Honeycomb pasta bake recipe

Try a pasta bake that looks impressive. Photo / Fresh Media

This pasta bake not only looks stunning but tastes incredible. The star of the dish is the tube-shaped tortiglioni pasta – standing upright, clustered together – that’s baked in the oven with a creamy bacon cheese sauce.

Honeycomb pasta bake

Serves 6

Ingredients

300g tortiglioni or penne pasta

4 rashers streaky bacon, finely chopped

3 cloves of garlic, crushed

Sauce

2 tsp plain flour

1 cup whole milk

1 cup cream

¼ tsp ground nutmeg

¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper

2 tsp Dijon mustard

1 Tbsp rosemary, finely chopped

A handful of fresh thyme, chopped

2 cups grated cheddar cheese

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.
2. Make the sauce: fry the bacon over medium heat until brown and the fat has started to render out. Add the flour and minced garlic. Stir and cook until the flour is absorbed by the bacon fat. Whisk in the milk, cream, herbs, and spices, and simmer for 5 minutes or so until thickened.
3. Mix in the Dijon mustard and 1 cup of cheese. Season with salt if needed but check first – the bacon and cheese may already make the sauce salty enough. Cover and set aside.
4. Cook the pasta for slightly less time than packet instructions, keeping it slightly underdone as it will continue to cook in the oven. Drain and cool slightly until it can be handled, but do not rinse nor toss in oil.
5. To assemble the honeycomb pie: butter inside of a 20cm round springform cake tin. Place the cake tin on another dish or oven tray to catch any drips that might escape. Pour about half a cup of the creamy cheese sauce and spread to a thin layer over the bottom of the cake tin. Place the pasta standing up inside the mould until full. Work from the outer round edge towards the middle. Make sure the pasta is level, touching each other and standing on the sauce. Once the cake tin is filled with pasta, pour the rest of the sauce over the “honeycomb” structure. Top with remaining cheese and a few sprigs of thyme.
6. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes or until the top is golden.
7. Leave to cool for 5-10 minutes in the tin before removing the mould. Serve sprinkled with more thyme.

Afterword

Here are two tips to make cutting up bacon easy: first, make sure your knife is really sharp. Second, freeze the bacon slightly before cutting. It becomes firmer and less likely to slip around while you are cutting it.