Pasta Bake with Mozzarella Cheese

If you are following the Slimming World diet then this recipe is Syn free apart from the cheese, which isn’t many, probably about 1 or 2 per serving. I eat this with salad and it tastes lovely. This amount makes enough for a dinner for me and my 2 boys, and it keeps in the fridge for a day or two.

Ingredients:

400g beef mince, 400g tinned tomatoes, 2 tablespoons of tomato puree, 2 cloves garlic, 500g pasta (penne or similar), 1 ball of mozzarella cheese, salt and pepper.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200c.

Put the pasta on to boil.

Dry fry the beef mince with the crushed garlic until brown. Drain off the fat and take off the heat. Add the tinned tomatoes, (I blend them first), tomato puree and the beef stock cube dissolved into half a cup of boiled water. Stir the mixture and simmer for 20 minutes until the sauce is quite thick.

Drain the pasta when cooked and leave while you layer up the sauce.

Use a large casserole dish and add half the sauce at the bottom, then pour the pasta into the middle and add the remaining sauce across the surface. Slice the mozzarella ball into slices and lay onto the meat sauce.

Place into the oven for about 15 minutes at 200c until the cheese has browned and melted. What’s lovely about the mozzarella is that once it cooks it becomes stringy, golden and tastes gorgeous