Meatball pasta bake

This pot of loveliness is pork and beef meatballs nestled into pasta in a roasted vegetable sauce with chunks of torn mozzarella and a crispy herb topping.

If you’ve got a crowd coming for lunch over the Easter holidays, then this would be the perfect dish to plonk on a board in the middle of the table with a bowl of green salad on the side and let everyone get stuck in. Crack open a bottle of red wine and loosen your belt a notch.

DIY meatballs

I developed this recipe for the Good Food Channel website and while I normally wouldn’t bother making my own meatballs, I would really recommend giving it a go. You can fill them with the moreish flavours that shop bought ones leave out. I put lemon zest, chopped anchovies and parsley in these with very pleasing results!

And of course when you make your own meatballs you can source your meat with a watchful eye.

Make ahead

Rather than try and make the whole meal in one go, i’d recommend knocking up the meatballs in advance and either freezing or chilling depending on when you need them.

The roasted vegetable sauce is super super simple and takes about 20 minutes. Again you could make this another day, make a bigger batch and freeze into portions. It’s very versatile so you could use it to spread on pizza bases or to cook chicken in.

And if you’ve done the legwork in advance, it’s just a question of cooking the pasta and assembling the dish to go in the oven. Very manageable, very delicious, job done!

Get the recipe here>>>