Blumenkohl-Nudel-Auflauf mit Veggiehack (cauliflower pasta bake with veggie mince)
A hearty baked pasta dish where cauliflower florets and pasta cook together, then everything gets folded through a browned veggie mince and tomato sauce and finished with a cheese crust in the oven. Browning the veggie mince properly before it goes near the sauce is the difference between a dish that tastes like something and one that tastes like wet crumbs.
Prep25 min
Cook40 min
Oven200°C
Servings5
Christoph's cauliflower pasta bake, the veggie mince browned hard first rather than simmered raw into the sauce, so it actually tastes of something.
Ingredients
Written for a 30 × 20 cm dish
Units
Temperature
Servings
Bake
- 300 g short pasta, penne or fusilli rounded
- 400 g cauliflower, cut into small florets rounded
- 250 g dried textured vegetable protein, rehydrated in hot vegetable broth 10 minutes, drained and squeezed dry rounded
- 150 g onion, finely chopped rounded
- 2 garlic cloves rounded
- 30 ml neutral oil rounded
- 400 g chopped tomatoes rounded
- 5 g dried oregano rounded
- to taste fine salt rounded
- to taste freshly ground black pepper rounded
- 150 g grated hard cheese rounded
Dietary labels are a guide, not a guarantee. If you have an allergy, read the ingredients yourself.
Method
- Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil. Add the pasta and cauliflower florets together, and cook until the pasta is just tender, about 9 to 10 minutes. Drain well.
- Meanwhile, heat the oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Add the squeezed veggie mince and brown hard, without stirring too often, for 6 to 8 minutes, until deeply coloured on most sides.
- Add the onion and garlic and cook a further 4 minutes, until softened.
- Add the chopped tomatoes and oregano. Simmer 10 minutes, until thickened. Season with salt and pepper.
- Fold the drained pasta and cauliflower into the sauce. Tip into a baking dish and scatter the cheese over the top.
- Bake at 200°C for 20 minutes, until the cheese is deeply golden and bubbling.
Notes
- Brown the veggie mince properly, not just simmer it once rehydrated. A hard sear in a hot, dry-ish pan gives it real texture and lets it pick up genuine flavour; simmered straight from soaking, it stays flat and spongy against the rest of the dish.
- Cook the pasta and cauliflower together in the same pot. They finish at close to the same time, and it saves washing a second pot, with no real downside.
- Do not overbake looking for extra browning on the cheese. Twenty minutes at 200°C is enough to melt and brown a good cheese layer; longer just dries out the pasta underneath.
- It keeps for 3 days in the fridge and reheats well, covered, in a moderate oven.
Ingredient substitutions
- Dried veggie mince can be swapped for the same weight of cooked, drained brown or green lentils for a different but equally hearty texture.
- Short pasta can be any shape that holds sauce well; avoid very long shapes, which are awkward to portion from a baking dish.
- Grated hard cheese can be any good melting cheese; a mix with a little smoked cheese gives extra depth.
From Christoph Mayer