Our new baking dish

After the moratorium imposed on me by hubby dearest on baking any more cakes for a while, I was sulking that I was not getting much baking to do..so yesterday he took me to Shopper's Stop for shopping:) and guess what?? We ended up buying a nice 1.5 L borosil baking dish for preparing our pasta dishes:)

Yes..yes..I know it is a bit too big for 2 people, and also our microwave, as well as our OTG (we had to place the dish diagonally to close the oven door), but then both of really liked the rectangular smooth shape:)

So obviously, after buying the dish..both of us rushed back home (on the way picked up a packet of button mushrooms and american sweet corn) and prepared a simple pasta dish for dinner. Our original plan was to use penne rigate for the pasta, but somehow we had runout of it, and I was not too keen on spagetti, so we settled on elbow macaroni to get a dish very similar to the Baked Veggies recipe, only instead of the white bechamel sauce, we prepared this real yummy tomato sauce.

Tomato Sauce: We blanched 4 big red tomatoes in the microwave and then pureed it. In the saucepan, saute some minced garlic and add the puree. Season it with some Worchestershire Sauce, mixed dried herbs, some more oregano mix and salt and pepper. Since we underestimated the volume of our dish, we had used only 3 tomatoes, so then we had to add some thick cream (or milk - your choice) to the sauce - it not only added bulk to the sauce, but also make the pasta smooth and creamy:)

We smothered the pasta-vegetables-pasta layer combo with the sauce and grated some cheddar cheese on top. The cheese gave a very crunchy crust on top, which we completely loved:)

Pasta dinners are fairly common at our place, generally once a fortnight is the norm, but both of us really like baked pasta dishes..it does give something extra to it:) So apart from being nutritious, healthy, simple and non-fussy, it is also soo very delicious!