makes next!
Isn’t it wonderful when your children start to cook? My daughter has just started University and keeps telling me about the meals she’s making. I’m so proud of her.
It really is 🙂 So delighted your daughter is cooking for herself at uni – me, I subsisted mostly on Doritos and beer!
How lovely to be sharing the joys of cooking with an older child. We often hear of cooking with kids, but it’s nice to be shown things by an older one!
That’s a very good point! We see lots of little ones cooking but not the big ones. I’m hoping to get my eldest involved more (in an ideal world he’d start blogging his own recipes!)
Oh, that is a very lovely looking pasta dish. And not only that, it has some delicious ingredients in it, too. A very important part is the cheese … for me.
The cheese certainly does help – you can never have too much cheese! 🙂
amazing comfort food… looks divine and so great that you’ve trained your slaves, sorry children well… chip off the old block and all that !
Hahahha, slaves 😀 Minions!
I can see your son having a regular slot on your blog 😉 this looks beyond yummy, the sort of dish that you would keep going back to pick at the leftovers until there were no leftovers.
I scoffed the last of it for lunch today as I was typing up this post – sooooo very nice! 😀 I hope to encourage him some more. We could make a great team!
What a fabulous tasty dish Elizabeth and seeing the word Birdseye always brings back fond memories of my time working there:-)
Oh that would have been an awesome company to work for! 🙂
Wowww LOVE that cheesy topping – and all those colourful veg! Gorgeous! Must try a veggie version of this one 🙂 thanks for the mention!
I reckon a veggie version would be just as lovely (if not better!) 🙂
Oh, you are absolutely right! My boyfriend used to cook before but after we started living together, he doesn’t anymore! He sometimes helps me with cutting vegetables or so but he seldom cooks. I love cooking so I don’t mind but I would sometimes appreciate if he cooked something normal, not oven-like, you know? 😉 We like going out with our friends so we often eat in one of the patios in the town. I found a list with some of them so I put the link }[spammy link removed] so that you can visit them when in Toronto 😉 When we are lazy and come home in the evening, it’s also our last chance to prepare pasta. I prefer it with grilled mushrooms, zucchini and cheese on it 😉 Zucchini is a kind of my obsession so I put it on a lot of things that I make! 😉 How about you? Do you have a favorite ingredient like me?
Cheese, mostly 🙂
What a fabulous family meal, and so nice to cook with your children too, my daughter is doing GCSE cooking at school and we have had a few cooking times together which I have loved! #tastytuesdays
I think it’s really important to teach our children how to cook and how to cook simple, inexpensive meals too. Good luck with your daughter’s GCSEs!
O.M.G I knew it was a bad idea to open up this post when I was starving. This looks utterly divine!!! Saved in the recipe file on pinterest!
Heehee, let me know what you think if you try it!
You really cannot beat a plate of pasta as the weather turns cooler and this looks just fab (the presence of cheese obviously helps greatly). One to try out very soon so pinning it now.
#TastyTuesdays
I am inclined to agree – what’s better than one cheese than four cheeses though! 😀
I do love pasta bakes! Thanks for sharing mine with your readers x
Me too Kavey 🙂 Proper winter comfort food!
That looks delicious – and I love your fresh herb garden! I grow my own basil as I love Italian style food.
Thanks Viccy 🙂 I confess our herb garden isn’t anything spectacular. All I can get to grow is parsley, chives and mint! I do try though 🙂
That’s a lovely idea for a family dinner. I will be trying this one out on my clan. Thanks for sharing.
I hope you try it – my eldest would be super chuffed if someone else tried his recipe 🙂 Let us know what your family thinks if you do!
Oh that looks divine comfort food for a weekday evening! Thanks for the Dinner With Crayons mention 🙂
Thanks Sarah, and my pleasure! 🙂