Sausage Pasta with Bechamel Sauce

I was wrong yesterday, completely wrong... :T

I have two more recipes to go from my previous blog, and  I completely forgot about it. Hmmm.... memory loss seems to be playing a very important role in my life these days. A doctor friend had once hinted that childbirth reduces a lady's memory power, ie. the more children she has, the more the memory deteriorates. With two, if my memory is like this, I am scared how it would be if I have more!!! Geesh... I think I should be happy with the two I have for the moment and not think about the next child... ;)

Hehe... ok, coming back to the recipe today, this is definitely the best pasta I have ever made. During a desperate attempt to make something different with some near-expiry stocks reeling onto my face (read: bechamel sauce, tomato paste!), I found this recipe as a rescuer and what a recipe it was! I twisted and tweaked it with whatever was available and the men in the family - F, B and H - declared that they were having food from an Italian restaurant!!! Ahem ahem... I seriously do not know if they were pulling my leg, but I really loved it and my kids did too. The next day, I brought it to office to have for lunch without realizing that there was a party in the afternoon. So my two colleagues were 'blessed' with having to eat it down for brunch. And they enjoyed it too!!! Wasn't I a glad soul! :) :)

Sausage Pasta with Bechamel Sauce
Recipe loosely adapted from Allrecipes
Serves 4 - 5


Ingredients:

400 gm macaroni, boiled and drained *
10-12 chicken sausages, sliced into pieces
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp garlic paste
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1/2 cup frozen green peas, thawed
1 pack (100 gm) tomato paste
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp paprika
1 tbsp red chilli flakes
1 pack all seasoning powder/ 1 cube chicken stock
Salt and pepper
1 pack Bechamel sauce (80 gm), prepared with half the milk as per instructions (to get a thick sauce) **
Mozarella cheese ***

Method:

Heat up your saucepan and pour the olive oil. When it heats, add the garlic paste and saute it till you get an awesome aroma. Add the onion and continously saute it till it becomes translucent. Add in the frozen peas, tomato paste, thyme, paprika, red chilli flakes and seasoning powder and cook till the raw smell of the tomato paste is gone. Check for the salt and adjust seasoning as required, add the pepper. Add the sliced sausages and keep the whole sauce on low flame for 5 minutes till the sausage incorporates the sauces.

Preheat your oven to 170 degrees. Take a large microwaveable glass pan. Spread a layer of macaroni, topped with the sausage sauce, then the bechamel sauce and keep layering till done. I got a total of three macaroni layers, two sausage sauce and two bechamel sauce layers. On the top, sprinkle sufficient mozarella cheese till covered. Bake your macaroni in the oven for 30 minutes or until bubbly.

Serve and devour!!!!


Notes:

* This is how I cook my macaroni - empty the macaroni into lots of water in your pressure cooker and little olive oil/ butter. Cook until one whistle and switch off, allowing the pressure to stay for 5 minutes and then let the pressure go off by lifting the weight. Drain and reserve.
** The Bechamel sauce recipe on the pack asked to be cooked in 1 ltr milk, but I cooked it in 500 ml of milk and got a nice thick sauce, which was perfect for the macaroni. The brand I used was Maggi. You can actually cook the sauce all by yourself. The recipe is in the Allrecipe link.
*** Since I didn't have mozarella cheese, I just dropped spoonfuls of cream cheese here and there on the top. Even though it tasted yum, I still feel mozarella would have given it an extra kick.

Old picture... :)

Updated on September 4, 2014 with new pictures...

Sending this off to "Flavors of Italy" of Simply Food, hosted by Divya's culinary journey...

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