My Mum is not one of life’s natural cooks – she just never got the bug.  She did once try to bake my sister and I a cake when we were kids but she’s dead clumsy and managed to scald her arm trying to get it out of the cake pan, tossed the lot in the air and it landed in the sink with the dirty dish water and she decided that was a sign from the universe for her to stop!

I had two grandmothers though who loved cooking – on to their recipes later.

My Mum was somewhat shocked therefore to have me ask her for this recipe for her pasta bake.  To be honest it isn’t so much a recipe as much as it is a combination of things made by others but it is delicious and it easily feeds two people and is easily scaled up to feed more.

Ingredients

200g can stewed steak

150g Dolmio Sweet Pepper Stir In Pasta Sauce

Small tin button mushrooms, drained and halved

1/2 onion, finely chopped and fried

100g penne pasta or similar

100g grated cheddar

2 x cherry tomatoes, sliced in halves

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 170C (fan)

Bring the pasta to a boil in salted water and cook for ten minutes.

Whilst the pasta boils, mix the sauce, stewed steak, fried onion and mushrooms together in a pyrex baking dish.

Add the cooked pasta and stir through to combine.

Sprinkle the grated cheddar evenly over the top and arrange the tomato halves on top of that.

Bake in the oven for twenty minutes and serve.