Dear reader, this is a post which comes with one of those warnings – this is a blog that contains food snobbery in quite large quantities.

There are some recipes I avoid every time I see them – especially anything titled ‘pasta bake’ or ‘vegetable curry’.

Personally, I can’t imagine the day when I am going to look forward to making or, indeed and especially, eating a tuna and broccoli pasta bake even if it ‘comes bubbling from the oven to the table.’

Broccoli is not a suitable partner for pasta. There, that is it, I said it.

(Now I do realise, I am not having to try to get fish and vegetables into resistant children who will, however, eat anything with pasta. 

Either sell your children, or give them fish fingers, peas and spaghetti hoops.)

Chicken and pasta bake – not really. Chicken and pasta don’t go together and certainly not baked in the oven with cheese.

And the idea of brussel sprouts and pumpkin pasta bake makes me want to weep.

I do realise that lasagne and cannelloni are pasta bakes but not as we know the term and tell me, hand on heart, when did you eat a really delicious lasagne outside of Italy – or even in it, for that matter.

The exception I will make is macaroni cheese – up there with cauliflower cheese as one of the very, very good comfort foods.

The pastas I prefer are long strips of varying width – spaghetti, tagliatelle, pappardelle etc – which don’t lend themselves to baking as far as I know.

A recipe for four cheese baked spaghetti is not convincing me that I am wrong, but in case you differ: https://www.foodandwine.com/pasta-noodles/baked-pasta/baked-pasta-dishes?slide=c079c521-8907-4786-a70e-e9fbc1b88b99#c079c521-8907-4786-a70e-e9fbc1b88b99

The long pastas remind me much more of good Italian meals and I am very prepared to spend time thinking of how to ‘dress’ them – crab and lemon zest, artichokes and olives (both from cans I have to say), squid, peas and tomato sauce ( actually very cheap to make), I could go on….

My sister’s friend’s sister apparently makes the most delicious pasta sauces from all sorts of simple ingredients and I always like hearing the stories of what they ate whilst on holiday – mind you any stories of holidays and good food are at a premium these strange days. 

I salute that woman’s cooking but am pretty sure a pasta bake was not included.

Wondering whether the Italians would also sneer at a pasta bake, I Googled about and found indeed there are all sorts of pasta bakes but they are not called that.

It is all a question of language…….but a closer look does not fill me with delight, pasta bakes with a posher name.

Meanwhile, likewise with anything described as a vegetable curry gets a stiff ignoring from me, as the Best Beloved would say.

This is not because I don’t eat or make them – sag aloo is a delight, dal with crispy fried onions, cauliflower masala, mushroom and pea keema ( thank you Meera Sodha for that and other lovely recipes)……

It is because all those recipes you come across have carrots in them, and I am not a big fan of a carrot – and other root vegetables. (Honourable exceptions include potatoes, of course, fennel and the occasional turnip but never found in any of my ‘curries’.)

The idea that you can curry chunks of carrot and parsnips and sweet potatoes is not getting a toe over my threshold.

I am not saying this is not a good vegetable curry for the people who like that sort of thing, but this is not happening in this part of Deepest Sussex, along with, and I am sorry if I offend anyone, beetroot and aubergine curry. I may rest my case at this point.

I am sure that there is an Indian cook out there who could make me sit and eat a meal with carrots in it which I would then describe as delicious. But that cook is not me.

And, finally on this, ‘curry’ is just too a generic term – it signals to me that the recipe is not going to be great.

( I did warn you about snobbery……)

So, I can happily ignore recipes for vegetable curry and flick past them, but as for pasta bakes the search is on.

We have a lot of none strip pasta. 

This is not as a result of panic buying in March or November or now ( the year marked by panic buying outbreaks, who would have thought?) but because too much pasta was brought into the Free Shop and some ‘shoppers’ suggested I could make some pasta bakes for following week – they apparently had a soft spot for a pasta bake.

You can imagine my delight.

As it happens, I am not volunteering there any more so not cooking for it, but am left with a lot of pasta. (Don’t worry, I have not deprived people of pasta, the Free Shop gets more pasta than it can shake a hat at.)

My plan is to find something I can call something other than ‘pasta bake ‘ and which tastes good but is nevertheless baked in the oven. 

There is already the aubergine pie recipe ( see a previous blog) but there must be more out there which will convert me.

I am not falling for Pasta Al Forno which is basically a bolognese sauce baked with pasta. Come on, there must be something better than that…….

So, in yet another lockdown with weather not conducive to gardening, temperament not conducive to nothing more than necessary when it comes to cleaning, upholstery on hold, dog walking not taking up all of the day, BB working on his great thoughts about the Bexit deal, news of record numbers of Coronavirus cases, my project may well be to find/create a ‘decent’ pasta bake.